“What are these?” he asked as he started to thumb through.
“For the last ten months, I have tried to apply to other schools. I was too embarrassed to come back here after my behavior toward Professor Proctor. No matter what led up to it, I never should have struck him. However, what you have in front of you is evidence of the way I have been systematically bullied and harassed since last year. These include taunting emails as well as my transcript being altered by the registrar’s office.”
His eyebrows drew together as he scanned the pages.
I barreled ahead, needing the momentum to push me through. “If you flip through to the end, my technical investigator printed out the evidence that these email addresses are owned by a member of the UCCS staff in the registrar’s office.”
“Michelle?” He shook his head. “She’s not the kind of woman who would do this, even for hitting Professor Proctor.”
One of the girls placed her hand on my back, and it gave me the little boost I desperately needed. My stomach nearly rebelled, but the truth crept up my throat until I knew it would no longer stay there. “Not because I hit him, but why I hit him. It wasn’t a bad grade.”
“Okay?”
“I was sleeping with him.”
He froze but showed no other outward emotion.
“I didn’t know he was married. That’s why I hit him. I’d just found his wedding ring. None of us knew.” Why was my throat so dry? I couldn’t move past the lump growing there.
Dean Miller looked at each girl in turn as they stepped forward to hand him their own packets of damning proof, laying a collegiate sex scandal on his desk.
“Michelle Proctor is bullying us because we all slept with her husband.”
His hand shook a barely discernable fraction as he hit his intercom. Was he going to throw us out? Label us whores?
“Mary? I’m going to need you to cancel the rest of my day. Oh, and I’ll need about four more chairs in here so these ladies can sit. Thank you.”
My chin dropped to my chest, and my shoulders shook once, twice, before I sucked in a breath and got control of my overwhelming emotions. He was going to listen. And at that second, I wanted nothing more than Grayson waiting outside the doors to hold me, to tell me he was proud of me. But I’d said I needed to do this on my own, and I would.
The chairs were brought in by a couple older classmen I recognized, and by the looks on their faces, it was mutual. I raised my chin and smiled. No more making assumptions about me.
“Please have a seat, ladies,” Dean Miller said once they’d left. He cleared his throat. “I assume you’d like to keep this investigation private and behind closed doors?”
“Oh no,” Carrie said, gripping the arms of her chair next to me. “We’d like it out in the open.”
“But given the delicate nature of the situation…” he urged.
“We’ve all spoken,” I said, confirming with a few looks to the girls beside me, “and our pride and that of the University, which I assume you’re trying to protect, isn’t as important as identifying other potential victims. We want it out there, so if another girl is enduring the same hellhole we have been, she’ll have the strength to come forward.”
“This isn’t going to be easy for you girls.”
I sat up a little straighter and thought of Grayson, his dyslexia, his determination to stand by Grace, even if in friendship only, and still maintaining that number one spot.
“Nothing that’s right ever is.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Grayson
“Nothing like Thanksgiving dinner at the hospital,” Grace said with a tired smile from her bed. “They promised this was the last round of testing, but at least they let me stay here for it.”
“Actually”—I placed the plate Mom had made for her on the rolling table—“this would be the sixth Thanksgiving dinner I’ve brought to you while in a hospital bed, so I like to think of it as tradition.”