The void was unbearable. At least at first, then soon it made the upcoming weeks tolerable on a certain level. The ridicule from Irina and her followers, the degrading remarks and treatment from Jeremy’s teammates. All the cruelty couldn’t compare to the isolating aloneness that being distanced from him caused.
I’d never felt pain like I did in that moment, not even when I had found out my parents’ car was mangled in a head-on collision after their brakes failed.
It took some time, but eventually, I did learn to breathe again. My heart had been dissected and I may never trust anyone…but slowly, I was mending.
Until that day.
Jeremy Rivers had been discovered dead on the beach. The same beach where we’d made passionate love. His body was found in a pool of blood-soaked sand, stabbed eleven times. His girlfriend lay beside him, stabbed nine times. Some horrible reports claimed it had been a murder-suicide.
The rumors were worse…
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Gossip circulated that I had been there to witness the massacre. Others speculated that I had been the one to commit the heinous act by brutally stabbing Jeremy and Irina to death.
Beach Blood Bash: Obsessed Lover Annihilates Couple.
The headlines were as gruesome as the act itself. The press was everywhere. At school, at my home. I was questioned and given a lie detector test. My aunt had to hire an attorney. There was a month-long court case.
I close my eyes and banish the memories.
I’m not Lanie Masters anymore.
But someone knows about her past, and they’re using it to fuck with me.
One thing is clear: Sue hadn’t been lying. At least, not completely. She wasn’t the one to send the text messages. She was simply greedy and tried to seize on an opportunity to exploit me. By making a quick assumption on my part, I gave her that chance.
Still, Sue was a problem—one that needed to be dealt with.
For Carter and me to be together with no other hindrance or threat, I need to discover who the author of the texts is and deal with them promptly.
I have a theory—but before I act on impulse, this time, I need to be sure. There are only two people who know about me and Carter, and one of them has reason to want me gone.
There’s a faint knock at my office door, and I look up from Carter’s file. I tuck his picture away in the desk drawer. “Come in,” I call out.
A girl enters my office, her head bowed toward her chest as she timidly shields her face with her hair, but I recognize her.
“Mia,” I say, finding her name in my memory bank. “I’m so glad you’ve come to see me. Please, have a seat.”
She does so, all the while keeping her gaze cast on the floor. She’s not the same spirited flurry of love and angst as she was before. “Ms. Montgomery…” She trails off, swallows.
“Mia, what’s happened?”
When she looks up to make eye contact, I notice the pallor of her once rich umber skin. “I thought he loved me,” she says.
My stomach sinks. Nothing good ever follows that statement.
“I did what you said,” she continues. “I wanted to have it all, love and a college career. He made me believe he wanted that, too. That he wanted me.”
She proceeds to tell me how, after she gave herself to Tyler on a special night they had both planned to be together, he suddenly changed. He became distant. His buddies on the football team snickered and taunted her.
“He became cruel,” she says, her voice cracking. “What’s worse, he’s with another girl now. She’s on the dance team, and she and her friends are even crueler.”
Some lost memory of Irina and her lashing cinnamon hair and taunting green eyes floats to the surface. You’re a psycho. Leave Jeremy alone.
A hot spike of fury prods me to stand. I walk around the desk, towing my chair behind me, and place it next to Mia. When I speak, my voice is low and deliberate.
“I’m sorry this happened to you, Mia.”