But I speak up before she can find it. “You tell me.” Tears burn my eyes. “What are you doing to her? Am I next? Do you watch us in the showers?”
“What?”
Vomit rises up my throat. I hate all the shit coming out of my damn mouth. Megan isn’t bad. She’s weak and a little annoying, but she isn’t hurting Liv. If anything, Liv was in control in that video.
And that’s why I took it down. I couldn’t stand it. Liv was into it in the car with her. So into it, and it hurt.
She raises her chin. “I’m going to Father McNealty tomorrow and reporting you.”
I laugh, the bitterness choked through the tears that she can’t see in the dark. “Please do.”
I hop off the table and approach her. “You’ll have to tell him why I’m so angry with you and what you’re doing at a student’s house, late on a Saturday night. Then, he’s going to find out it was you in the sex tape with her, and you will never get another job again.”
“Screw you, Clay!” she yells. “I have family too, and they’re not the Jaegers whom you think you can bully.”
“Stay away from her or else.”
“Or else what?” she fires back. “You going to take another video of us? Well, enjoy yourself, because when she graduates, and I go to college in New York in the fall—oh, did she tell you about Dartmouth? As luck would have it, we’ll be that close to each other…” And she gets in my face, taunting me, “And then I can fuck her every weekend where you can’t get a hold of her.”
My eyes go wide, burning.
“We’ll be gone, and we’ll laugh about how sad you were.” She laughs. “Or are.”
I grit my teeth together.
“You don’t deserve her attention,” she says, “and pretty soon she won’t think of you at all!”
“Ugh!” I slam my hands into her chest, and she crashes into the wall next to the doorway. She cries out, falling to the ground, and I spot the garbage can next to her and grab it.
I hesitate a moment, a sob stretching my throat so tightly it hurts. Fuck it. I lift it high and dump everything on her head, and she screams as remnants of gumbo and chicken noodle soup smear all over her.
“Clay!” she cries.
I drop the can and clutch her jaw in one hand and the back of her neck in another, bringing her face up to mine. “Look at me,” I grit out. “Look at me!”
She raises her eyes, whimpering. “Stop.”
“Shut up,” I say, tears welling in my eyes, because I know I’m losing. I’m going to lose her forever. “Her team spots her. Do you understand?” And then I lower my voice, pressing my forehead into hers hard. “I spot her. If I have to repeat myself again, I will do damage you can’t come back from. She is seventeen, a minor, and…”
Mine.
Megan coughs, and needles prick my throat, because she doesn’t deserve this, but it can’t happen. Megan doesn’t deserve her. And Liv doesn’t get to have someone. She doesn’t get to forget about me.
She stares at me, clearing her throat as something crosses her eyes. “You want her,” she pants. “That’s what this is about. Oh my God.”
Tears spill.
“You’re a…a…”
And I throw her down, ready to hit her until she can’t say the words loud enough for anyone to ever hear.
“What the hell?” someone bellows.
I look up, seeing Liv standing in the doorway as I hover over Megan on the floor.
Liv runs up, flipping on the light. She takes in Megan and me and dives down to pick up her friend; Megan shivering like a scared rabbit as she grapples onto Liv.
Liv turns to me. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Her brothers spill into the house behind her, and I grab the flag from the table and bolt out the back door and into the yard.
Patting my hand over my mouth and singing, I dance into the forest. “I got the flaaaaag,” I call out. “Come and get it!”
I dart back toward the village and Callum’s car, but in moments, Liv is on my tail. I feel something muddy hit the back of my knee, and I’m on the ground, flipping onto my back and looking up at her.
She comes down, pinning my wrists to the ground.
“Get me off the ground,” I order.
“In the dirt is where you belong!” she spits out. “You’ve never been uglier to me. How could you do that to her? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I don’t answer, clenching my teeth so my chin doesn’t quiver.
I know she’s right. The walls close in, and sometimes I feel like I want to die.
“That money and that house doesn’t make you clean,” she says. “It just provides a shield of defenders who are only there because they hope to get something out of you. They don’t love you. No one loves you!”