Had he?
Did the bastard take a picture of us?
Darkened eyes bored into mine. “That wasn’t very nice.”
Nice? We were way past pleasantries. “What the fuck, Sterling!” I lunged for his phone, my thoughts only on the photo that might or might not be on there. I couldn’t care less about his little burn. But Sterling was quick and jerked the phone over his head.
He tsked like he was scolding a three-year-old who wanted something that wasn’t hers. “I don’t think so, Splash.” The deepening of his grin infuriated me.
I gritted my teeth. “You took a picture of us.” And I needed to see what it looked like.
“A keepsake, nothing more. No need to get worked up.”
A new wave of anger rushed to my head. “Delete it.”
A dry laugh came from him. “Not happening. I need something to remember you by.”
“You don’t need to remember me at all.” I jumped at the phone again, but his damn long arms were out of my reach, and for a guy who didn’t play any sports that I knew of, his reactions were freakishly quick. “The last time you got a pic of me, you put it in the blasted school paper!”
He shook a finger in front of my face, and I wanted to snap my teeth at him. “That was different.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.” Sarcasm dripped like poison from my words.
He slashed a hand through his midnight hair. “I figured you for a smart girl. For once, I’m glad I was right about you. It’s just a little insurance,” he proclaimed, backing up a step away from me, and I realized he was preparing to leave… with the photo. I couldn’t let that happen. That shit was gone, even if I had to destroy his phone.
Taking a step forward, I regained the space he put between us, my eyes flashing from the phone to his face. I didn’t want to let the thing out of my sight. “Why are you doing this?”
He gave a one-shoulder shrug as if this had little meaning at all, just something he liked to do on his weekends. Harass girls and take their pics as trophies. Weird. And fucking creepy. “I might need something from you in the future,” he replied.
Add deviant and sadistic to the list.
Why did this sound so familiar?
Maybe because this was the kind of thing Micah and Elite would have done, gathering evidence on someone to store away. But why? What did Sterling want from me?
“I’m not giving you anything. Keep the fucking photo.” The brave words tumbled from me despite the knot forming in my stomach.
His eyebrows furrowed together. “I wonder what your boyfriend would say if this ended up in his text messages, from an anonymous number, of course. He does know about our history, doesn’t he, Splash?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Micah and I don’t have secrets. He knows,” I lied, not willing to give Sterling the satisfaction of guessing the truth.
“Maybe he would be more interested in these.” He started to flip through photos on his phone, making sure to allow me a glimpse at each one. “Or how I got them.”
My fury turned into something cold and fearful at each image that scrolled across the screen. They were all of me. “How the fuck did you get those?” A shiver pricked down my spine, seeing my face, my body in various ways on a bed. Some with my clothes on and others not. Most of them were single shots of me, but in a few, I wasn’t alone.
I was with Sterling. And I meanwithSterling.
There were even some of me sleeping in my dorm bed.
How the fuck…?
They weren’t tastefully taken photos, and as much as I wanted to believe he had photoshopped my head on another girl’s body, it didn’t look that way. I had a small beauty mark on the inside of my right thigh, and that little dot was present in a few pictures. Was it possible he’d found someone who was a close match to me? Sure, but would he put in that much effort?
The last thing I fucking needed was a bunch of nudes floating around campus. These were bad enough; however, if he had these, then he most likely had photos that had me completely unveiled.
I suddenly couldn’t feel my legs, and my insides went to ice. The year ahead of me flashed through my mind, a nightmare. That was what Sterling promised me.
“I took them when we were together.”