Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1)(71)

She hadn’t sent anyone a video of them having sex.

God, God, he had sent a video to someone of them having sex. She watched the crooked, half-obscured vision of her as she kissed him and touched him and closed her eyes in ecstasy and happiness and love for him. Oh, you could clearly see how much she loved him—more than she’d ever said, more than she’d ever wanted to reveal. She thought she’d guarded her heart a little better than that, but no no no. It was raw and open and right there for anyone to see. He probably noticed it a thousand years ago, when she was busy still thinking she hated him.

And now she could never go back to that.

She couldn’t go back to that perfect state where nothing might penetrate her armor. He had gotten through, and now the whole thing was full of holes. All he needed to do to wound her was half of this, one tenth of this, and yet she suspected he wasn’t even done. This stuff was clearly leading to some big thing. Broadcasting it to the whole of campus maybe, or creating some kind of YouTube nightmare. She could imagine Jason having a vlog, full of mean pranks and cruel jokes.

And that was before she flicked through the pages to the first email, in search of the beginning of this elaborate scheme. Some word, some sign of what they were plotting together, some hint of revenge or festering resentments. Though she didn’t really brace herself for how bad it could be. She imagined a sniggering email to Jason, and instead found an email to her.

One that he had sent the day after the accident, only to have it bounce. Probably because of her father, she thought, and thanked god for that. If she had read it at the time it would have destroyed her.

Though the destruction was much more complete now.

She read the lines with blurry eyes, sick with despair and disbelief:

Letty,

If you think I care that you’re hurt, I don’t. I’m not sorry about the shit that went down—it was your fault. Everything was all your fault anyway and you deserve all of this.

Fuck you, Letty, for doing this to me. Fuck. You.

Tate





Then sobbed, for all the things she had lost.





Chapter 22


She couldn’t remember the twenty minutes it took for him to get to his room. Something must have happened in the interim, but she couldn’t say what. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was still sitting in his desk chair when the door opened, that email still open on the laptop in front of her. Face wet and insides sort of hollowed out, as though that f*ck and that you had reached in and scooped it all up.

And the only way to get any of it back was to rewind herself.

All the way back, to the girl she had been on that bluff.

“Man, I knew you could stoop low. But this a steep drop, even for you.”

“What? What are you—”

She knew what cut him off before he could finish the question. He’d seen what she was looking at. That f*cking email, the pictures she’d left up, the video still playing on an infinite loop in the corner. It made her bleed to see her own tender-hearted face over and over, but it was worth it somehow. This was the scene in their movie where the villain was confronted with the evidence of his wrongdoing.

Only the villain in this case was him and, oh god, she could hardly stand it.

Just hearing the bafflement in his voice. The vulnerability.

The fake, fake, fake f*cking vulnerability.

“You went through my emails? Why would you…How could you…?”

“I don’t think demanding answers from me is really the way you want to go.”

“I don’t know which other way I should go. I don’t know what you think this is.”

She stood up then. She had to. There was too much roiling emotion in her to stay seated.

And besides, she needed room to move. To throw her hands up and shake her f*cking fists.

“Oh my god, are you serious? Are you seriously going to try spinning this garbage out? Look at this shit! Man, the jig is f*cking up, *. I know, okay. I know that you’ve been f*cking secretly filming me and sending emails to some dick—probably the same one that split my f*cking head open.”

“No wait, just wait a second, let me think.”

“Yeah, that sounds like it would be a super smart move for me to make. Wait so that you can dream up a way to weasel out of this. Or maybe you just want time to figure out how to dump the pig blood on my head anyway, huh? Bring your master plan forward a little, perhaps?”

Now it was his turn to throw his hands up. To lose it a little.

“This isn’t Carrie, Letty, goddamn it, I just—” he started.

But she couldn’t let him finish. Not when he was this good at making it convincing. Not when he could make his eyes seem so full of panic, and force that desperate tone into his voice.

“You just what? Your thumb slipped on the record button? You fell headfirst into emailing Mr. Douchebag? I can imagine all of that pretty easily. But you know what I can’t imagine? How you can possibly have meant your apologies, when right here in black and white you say that I deserved it.”

She managed to get through most of it before she broke. But then she got to the word deserved and her voice just started to fall apart. Every bit of her fell apart. She had to take a second to gather herself, to hold back the tears—though her efforts were nowhere near as good as they once were. Some still leaked out. Her chin still trembled. And when she finally spoke again, her pain was riddled through her voice.