Page 18 of One Mistake

“Then I’ll buy the house and you’ll always have a place to come back to.” He swallowed and took me by the shoulders, turning us to face each other. “What I’m saying is, this wasn’t just scratching an itch for me.”

Fuck. I couldn’t do this again. Our history was too complicated, too hurtful. Plus, once a cheater, always a cheater. I pulled out of his hold and turned to stand and pull on my shirt. It was draped over the TV where I’d tossed it hours ago. And I concentrated on slipping it over my head to give myself a minute. I was going to say something so hurtful, so untrue, but so necessary, and I needed a breath first.

I yanked on my panties and looked at him. “It was for me.”

And if he decided to call the police and tell them I kidnapped him, then fine. It was what it was. I would be upstairs waiting and packing.

One Decade Ago

Beth burst into my room. It was the first night I’d spent away from Ryder in a while, but he’d had to go home, and I needed some sleep. Hence the reason I threw a pillow at Beth. “Get out.”

“You have to get up now. Something big is going down.” There was a note of alarm in her voice and it sent a shiver down my spine.

I burrowed under my blanket to escape the cold already in my bones. “I don’t care.”

She tugged my arm, then gave up when I jerked away. A second later, she was back with her iPad. “Did he take any videos of you?”

“What?” Videos? Of me? Who? I could only think in very small questions.

“Did you let Ryder video you two having sex?” She pulled up a website and turned the screen to face me. In living color, there were GIFs of Keaton with…six different girls, Finn with…Oh, God. Ryder. I searched the GIFs on the front page. No Ryder. Second page. No Ryder. But then…on page three.

My stomach clenched. My heart stopped. My guts ached. Ryder. I didn’t need to see more. But I couldn’t stop looking. This was my train wreck.

“What the fuck is this?”

Beth shook her head. “It’s all over campus. The Alphas have been using their boat to film themselves with women and charging for views. I have to go. I need to get the story, but…I thought you should know.”

Nothing like a good morning heart attack to get one to sit straight up in bed. I clicked on a GIF—not one of Ryder, but of Keaton—and watched for a second. Neither one of them seemed particularly aware they were being filmed. That was to say they weren’t playing to the camera. Weren’t concerned with good sides or lighting or whether the camera saw too much or too little or about what it heard.

I searched through the GIFs. There were none of me. Thank God.

“Who knows about this?” I threw back the blankets. I had to get to Ryder. I didn’t hear her answer as I popped into the bathroom that connected our rooms. When I came back out, she was watching a video on her tablet. I could hear the moaning. “Who knows about it?” I asked her again then snapped my fingers in front of her as I slipped a shoe on.

“Everybody, I think.” She clicked the off button so my room went quiet. “I’m on my way to a protest outside the Alpha house right now.” She laughed. “You know Susie, right? The one who’s been trying to gather girls to paint the frat house every night? Well…” She launched into a story my brain was too addled to comprehend all of, but the gist was Susie had slept with one of the Alphas, got dumped, and got angry. Decided to take her rage out on the front of the frat house. Every day she painted a new dirty word on the front and every day they had the pledges clean it off. “She’s got all the girls she could find standing outside the Alpha house right now.”

“I have to get over there.” Ryder had to be innocent, right? I ignored the fact—for now—that he had videos on the site that weren’t with me. We hadn’t talked about being monogamous. Although we spent so much time together I just assumed we weren’t seeing anyone but each other.

“Reese…” When I ignored her, she took one of my shoulders in each of her hands and gave me a little shake. “They suspended all four of them. Said Ryder…” She looked down at the floor. I wanted to hurt her. Hurt him. Hurt everyone.

“Said Ryder did what?” It was better to know than not to know.

She blew a long breath from her puffy cheeks. “They said Ryder is the one who…did it all. That he was the mastermind, anyway, but they’re all suspended.”

I stared at her. Suspended. Ryder. His mom would kill him. I had to get to him. There had to be a way to prove he was innocent. If. If he was innocent.

“Come on.” I pulled her by the arm this time until she stood. “I need to go there.”

And if I needed help burying the body, so to speak, she would be there for me.

She chattered the entire time she drove across town and didn’t close her mouth until we pulled onto the street behind the Alpha House. The front of the house was full of picketers and the back was surrounded by the fence, but I would rather take my chances climbing the fence than with a bunch of enraged victims of whatever was going on.

“I’m going to pull the car as close to the fence as I can so we can use it to climb over.” It was a Mercedes convertible. Not much in the help department. But it also didn’t have enough room to bring a ladder, so any help was better than none.

“Okay.”

I climbed over first and waited for her at the bottom before I weaved through the beer cans, the firepits, assorted debris, and mismatched chairs and furniture in the yard between me and the back door. It opened into the kitchen which usually smelled like old cheese, stale beer, and hot wing sauce, but today smelled fresh and clean and every surface sparkled.

The whole house was dust-free and dazzling. Candle scented. Empty. I walked around another corner to the staircase that led to Ryder’s room. The silence was loud, broken only by the tick of the grandfather clock in the foyer and our shoes on the polished tile floor.