“I admit it looks back, but-”
“Just do it, Mad,” I told him. “I want her future ruined while I take care of her present.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to hit her where it hurts most,” I told him.
“And where’s that?”
“She’s not going down alone. I’m taking Eden with her.”
“Dash won’t have something to say about that?”
“You know he won’t,” I replied. “Not once he knows what’s going on.”
Maddox gave me a tight nod as he slapped a hand on my shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am.”
“Fuck her, Mad,” I scoffed. “Fuck that lying, cheating bitch.” He didn’t comment, but what could he say?
I pulled my phone out as Mad went back outside to the party, and I pulled up Erica’s account to torture myself with the pictures she’d been posting. The first picture was of Lake and Curt in the background talking. The second was of him crowding her, maybe arguing. The third was of Lake against the wall, Curt’s hand on her neck, while the other was resting on her hip. The fourth was of them heading into the bedroom.
Telling myself not to do it, I did it anyway.
I pulled up his account, and I was immediately greeted with a picture of him and Lake in a bedroom, his arms around her, her face buried in his chest, with the caption ‘Took long enough, but I finally got my girl back’.
I was going to fucking kill him.
I knew it like I knew I was going to destroy her.
She’d had the nerve to talk to me about being surrounded by half-naked girls when it’d been her who was the weak one. And my mistake had been being worried about other guys when I had only needed to worry about one.
Lost in my plans for revenge, I hadn’t heard Dash coming inside the house until he was striding into the living room. “What’s going on?” I looked over at him. “Mad told me to come talk to you.”
I went back to Erica’s social media feed before handing my phone to Dash. I didn’t say anything as I watched him scroll through her recent photos, but I did notice his knuckles turn white around my phone.
When he was done getting an eye-full, he handed me back my phone, and asked, “What do you want to do?”
“I got Mad working on a couple of things, but I’m not satisfied with just fucking up her future,” I told him truthfully. “I want to make her take a blade to her wrists.”
Dash straightened to his full height and his chin came up in understanding. “So, this is a courtesy?”
I nodded.
Dash remained silent for a few before finally saying, “I got you.”
“You sure?”
He arched a black brow. “Don’t ever ask me that again.”
I stared at the person closest to me, aside my brother, and said, “It’s bad.” He immediately knew what I was referring to. Dash knew I was referring to the heartbreaking betrayal. Something I’d never experienced before. Something none of us have ever experienced before.
“Then make her fucking pay,” was his only reply.
Chapter 30
Lake~
My head felt like a blood vessel was going to burst from the intense pressure from my headache. With machines beeping all around me and feeling like I’d been run over by a truck, I knew I was in the hospital, only, I didn’t know why.
With heavy lids, I glanced around the room, and I saw Eden sleeping in a chair next to the bed. I didn’t see my parents or her parents, but they had to be here, right? Or on their way? Ramsey was also noticeably absent.
“Eden?” I croaked out, and she immediately jumped up.
Her green eyes wild, they finally calmed when she registered that I was awake. “Oh, thank God,” she rushed out.
“Wh…what happened?” I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. Opening them again, I asked, “Where are my parents?”
“They were here,” she said. “But your dad was getting worried about your mom, so they went downstairs to get a bite to eat really quick.”
“Where are your parents?”
“With yours,” she quickly added. “They’re…they’re all kind of losing their shit.”
“What happened, Eden? Why am I here?” Eden looked like she was about to cry. “What is it? What happened?”
“Curt and Erica crashed the party last night,” she began. “And…”
“Eden, just tell me, please,” I pleaded. “I need to know.”
She gave me a small nod. “I was in the kitchen making some more ice shots when Xavier Watson came in, talking about how you had to be the dumbest girl on the planet.”
“Me?” She nodded. “But…but I get along with Xavier.”
“I know,” she quickly replied. “So, when I asked him what the hell he was talking about, he said only a stupid chick would be ballsy enough to cheat on Reed.”
“What?” I exhaled and immediately regretted it. My head thumped hard and the pain was nauseating.
“When I told him he was crazy because you’d never cheat on Reed, he said he just saw you and Curt going into a bedroom together.”
I gasped. “What?” I started shaking my head, the pain ricocheting everywhere, but not caring. “I…I never went into a…” My head hurt terribly as I reached for my memories, but the last one I could come up was arguing with Curt and telling him to leave me alone. “We argued, but…”
“Lake…” Her voice sounded so pained, I feared the worse. And if anyone asked me, I was sore between my legs, but I’d been sore all evening after Ramsey had taken me the way he had after school. He’d shown no mercy, and that wasn’t anything I wanted to have to tell a doctor, or my parents.
“Did he-”
Eden shook her head. “No,” she quickly assured me. “As soon as Xavier said he saw you guys going into one of the bedrooms together, I raced out of the kitchen and found you guys in the guest room.”
“And?”
