He ran a hand along his jawline, shaking his head. “I don’t know where to start.”
Instead of continuing like I hoped he would, he looked away and fell silent. Seconds ticked by. Nothing. This was the first time I’d ever seen Chase look scared.
“I don’t want to fight.” I squeezed his hand, doing my best to keep my expression open and nonthreatening. “I just want to know why you didn’t tell me. Did you think I’d be mad at you? Judge you?”
Chase focused his attention on our intertwined hands and shrugged. “Yes and no. I mean, yes. But that wasn’t the main problem. I was trying to protect you.”
My stomach rolled over as a flood of conflicting feelings surged within me. In all of this, he was trying to protect me? Why? And why didn’t he talk to me?
“From what?”
“From me and my dumbass decision,” he muttered.
“By breaking my heart?”
His expression crumpled, and he buried his face in his palm. “No. By distancing you from this clusterfuck so you don’t get dragged down with me.”
“You’re calling the shots without me again, Carter.” The words were harsh, but my tone wasn’t.
“Look…” He trailed off. “Did you watch the video?”
“No,” I said. Queasiness swirled in my stomach at the very thought. “God, no. I don’t plan to.”
“You might feel differently once you know what’s in it.”
OceanofPDF.com
CHASE
James beside me, holding my hand. I didn’t deserve it, not one bit, but I was so fucking thankful she was here with me.
For now, at least.
“I doubt it.” Bailey’s brows knit together, her hazel eyes soft. “When did this happen, exactly?”
“Last April.” Not even a year ago, though it felt like a lifetime ago. Or another lifetime completely. Like someone else’s life. I wished it was.
“That was way before I met you.”
“Yeah.” I gritted my teeth, searching for the courage to spill the ugly details, but the words stuck in my throat. Would this change the way she saw me forever?
Her expression turned thoughtful. “The Sideline had a blind item a while ago about a hockey sex tape, but they said it was someone at Callingwood.” Bailey grabbed her phone and navigated to the website. She scanned the screen, her mouth twisting into a frown. “They claimed it was a girl from Callingwood. Didn’t say anything about who the other person was, I guess.”
“I knew about that, but I wasn’t sure if you did.” I rubbed her thigh with my free hand, savoring the contact I’d missed so damn much.
She kept her gaze fixed on her phone instead of meeting my eyes when she responded. “I didn’t want to bring it up because I was worried it was something Luke did without my knowledge.”
My hand froze on her leg. “Oh my god, that would be the end of his sorry life.” The very idea made me homicidal. It would have had me taking Vincent up on that hitjob immediately. Or doing it myself.
“Do you think they meant—” Bailey faltered.
Me.
“Maybe,” I said. “One of the girls goes to Callingwood.”
Her phone slipped out of her hand and landed on the cushion beside her. “One of them?” She blinked slowly, shaking her head. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound—to judge—I’m just confused.”
“There were two girls in the video, James.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
Hearing the words from me might have been worse than watching the video herself. When Dallas said she knew, I thought she’d seen it already.
Then again, if there was a video of her, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach watching it.
“Okay.” Bailey drew in a shaky breath. “Okay…okay. Can you, um, provide a little context?” She quickly added, “I don’t want to know everything. Please don’t give me your usual blunt honesty. Can you give me a high-level idea of what happened?”
I let out a long breath. “The video doesn’t paint me in the best light. I was fucked up out of my tree, like every year on the anniversary of my dad’s death. This girl Nikki and I were fooling around and smoking a joint. And Kristen was there too.”
Her brow crinkled. “Nikki? Like Kevin Richmond’s girlfriend?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know they were together then.”
Bailey nodded, her expression neutral and her demeanor far more understanding than I deserved. She watched me silently, so I pushed through the discomfort and forced the words out.
“Then Kristen pulled out her phone and started recording without my permission. I got mad and told her to stop. She said she was just messing around and told me she would erase it. Then she pretended to, but I was too out of it to realize she didn’t.” What a fucking idiot. How could I not have known?
“So you were violated.” Bailey’s voice was skate-edge sharp.
“I mean…I guess.”
“You were, Chase. Are you hesitant to admit that because you’re a guy or because there were three people involved? Do you think you deserved it?” Her gold-flecked eyes searched mine. “You still had the right to privacy.”
“That’s what I thought. I guess Kristen had other ideas.”
“That crazy bitch,” she said under her breath. “When did you find out?”
“After our last game. Then I met with Dallas’s dad to talk through legal issues. My plan was to bury it and find the courage to tell you once it was taken care of.” I swallowed, dread surging.
“But…” she prompted me.
I swallowed hard. This was going to be like dropping a bomb on her head all over again.
According to the texts Vincent sent while I waited for Bailey, it didn’t look like Luke had dragged her into things the way he’d threatened to. So far, he’d sent the clip to people she knew simply to make me look bad—and, presumably, to put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. But that didn’t make telling her about how her world nearly got destroyed because of me any easier.
“Luke got a hold of a copy. Told me if I didn’t end things with you, he’d send it to your advisors and the scholarship committee and tell them you were the other girl on the tape. Kristen is offscreen in the clip he has. She’s just a voice on camera.”
Bailey’s body turned bolt stiff. “Luke did what?” Her eyes widened and her hands balled into fists. “Oh my god, I’m going to kill him and Kristen.”
I’d never heard Bailey threaten bodily harm to someone else. That probably meant she’d spent too much time with me.
“I finally tracked down the second half of the clip today,” I said. “In it, I call Kristen by her name, so everyone would know it wasn’t you. There’s a time and date stamp in the metadata too, along with the geolocation. That should take the teeth out of his threats regarding you.”
She shifted her weight, scooting closer to me, and stroked my face.
“But why didn’t you tell me? We could have faked a breakup. We could have figured it out.” Her eyes were so wide and full of sadness, expressions so earnest, that another fresh shot of regret hit me. Maybe she was right. But I wasn’t thinking clearly, and my only priority was shielding her. The stakes were astronomically high, and I didn’t want to gamble with her future.
“I panicked, James. I was afraid Luke would know. I didn’t want him to derail everything you’d worked so hard for. Turns out, he had a PI tailing me, so he probably would have found out if we faked it. Plus…” I trailed off and cleared my throat, forcing out the words. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure you’d want to be with me once you found out. I thought you would be better off without me and this mess I created.” The last part was the hardest to admit, but I wanted to give her the honesty she’d asked for.
“Chase,” she said. “You have to know that isn’t true. There is no scenario where I am better off without you. Ever.”
“Are you sure? Whether or not I agreed to being recorded, there’s a video circulating of me getting high while having a threesome. That would be a deal breaker for a lot of people. I would understand if that’s how you feel.”