Realizing that I’m not about to get anywhere with them, I turn on my heel only to find Sara Bennett standing right in front of me with a smug-as-fuck grin stretched wide across her face. I’ve been at enough schools and had enough run-ins with the ‘popular girls’ to know that she thinks she has me backed into a corner, but I still can’t work out why. What’s her problem with me? Does she think I’m trying to take Carver from her? Because the way I hear it is that she doesn’t even have him herself, but what does it matter? Carver can go and fuck a pinecone for all I care.
“Need something?” I question, sensing the guys hanging around.
“Oh, hell no,” she laughs. “Not from you. Who knows where you’ve been? I don’t want to catch something.”
I can’t help but laugh. “That’s the best you’ve got?” I ask, a little disappointed. “I thought you were going to give me something good but you’re coming at me with the disease shit? Oh, honey, you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that.”
She grins, and for a second, I falter. I’ve never had a run-in with her, but so far, she hasn’t flinched. That usually tells me that she’s got something hidden up her sleeve, and from experience, it’s never anything good.
Her hand twitches and I follow it down to find her phone resting in her palm and my whole body stiffens. “Oh, honey,” she mocks in a sing-song tone, attempting to mimic me. “I don’t need to fucking try because I have everything I need right here.”
“Please, do share with the class,” I ask as her friends around her begin to snicker and laugh, pointing at me and calling me a whore.
Sara laughs. “Okay,” she says, bringing her phone up in front of her and looking down at the screen as she presses a few buttons. “But just remember that you asked for this.”
I roll my eyes but as she turns the phone around and I find my face staring back at me with my lips curled around some guy’s cock, everything shatters inside of me.
A video plays and it takes me only a second to realize that this is a video loaded onto Pornhub, a video that was taken without my consent when I was only sixteen.
Humiliation washes through me as I watch myself go to town on someone’s dick, knowing damn well that Carver, King, Grayson, and Cruz stand right behind me, with a more than perfect view of Sara’s phone. I feel myself beginning to close down but there’s no way in hell that I’m about to let this bitch know. “So, you’re into statutory rape and kiddy porn, huh?”
“What?” Sara snaps as I desperately hold back tears, only able to do so when Carver steps right into my back with his hand falling to my waist and slowly beginning to circle it, holding me tight.
“That’s exactly what you’re looking at. I was sixteen when that was recorded by a guy who got me drunk at a party and told me he was a senior in high school. Turns out that he was twenty-two, and he knew damn well that I was a minor. Meaning that video that you’ve no doubt been distributing around the school to a bunch of other minors is actually child pornography, a criminal offense. I wonder how a jury would feel about you having child pornography saved in your phone.” I cringe, before sucking in a horrified gasp. “Oh, no. A criminal record isn’t going to look good on your college applications.”
Sara’s eyes widen in horror, but before she can pull her phone away, Carver’s hand snaps out and clenches down around her wrist, his other hand tightening on my waist and getting looks from everyone watching the show. “What are you doing?” she demands, her wide eyes raising to meet Carver’s, filled with betrayal, assuming that he was going to stand by her.
Without a word, Carver takes her phone from her hand, locks it, and instantly slides it into the back pocket of his pants.
“What are you—” she cuts herself off, looking in panic up and down the line of muscle behind me before coming back to Carver. “This isn’t funny, Carver. Give me my phone.”
King scoffs. “What’s not funny is trying to humiliate someone by displaying them all over the school in a vulnerable position.”
“But I … I didn’t—”
Carver leans in over my shoulder, his face moving in right beside mine as he captures her whole attention. “Run.”
And just like that, she’s gone.
With one scathing look from Carver, the crowd around us disappears, including Ember, and I’m left with only the guys. Carver spins me around, and without the crowd to hold me accountable, the humiliation takes over and I break.