“Have you been down here all night?”
“Thought I’d get a workout in, try to tire myself out, but then—” He gestured to the screen. “I was just going to watch it once.”
“You have to stop this.” Guilt was a bear, didn’t she know it, but this? This was not healthy. “You’ve got to stop torturing yourself. You’re watching this over and over again, to what end, Cash? Are you—are you punishing yourself? Because that’s not—”
“I’m not—” He exhaled sharply and ran a hand over his face, fingers rasping against his stubble. “I’m not torturing myself. This isn’t punishment. I’m... fuck, I don’t know, Poppy. I’m trying to make it make sense.”
Poppy chewed on her thumbnail. “I love you. You know I do. But don’t you think it’s time to admit that—”
“No.” He gave a sharp shake of his head. “I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do.”
Video Cash stuck his tongue down video Ashley’s throat andPoppy felt just as sick watching it now as she had the first time. How Cash was able to watch it on repeat was beyond her.
“You don’t believe me.” He sounded resigned.
Poppy pinched her eyes shut. “It’s not that I don’t want to. Because I do. I really,reallydo. I just—I don’t know what to believe, Cash.”
She knew the Cash who was sitting beside her. The Cash who’d always seemed to have a sixth sense for when she needed him. The Cash who’d made the two-hour drive from Eugene to Portland one weekend a month, skipping out on the chance to party with his teammates, choosing instead to spend time with her, knowing her parents left her alone more often than not. The Cash who’d picked her up when she was down. The Cash who’d never made her feel like a failure.
It was next to impossible to reconcile that Cash with the one on the screen, blatantly cheating on his fiancé with his ex-girlfriend, not even looking a little sorry for it.
But the Cash she knew, the Cash she loved, had always given her grace.
“You know you aren’t your mistakes, right?”
He scoffed. “I don’t need platitudes, Poppy.”
“It’s what you always tell me.”
“I didn’t do anything.” He tugged hard on his hair. No wonder it looked like shit. “I didn’t. If I did, I’d own it, okay? I’d apologize. I’d grovel. I’d beg Lyric for forgiveness, but I didn’t do it. That?” He pointed at the screen. “That’s not me.”
“Were you drinking? Because you know that I of all people won’t judge you if you—”
“No! Christ, that’s not what I’m saying.” He stood and began to pace in front of the TV. “That isliterallynot me. It looks like me, I know it does because I’ve got two working eyes, but... It’s.Not. Me.” He snatched the remote off the ottoman and rewound the video to the beginning. “Please just hear me out.”
Poppy slipped off the arm of the couch and took a seat on the cushion Cash had vacated with her feet drawn up and her knees hugged to her chest. “I’m listening.”
She’d always listen.
He offered her a ghost of a smile, wan and weak. “Okay. This is going to sound crazy, but I was reading about deepfakes. About how people can use artificial intelligence to swap faces and—Poppy, I think someone did that to me. At the seventeen second mark, the video glitches. You’ve got to pay attention to my face, okay? My eyes and my mouth.”
Poppy rested her chin on her knees. “Seventeen seconds. Glitch. Watch your face. Got it.”
Cash pressed play and the video started. She wrinkled her nose, watching as Cash threaded his fingers through Ashley’s hair and—
Wait.
Poppy leaned closer to the screen. “Go back.”
Cash held down on the rewind button and started the video from the beginning.
His hand was in her hair. He leaned in and—
The video glitched.
It fuckingglitched.
“Oh my god.”
