23

Amy answered after four rings, and Olivia’s teeth ground together at her friend’s cold greeting.

“What do you want?”

“You sent the video to Chris,” Olivia said, not sure if she was asking Amy why she’d done it or if she was merely stating a fact.

“I did,” Amy replied. “He deserved to know.”

Olivia was standing in the middle of Copley Lawn, and she peered over her shoulder to make sure nobody was in earshot. “Why didn’t you talk to me first?” Olivia asked.

Amy let out an ugly laugh. “Listen to you playing the victim and trying to shift the blame to me.”

“Amy, I—”

“You never deserved him, you know.”

Olivia blinked. “What?”

“Drew,” she spat. “He should have ended things with you. If he had, he’d still be alive.”

Olivia bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood.

“And to think I actually felt guilty,” Amy continued, breaking off with a scoff.

Olivia blinked, her brows drawing together. “What are you talking about?”

“Why do you think I’ve been avoiding you?” Amy asked, sounding almost amused. “Why do you think I chose to go to a different college?”

Olivia swallowed as a sinking feeling hit her stomach. She’d never even suspected it, but she should have known. “You were sleeping with him,” she said, a bitter smile forming on her lips.

“I was planning on finally telling you last night,” Amy replied. “I was hoping the alcohol would give me some courage and would chill you out a bit, but you got so trashed that I didn’t even get the chance.”

“You had sex with my boyfriend.” The words fell from Olivia’s lips like paper arrows, flimsy and weak.

“And you killed him,” Amy bit out, as though it were an excuse for her betrayal. As though two wrongs made a right.

“You weren’t the only one, you know,” Olivia told her, wanting to inflict pain on her former best friend in return for the betrayal. “He had a few women on the side.”

“You’re lying,” Amy said after a long pause. “What we had was special.”

Olivia shook her head in disbelief. “Is that why he didn’t break up with me first? Because what the two of you had was so fucking precious?”

“He was miserable with you,” Amy practically screamed into the phone.

Olivia nodded. “And I was miserable with him.”

“Is that why you killed him?” the other woman asked, rage infused in every word.

“No,” Olivia replied simply before hanging up.

She closed her burning eyes and rubbed her hands over her face. She let a trembling breath out and swore under her breath.

I don’t know how you didn’t see it, that infuriating voice needled her. Of course, they were fucking.

But Olivia hadn’t known, even though it all made so much sense now. Amy had become distant after the accident, always too busy with school to meet up and always cutting their infrequent phone calls short.

She’d been feeling guilty, even if she’d probably also hated Olivia for letting Drew drive drunk that night. Now, that guilt had transformed entirely into rage and hate because whatever sins she’d committed paled in comparison to Olivia’s.

Olivia shook her head angrily, the events of the morning piling up on her shoulders until she was sure her back would break. She wanted to go home. She wanted to cry. She wanted it all to stop.

But she knew that if she got an Uber and went home, she’d end up doing something she couldn’t take back.

So, Olivia locked herself in a bathroom stall for five minutes before she went to her next lecture. Five minutes was all she gave herself to cry. It wasn’t nearly enough, but she managed to walk into that lecture hall and pull out her textbook without breaking down.

During the lecture, Chris’s words replayed in her mind over and over again. Olivia could have survived knowing that Amy and Drew had been sleeping together behind her back, but she wasn’t sure if she could survive Chris’s cutting words or the guilt of her own actions.

She heard little of her professor’s lecture, but when the class ended, Olivia stayed in her seat until everyone else had left the room. She felt heavy, her bones growing denser by the second. Regret, shame, and hurt kept her rooted to her seat long enough that minutes passed before she forced herself to her feet and left the lecture hall.

Olivia might have spent the rest of the day in that lethargic daze if she hadn’t arrived at her next class to scathing looks and not one but two shoulder checks. She thought the first one was accidental, but after the second, Olivia blinked her eyes back into focus and took in her surroundings properly.

The professor wasn’t there yet, nor was more than half of the class, but those who were there were looking at Olivia with venom in their eyes.

But there was one person in particular who looked ready to murder her. The girl who’d cornered her in the library weeks earlier walked up the aisle to stand in front of Olivia.

“I always knew there was something off about you,” she said before holding up her phone screen for Olivia to see. “I guess I was right.”

Olivia stared at the still of her and Amy singing. If she’d thought things couldn’t have gotten worse, she’d been dead wrong. “Where did you get that?” she asked, trying not to let the panic consume her.

“It’s going around the college,” the woman replied, a cruel grin stretching across her face. “And it’s on Instagram and TikTok now, too.”

