Then it comes to me. “Sydney, they were my cousins. Lynn and Lucy.”
“What?” she splutters.
Placing a hand over my heart, I say, “I swear on my sister’s life that is the truth. Ask Heather if you don’t believe me. She’d flown in with her husband to attend the party. It was Lucy’s sixteenth birthday, so it was a big deal. I remember getting that picture taken, but how did you see it?”
Her brows knit in confusion. “You sent it to Anvil, and he showed me.”
“Anvil?” I roar, instantly enraged. “How the fuck did he get it, and were you already screwing him by then?”
ChapterFourteen
Sydney
“What?” An anxious fluttery feeling invades my chest, and I feel like I might puke. “Of course, I wasn’t screwing Anvil. I hated his fucking guts.”
A red haze coats Jared’s gorgeous blue eyes. “Don’t fucking lie to me!” He stands, grabbing fistfuls of his hair as he paces. “I know about you and him.”
All the blood drains from my face. “There was no me and him,” I truthfully admit.
“Stop fucking lying!” He drops to his butt, pulls his knees to his chest, and buries his face in them.
Pain eviscerates me from all angles. He knows, and I can guess who told him. I am ashamed. I’d like to say it’s my most shameful moment, but there are much worse things I’ve done. Setting my wineglass down on the coffee table, I rise and walk to the end of the couch, sinking onto the tiled floor across from Jared with an ache in my heart.
“Anvil told you,” I quietly say.
Jared lifts his head, stabbing me with tortured eyes. “He emailed me a photo.”
My eyes pop wide. That backstabbing, double-crossing asshole. “I didn’t know there was a photo.” I palm my queasy stomach, thinking of the other vulnerable photos and videos of me that are out there somewhere in the world. Acid churns in my gut, and I’m regretting my wine consumption on an empty stomach.
“You were asleep. Naked in his bed.”
“Not his bed,” I whisper. “It was a party.”
His mouth pulls into a sneer. “Like it fucking matters!” he barks, and a fresh wave of shame washes over me. “While I was locked away in a boarding school, dreaming of you and counting down the days until I could be with you again, you were fucking my ex-best friend.”
“I wasn’t. It was a one-time thing, and I—”
“How could you do that to me, Syd?” His eyes fill with tears, and I’m horrified. “Seeing you with any other guy was always going to hurt, but Vil? Why him?”
“I was out of my mind. High and drunk. I don’t even remember how it happened, just that I woke up beside him and threw up everywhere,” I whisper, biting on the inside of my cheek to stop the scream dying to break free.
His expression alters in the blink of an eye. Fear swims in his gaze. “Did he rape you?” He crawls over closer. “I swear I’ll fucking kill him if he did.”
Excruciating pain flays me on the inside, and I tuck my knees into my chest and hug my legs, desperately praying I keep it together. “No.” I shake my head. “I might not remember it, but it was consensual. Cay was there. She saw it going down. Tried to stop me, but I pushed her away.”
The only time Cayenne and I stopped speaking was then. She was furious with me because I slept with her ex but angrier over how I was behaving. I lost my will to live during that time, and I was completely out of control. My best friend tried everything to get through to me, and her avoiding me for four months was her form of tough love. Cay was appalled when I told her the real reason for my wild behavior, but it was on me for not telling her sooner.
Silence descends, and it’s not the comfortable kind.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you’d given up on me. That you’d been fucking other girls for months. I assumed we were over, and there were extenuating circumstances.”
His head whips up.
“Not that it’s an excuse, but…”
“He told me he was going to move in on you,” Jared admits, shocking the shit out of me.
“What? When?”
