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Both of my hands come up to bury my burning face in them.
“C?” I feel her too-cold hands on my bare shoulders thanks to the simple racerback tank I opted for today instead of the showy shit and my pregnant best friend is guiding me across the tent until my ass hits a stool. “Did he leave you early last night?” I hear the anger filtering into her voice as she tugs my hands from my face. “Did he really leave you and go sleep with someone else?”
I shake my head—at least I think I do—as I stare at the ground and wait for a pit to open up and swallow me whole.
This is all wrong.
So wrong that the heat of angry realization washes over me and my breath comes in pants. “Do they know who took the picture?”
My voice doesn’t sound like mine as flashes of the who that would give a fuck about me sleeping with Fin fill my mind and fuel my rage.
“I don’t know. All I got was that there was a pic.” Aria dips to catch my gaze when I stare my seething heat at the concrete and hope that a pit doesopen up and teleport me right to the shithole place I know Jeremy’s holed up in.
He was way too eager with Rex last night. Too pointed about being back.
The fucking cash.
“It was me, Ari.” Filling my chest with the almost chilled air my portable AC unit tries to keep up with, I steel my chest and meet my best friend’s eyes. “That’s me. In the picture.”
“Hot damn.” Aria’s grin appears on her rounded out face, but her brow stays pinched. “No one is going to know it’s you.” Her hands rub up and down my arms soothingly, even though there’s no way to soothe this ache in my chest. “They aren’t even sure it’s Fin yet.”
“Doesn’t matter, Ari.” I shake my head and stand on steady feet as I run a hand through my hair to get it out of my sticky face. “Someone will figure it out.”
“Well,” Aria sighs and keeps a hand on my bicep as I step forward. “Can’t say I know what to say to that. Especially with what happened after the video leaked.”
The video that got Jordan banished for supposedly getting head and made Mac all pissy.
At the same time that Rex’s tat got leaked, and the internet went wild with As Above secrets.
Shit.
My hands go to my head when my chest feels constricted and I suck in a breath as I pace the small space around my sleeping client and my preggo bestie.
All the while, my head swims with so many emotions I can’t even catch one long enough to feel it before it changes again, all of the feelings merging together and morphing into some weird numbness.
“Fuck,” I hiss. “It was me. All of it.” The words rush out of me into the humid air of the tent before I can stop them. “I bagged Fin on stage and I’m pretty sure I know who took the picture. I didn’t think he was fucking smart enough, but I guess it doesn’t take much to just upload a pic of the right person and the internet digs in its talons and takes off.”
“Whoa, C …” Aria steps forward like she might try to stop my angry paces, but backs away at the last second. “Slow down. Who would do that to you?”
I freeze mid step and spin so fast it makes my head tilt. I drag my hands down my face and meet my best friend’s worried gaze, knowing that there’s no way around telling her. “Fuck, I know you remember Jeremy.”
“Hated him, actually. So glad when he left.” Aria shakes her head. “I know it was hard for you, though, but I’m so glad he disappeared.”
“He was bad, Aria.” The words fall between us as the ambiguous meaning furrows the already deepened vee between her brows. “Like bad.”
“Uh-huh.” Aria nods slowly like her hormone addled brain is taking a second to pick up what I set down. “Bad how?”
“Like bruises I hid, emotions I can’t process, and the reason I keep a bat in the shop.”
Her jaw grits and her fists ball up as tears build in her pretty green eyes.
And my chest splits open just a little more.
“No.” She shakes her head as the tears crest her lashes and she swipes them away from her cheeks with her free hand. “But you never told me.”
I drag in a shaking breath and rub at my face again to distract myself from the tears that prick the backs of my own eyes. “We weren’t as close until after it all. And I never wanted to relive that shit again.”
“So.” Aria sniffles and wipes at her face with flared nostrils and a ticking jaw.