Olivia’s breath caught in her lungs. Her eyes flew around the room, finding nothing but disgust around her. Disgust for her. Disgust for what she’d done. And she knew she’d never escape it. Wherever she went, it would now follow. And this time, it wouldn’t only be coming from herself.

“I’ve already set up a petition to get you kicked out of Georgetown,” Drew’s fuck buddy told her.

As though not being able to finish her degree was the worst problem Olivia would face after this. It was almost absurd.

“Your life is over,” the woman said gleefully.

Olivia spun around and ran. The woman yelled something else, but Olivia didn’t hear it. She bolted, no destination in mind and with no hope of escaping what she was running from. When she got to the path running adjacent to Copley Lawn, she slowed, her panting breaths too loud to her ears and her pulse like a hammer against her skull.

Her first thought was that Chris must have done it, but she almost immediately dismissed the idea. True, he hated her and probably loved that she’d been exposed, but it didn’t seem like his style. Amy, on the other hand. This had her fingerprints all over it.

She felt like Olivia had stolen Drew from her. She must have felt like Olivia had ensured they could never be together like Drew had probably promised her they would. Like Olivia, Amy had always been one for revenge, and her personal favorite—at least in movies—had always been the very public kind.

Olivia carried on walking down the path. She felt as though everyone was staring at her, whispering to each other about what she’d done and shaking their heads at her in disgust. It might have been paranoia, but Olivia didn’t think so. They had a reason to stare, and more importantly, they had a reason to hate her.

She took her phone from her pocket, desperate to get an Uber or check when the next bus to the Rosslyn metro station left campus so she could get the fuck out of there. Olivia bit the inside of her cheek when she saw the missed calls from Noah, Riley, and Ella.

They must have all seen the video. They probably hated her now, too.

Olivia’s fingers trembled as she tried to open her Uber app. She couldn’t wait for the next bus. She needed to leave immediately.

“There you are.”

A hand clamped down on her arm, and Olivia froze.

“What the fuck is going on, Livvy?”

The hand released its grip, and Olivia turned to face Noah, terror making her knees tremble. She couldn’t meet his gaze, but she wished she’d been able to when her eyes landed on the group of people standing behind him instead.

What looked like most of the football team were looking at her, varying degrees of anger darkening their expressions. Chris was there too, and his eyes seared into her and cut right to her ugly soul. Olivia took an unsteady step back.

“Is it true?” Noah asked, not ungently. “What you said in the video.”

Olivia’s lips parted, but she couldn’t quite seem to get the words past her lips. Some of her half-brother’s patience wore away under her silence, and he placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” Olivia hissed, shrugging out of his touch and nearly falling backward in her haste to move away from him. She couldn’t bear the accusation and doubt in his eyes.

Noah frowned at her, his head shaking in confusion. “Livvy, just tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I…” The words still wouldn’t come, and this time, it was because the world felt like it was spinning beneath her feet and she couldn’t quite seem to get more air into her starved lungs.

Panic stopped her eyes from settling in one place. Her vision shifted rapidly between Noah’s frown, Chris’s hate-filled glare, and a sea of other angry faces. And then, finally, there was a friendly face, and her eyes locked onto it like it was a lifeboat and she was drowning.

Brady pushed past Chris and then Noah to stand in front of her. “Why don’t I give you a lift home?”

Olivia nodded, tears dropping from her eyes and carving stinging paths down her cheeks. She tried to thank him, but her throat felt too tight and raw.

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Noah said. “I can do it.”

“No,” Olivia managed to choke out before Brady could reply for himself.

The frown lines across her brother’s forehead deepened, and he looked between the two of them as though they were a riddle he couldn’t figure out.

“I’ve got it,” Brady told him. “We came in my car today anyway, remember?”

Olivia didn’t deserve whatever luck or fortune that had ensured that Brady’s car was on campus, but she was grateful for it all the same.

Noah didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Fine.” He moved his gaze back to Olivia. “We’ll talk later.”

It was a command, not a question, and though Olivia wanted to tell him that she’d tell him everything when she was ready, she simply grit her teeth together and nodded tightly.

“Let’s go,” Brady said, gently wrapping his arm around her.

Olivia let him guide her away from Noah, Chris, and the others, and she didn’t look back. She couldn’t face seeing the disappointment in her brother’s eyes or the rekindled hatred in Chris’s hard stare.

The woman who’d already started a petition was right. Olivia’s life was over. There was no coming back after this. There was nothing that could fix it, nothing that could bring back the people who’d died, and nothing that could stop Chris’s nephew from growing up without his father.

Olivia’s secret was finally out, and there was no going back in time to ensure it was done the right way or that Chris was the first to know. The truth was out, and she needed to face the consequences.