Her eyes were filled with anguish, and I was beginning to feel sorrier for her than for whatever happened to me. “Xavier had immediately known something was wrong by the way I had taken off, so he had followed me, and when we found the door locked, Xavier kicked it open, surprising Curt.” Oh, God. “Curt jumped back and…and you fell into a heap on the floor. When I rushed towards you, I couldn’t wake you, and it was obvious you’d been drugged.”
“Oh, God…oh, God…” I whispered.
“All hell broke loose after that,” she went one. “Xavier lost his shit and started beating the shit out of Curt while I called an ambulance.”
I couldn’t remember anything beyond arguing with Curt and it made me sick to my stomach. And when my mind started going down the road of ‘what its’, I quickly shut it down. Eden and Xavier had gotten to me in time, and that was all that mattered.
“Then what happened?”
“I had to jump in between Xavier and Curt before Xavier killed him, and Xavier helped carry you outside to wait for the ambulance. People were assuming you got alcohol poisoning or something.”
“I’d only had that one cup,” I absently stated. I hadn’t wanted to get drunk, knowing Ramsey would get pissed off if I did and probably ruin the night.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why, as soon as the ambulance arrived, I told them you’d been drugged and to draw your blood immediately.”
“Oh, Christ…”
“Xavier and some other boys from the football team helped me clear out the party,” she went on. “As soon as everyone was gone, Curt included, I called your parents and then mine. As soon as they came home, we headed straight over here. We’ve been here all night, waiting for you to wake up.”
“So…what did the doctor say? Have they been by?”
She nodded. “Your blood work results confirmed you’d been drugged.”
“I…” What in the hell? “I…why would he…I don’t understand…”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Lake,” she
remarked sadly. “But while Xavier was wailing on him, Curt was saying odd shit about how…about how if you know what it feels like to be drugged, then you’ll have to forgive him.”
“What?” That made no sense.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Lake. That’s just what he kept saying.” Her shoulders dropped and that told me there was more. “Also, it wasn’t until we were herding everyone out of there that I saw Erica.” Eden’s voice grew cold. “I have no idea why she was there, but she hadn’t been invited. Neither was Curt.”
I took a deep breath and tried to steady my trembling hands. I’d been drugged by Curt and I had no idea why. Worse than that, I’d been drugged by a guy I used to date. Was I that bad a judge of character that I dated someone who was capable of such a horrible act and not suspect that he had that type of evil in him?
“Also, the police came by this morning,” she continued, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could process. “They’re going to come back this afternoon with the hope that you’ll be awake by then.”
“Did they arrest Curt?” My head was throbbing badly, and I could feel my body losing its energy.
She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “They want your accounts of last night. They want to see what you can remember.” Eden sounded frustrated. “Our parents are pissed because the police basically told them that, just because you were drugged, that doesn’t mean it was Curt who did it. Curt can argue that he was helping you.” She shook her head again. “They’re basically depending on your memory, Lake.”
“But I don’t remember anything, Eden,” I told her.
She reached out and squeezed my leg. “Maybe not now,” she said. “But…maybe if you rest some more, or…once the drug completely leaves your system, you might.”
Tears pushed out and I didn’t bother wiping them away as they coursed down my face. “I don’t…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Eden,” I quietly confessed my confusion.
“You’re not supposed to do anything but rest right now, Lake,” she said softly. “Your health is the number one thing right now, okay? We’ll worry about the rest of it as it comes to us.” I stretched my arms out for a hug because she said us, not you.
Eden wrapped me up in her arms, and I cried for a long time before asking her to go get my parents. She quickly agreed, but not before wetting a washcloth and cleaning my face, and I was, again, grateful for her consideration. My parents were already worried about me. They didn’t need to see me a crying mess on top of it.
As I closed my eyes and waited for my parents, I couldn’t help but wonder why Ramsey wasn’t here. I suspected my parents probably had my phone, but even with that, when he arrived at Eden’s last night to see the party had been broken up, he would have gone in search of answers, right? Ramsey didn’t strike me as the type who would be all ‘oh, well’, and go about his business.
So, why wasn’t he here?
And what did Curt mean about how I’ll forgive him now that I’d been drugged? That didn’t make any sense. What did drugging me have to do with him cheating with…
Oh, God.
Had she drugged him?
Did Erica hate me enough that she drugged my boyfriend just to…hurt me? That made even less sense, but what else could Curt have meant?
Sleep claimed me again before I could find answers to any of my questions.
Chapter 31
Ramsey~
I spent last night getting drunk enough that I passed out in mine and Maddox’s spare bedroom. We had one here, one at Uncle Liam’s and Aunt Roselyn’s, and one at Uncle Deke’s and Aunt Delaney’s house. Bu then, with the houses being as big as they all were, every one of us had a room we could crash in at any one of the houses.
After waking up with a killer hangover, I had headed back to Sands Cove. I wasn’t sure where everyone else had made off to, but I wasn’t worried about it. We were all going to make our way back to my place tonight.
Once I showered, changed, ate, and felt relatively human again, I sent out a group text that needed to make tonight happen.
Me: Party @ r house 2night. I need u here.
