The anger simmering inside of me morphs into a bonfire of rage. “He still hurt you.”
“Not as bad as he could have. It could have been so much worse.”
The rage inside of me turns murderous. I’m a pretty laidback guy. I joke around a lot. I try not to sweat the small stuff and like to have a good time. Not a lot of things piss me off.
But hearing how Briar’s ex put his hands on her…hearing how he tried to force himself onto her…
I’ve never felt this before. This raw, unbridled, seething fury that pumps like molten lava in my veins.
“If I ever see Logan, I’m going to kill him.”
Briar’s eyes are as big as saucers when she looks up at me. “What?”
“I’m going to kill him for hurting you.”
She blinks, the shock in her eyes clear as day. Awareness catches up with me a second later. That’s probably not a very helpful thing for me to say to her right now.
“I’m sorry, I…” I clear my throat. “I’m sorry he did that to you. He’s a piece of shit.”
“He had me fooled for so long. He was so sweet and funny when we first started dating. But that night, I saw a side of him I never want to see again. It was like a switch flipped.”
She leans back and wipes her face with the sleeves of my hoodie.
“That wasn’t even the worst part,” she says, leaning back against the counter, hugging her arms around herself. “The day after I broke up with him, I tried to meet up with my friends at school, but they wouldn’t text or call me back. It went on for days. It felt like everyone was ghosting me. And then I bumped into one of them at the coffee shop, and she made a snide comment about what a jerk I was for using Logan. I was so confused. And then I bumped into one of Logan’s teammates at the coffee shop on campus. He asked me out, but I turned him down. He seemed really surprised for some reason, which wasweird because I never showed interest in him like that. He even called me a tease.”
I grit my teeth. What the fuck?
She lets out a heavy sigh. “I kept trying to reach out to all the friends I made, but they all blew me off. This went on for like a month. I finally confronted one of them in person and asked what the hell was going on, and they said that after I broke up with Logan and left the party, he told everyone that I used him so that I could get close to his teammates. He told everyone that I wanted to hook up with all the guys on the team.”
Her voice breaks, and she starts to cry.
“And they all believed him. I couldn’t believe it. He was so mad that I didn’t have sex with him, so he started a disgusting rumor about me and told everyone. His teammates, their girlfriends, all our mutual friends. And they all believed him. Even when I tried to tell my friends that he was lying, they sided with him.”
She covers her face with her hands as she cries softly. My chest shatters.
I wrap my arms around her and hug her.
“My whole life at Chicago University was ruined. I lost all my friends because of him,” she says.
I think back to the night when she called me sobbing, saying she wanted to leave Chicago and come back to Colorado.
“That’s why I left. I was so happy in Chicago for so long, but after that night, it was ruined. I didn’t have any friends anymore. Strangers would see me across campus and call me a slut or a whore. I didn’t even do anything.”
I hold her tighter, pissed off and heartbroken for her.
“I just needed to get away,” she says, her voice watery and broken.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You’re here now. You’re with me, and I’m not going to let anything like that happen to you ever again.”
She buries her face in my chest. Emotion lodges in my throat. She’s been holding this inside of her for months. She’s been in pain this whole time, struggling alone.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask softly.
“I just wanted to forget it. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.”
She leans back and looks up at me, her face red and swollen from crying. “And I…I was scared you’d think I was a coward.”
My jaw drops in shock. “What? No, Briar. I don’t think that at all.”
