Page 35 of One Bet

“Things turned out good for you, though, you got the contract, the lifestyle, everything we wanted.” His voice turned hard and angry. “And the girl, too. But you always got the girl.” He smacked his hand against the butcher block twice. “You got everything. Always.”

“Yeah right, I got my face and my dick all over the internet.” I hadn’t quite reached the forgive and forget part of our relationship and the meltdown was coming. I set my beer down, and he smacked it away so that it shattered against the far wall.

This wasn’t our space anymore, we didn’t even belong here and now we were drawing a crowd. Ryder always played to the crowd. He looked at the couple guys standing in the doorway. “This guy is a legend, fucked more girls in this house than all the rest of us combined.”

He walked around the table to sling his arm around my neck and pull me down so that our heads knocked together. I shoved his chest, and he let go. “Should’ve seen this guy, he didn’t even need lines. Just that pretty face and his big dick, girls were dying to get in here.”

My skin burned as the crowd grew.

“And we have all the home movies, don’t we, buddy?” He shot me a wink.

Oh, shit….he chuckled, and I hated him because this was going to end badly. For me, for the Alpha house, and for Ryder. “Don’t do this, Ryder.”

He stared at me with his wide-open, angry eyes and a grim line for a mouth. “Cops let you go once. They won’t do it again.”

I didn’t even know if that was true, but I’d almost lost everything right along with him and I couldn’t risk that again. Couldn’t risk losing Avery after we’d just started figuring things out and I could see a future with her in it.

He laughed. “I’m not the star of the show. I’m not even here right now. I wasn’t invited back to celebrate the centennial of the fraternity I ran.”

He had a point, he hadn’t been asked back, which begged the question…what the fuck was he doing there? He blamed me for what happened to him because I was the only one who hadn’t been kicked out of school. Of course, I was also the only one who wasn’t in on it.

He’d used me, set up his whole operation using his “secret” video recordings to blackmail some of the girls into working for him, to humiliate others, and the videos he couldn’t use, he sold. The cops had gotten them back, as far as I knew. I hadn’t shown up on any porn sites that I’d ever been able to find so I’d stopped looking, but maybe he’d restarted his little entrepreneurial enterprise and neglected to mention it.

His dad paid off all the girls to keep quiet, except Avery. She hadn’t taken a dime, and she’d pressed charges. But by then, the damage had been done. She’d believed I knew about it all, that I was in on it with Ryder.

I should’ve known when the fallout started happening, that Ryder was going to try to take us all down with him, but he’d been my best friend since he’d come to Dallas stadium for football camp when he was a senior in high school, I’d trusted him.

A Decade Ago

Ryder fidgeted in the chair next to me, he looked at me then away, then looked at me again.

Jameson nudged me. “We’re screwed.”

Maybe, not that I could say why, not that I had a single clue why I’d been hauled into the dean’s office with Ryder, Jameson, and Finn. “Why?”

Finn leaned around Jameson to stare at me. “Obviously, they have one of the videos.”

“Videos. Right.” Videos of what?

Finn chuckled. “God, it’s a good thing you’re a rockstar on the gridiron because you’re an idiot.”

Finn and I weren’t as tight as me and Ryder, but I’d always thought we were friends. Why the fuck was he insulting me now?

“It must be because I don’t have a fucking clue what we’re doing here.” I stared at Finn, then Jameson, and finally, Ryder. No one answered or offered up any information, so I had no choice but to wait until the dean walked in and slid behind her desk.

Dean Ferguson stared at us as a group then each one individually. Her long blonde hair was piled on top of her head and she wore a business suit and an expression that said this wasn’t a meeting to praise our good grades or our school spirit.

My stomach churned. I’d never even been called into the principal’s office. She opened her laptop and after a few quick keystrokes, turned the screen to face us. In living color, there I was, hands on her hips while a very naked and very loud Sheri Epson rode my dick in my room at the Alpha house.

I hadn’t filmed a video and I sure as hell never invited anyone into my room to take a video. I glanced at Ryder who had the good grace to stare down at his hands, and the misfortune of not being able to control his smirk. Finn stared out the window, and Jameson nodded at me. I was the only one surprised by what was on the screen.

“The university has received a complaint signed by three women whose similar videos have been found online.” Dean Ferguson sighed and closed then turned the laptop away and folded her hands on top of the machine. “Mr. Shaw, as costar of each video, I’m allowing you to explain yourself.”

I couldn’t believe this. My friends had taped me? And uploaded it to the web? I glanced at each one of them again. “What did you do?”

Finn raised his eyebrows and nodded to Ryder, but that couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t… And our friendship meant nothing. I stood, Ryder, Finn, and Jameson stood, and I shoved Ryder against the wall behind us. I held him there with an arm against his throat. “You son of a bitch. What the fuck did you do?”

He laughed and pushed me off, I backed away because of our friendship.