D.J.: (thumbs up emoji)
Crew: Sure thing
Chance: No problem
Mad: Ok
Dash: C u 2night
Then I dialed Chance. He picked up on the second ring. “What’s up?”
“You sound way too chipper,” I remarked.
He laughed. “What’s not to be chipper about a threesome?”
“Jesus Christ, Chance,” I chuckled, surprised I could still laugh with as angry and gutted as I felt. “Your dick’s going to fall off one of these days.”
“I use protection,” he defended. “Besides, I didn’t have the heart to disappoint the two lovely ladies.”
“Do you even remember their names?”
“Did I need to?” he sassed back like a smartass. “No one told me there was going to be a pop quiz.”
“We’re tying to keep D.J. a virgin, asshole,” I reminded him. “Having threesomes at her party is not the way to do that.”
“That’s why I met my lovely companions at the Port Lucia Hilton, asshole,” he retorted.
I decided Chance’s dick was a lost cause and got down to business. “How much do you know?”
“After you grabbed that bottle of Old Forester Birthday and headed upstairs to your room, Mad gathered us in the game room and told us what happened.”
“D.J., too?”
“Yep,” he answered. “She knows.”
“I need you to invite Erica Chambers to the party as your guest,” I said, telling him what I needed from him.
“Goddamn it,” he cursed. “You’re not going to fuck her, are you?”
“No,” I assured him. “That’s not her purpose.”
“Just her, or other SC kids?”
“This will be a Windsor party,” I informed him. “She’ll be the only one, which will guarantee she shows up.” Erica had an ego problem and being invited by Chance to attend a Windsor party at my place was exactly what she’d whore herself out for. It was also a guarantee that she’ll be posting pictures all over the place of her attending the party.
“So, what am I supposed to do with her?” he asked. “Because if I gotta babysit, I better get laid out of the deal.”
“Dude, you just had a threesome last night,” I reminded him. “Your dick can take a night off.”
“Fine, but my loyalty should be noted here,” he replied, and I had to take a deep breath.
Chance could be challenging sometimes.
“Just play the part, Chance,” I said. “That’s all I need.”
He quickly got serious. “Have you spoken with her?”
“No, I haven’t,” I told him. “I know better than to.”
“Christ, R.J.,” he mumbled because he knew what I meant.
If I reached out to her, there was a real possibility that I’d kill her. She would either try to explain her pictures away or try to explain how she still loves that bastard, and there was no guarantee I wouldn’t strangle her with my bare hands either way.
“Is that why you’re bringing in Crew?”
Crew Marlow was only sixteen, but he was a cold-blooded psychopath. People thought I was bad, but Crew was the worst out of us all. The rest of us, even sweet, little bloodthirsty Lennon, could still be reasoned with even if we were in the middle of our emotions. Even as furious as I had been last night, and still was today, I was still able to focus and interact with other people.
Crew couldn’t.
Once Crew met his limit, the kid was unreachable, and reason and patience were a foreign concept. The kid was scary with revenge as his lover, and let me tell you, he loved the shit out of her. And he was exactly who I needed to tell me if I was missing something. I needed him to tell me what more I could do to make Lake’s life a living hell. I was too close to my anger to see beyond it.
“Yep,” I answered honestly.
There was silen
ce on the other end, and I knew it was on the tip of his tongue to ask me if I was sure about all this, but knowing me the way he did, he refrained, and instead said, “I’ll reach out to her now.”
“Thanks, Chance,” I automatically replied.
“Never thank me, R.J.,” he said. “There’ll never be a need.” As he hung up, I glanced up and saw my brother walk into my room.
“Is it done?”
Maddox threw himself across my bed and leaned up on his elbow. “I started working on it when I got back from Port Lucia this morning.”
“Did you delete everything?”
He nodded. “There were photos dating back six years,” he said. “A lot of them were personal pictures, but I got rid of those, too, along with all her photography photos, projects, and contest photos.”
“What about her school applications?”
“Those are taken care of, too.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Mad.”
“You know better than to thank me, R.J.,” he replied, and I laughed at him basically repeated what Chance had just said. “What do you want to do about Curt?”
At the mention of Curt Metcalf, I realized I’d been so caught up in destroying Lake, I’d forgotten about him. “He’s SC High’s soccer star,” I reminded him. “So, I’m going to break his fucking legs.”
Mad nodded. “And Erica?”
“After she serves her purpose, I’m going to make sure she becomes the social media star she wants to be.”
“By?”
“That egotistical bitch is so desperate to fit in, I’m willing to bet she’d do just about anything to be invited back to a Windsor party,” I told him. “So, I’m going to see just what she’s willing to do to belong.”
“And Lake?” he asked. “Are you still going after Eden?”
“Fuck yeah, I am,” I told him. “I’m going to make Lake regret fucking with me for the rest of her life. By the time I’m finished with Eden Rudolph, Lake won’t be able to ever look her in the eye again.”
“And what about Lake?” He shrugged. “I mean, I know her future’s taken care of, but what is this party for?”
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