“What’s wrong? Didn’t you like the event?”
Zane puts a hand to my face, staring into my eyes with a puzzled expression.
Breathe.
My hand clutches my phone so tightly the casing creaks.
My phone, which spent Saturday night at Zane’s house and on Monday morning he uploaded videos using my social media accounts. Back when I was stupid with distraction, never stopping to wonder what else he might have put on there.
Maybe spyware so he could listen to my counselling session when I spilled out all my fears.
The Friday he made his proposition, he wore the glossy black shirt from the photo I loved, even though it wasn’t a mufti day. The photograph I stared at most from all those posted online. An image I felt safe to look at from the privacy of my bedroom. Behind a closed door. Inside my house.
A place where I thought no one else could see.
“Avon?” His hand touches my arm and I jerk away. “Are you okay?”
In the library, I’d told him the police would care about witness intimidation and he deleted everything, taking away the threat of Wilder’s video, giving up his leverage.
Except I had a book on his mother’s art in my hands.
The gesture meant nothing because I’d already handed him everything he needed to know.
And tonight. Gaining validation for my art, worth far more than an endorsement, and why would he arrange this?
Because you don’t bite the hand that feeds you, that’s why. You certainly don’t report that hand to the police.
More and more thoughts crowd my head, connections forming, tangling together.
I had sex with him in the studio and he took photographs, polaroids. Maybe there are hidden cameras in there recording a new video for him. I have no way of knowing, but it makes sense. Replace the fake videos with something real to discredit anything I might say.
It was so easy for him, because I’m as gullible and shallow and worthless as everyone always said.
None of it was anything but a means to an end, another way to insulate him from the consequences of his actions. Probably laughing at me all along because how could I ever believe this was genuine when he’s a royal and I’m afreak.
My breaths are choppy, as irregular as my thundering heartbeat.
I can’t look at him. Can’t stand to feel his faux care radiating out at me while my thoughts speed like a runaway train, careening along the tracks, heading for the utter devastation at the end of the line.
It’s beyond anger. My emotions surge into despair as the scales fall from my eyes, and I can finally see the truth.
My nose stings with tears, lips trembling. Jaw clenching before I bite out the words. “Did you pay the bully, too?”
His face crumples in confusion, twisting to concern. “What?”
“The bully.” My voice is half an octave too high, and I force myself to pause, to swallow. “That was how you got me on board to begin with, right? You somehow listened to my counselling sessions, and you knew how badly I was treated, how much I hated my last school. How much I hated myself. So you, what? Paid John to torment me so you could swoop in and be the hero?”
A kaleidoscope of expressions stream across his face. His beautiful face. His utterly beguiling temptation of a face. The face I never quite believed could ever care for someone as ugly as me even though I wanted him to.
I was desperate for him to.
Desperate and stupid and weak.
“You paid Dahlia to get my mother’s salon running. Got Wilder to mess with Clare. You bullied your way into my art class even when my teacher tried to keep you out. What else, Zane? Am I missing something?” Then I laugh because of course I’m missing something. “You used your mother’s paintings to get me to sleep with you and how were you planning to use that? Another set of videos to pass around school? Now you’ve even got your father running errands. I have to hand it to you; you’ve been very fucking thorough.”
Tears stream until my voice is claggy with them. A hot pulse beats behind my eyes, making them flash with brilliant shots of white.
“Stop! How do you…? This isn’t—”
