My heart stops working as a pulse of adrenaline skitters across my nerve endings. Everything is icy and frozen inside.
“What?” I choke on my question. Oh my god. Willing myself to breathe so I don’t pass out, I dig my grip into the books, grasping desperately at the way the spines dig into my skin to hang onto my temper. “Why do you think that?”
Sean shrugs. “It’s been a rumor going around for a couple of weeks. Trent told me. So,”
he drawls. “Your rates? How much will it set me back for the 24/7 thing?”
My fist flies before I can control the anger coursing through me. I may not be physically strong, but I know how to throw a punch. Sean is caught off guard, doubling over with a winded groan when my fist lands in his gut.
“I’m not a fucking hooker, you dumb sack of shit!”
The people watching give up on pretending to do it on the down low, openly gawking. Some of them have phones out, because if there’s drama it’s getting filmed these days. Fucking posterity.
My chest heaves as I stalk away from Sean, seething.
Did Devlin know about this? He has to. Trent and Sean are his closest teammates other than Connor Bishop. How long has he let me believe that things between us were good?
He called me his girlfriend in front of his parents, for fuck’s sake.
Tears well in my eyes. I swipe at them with a frustrated sound. I will not cry over this.
The bullshit at this school can’t touch me.
It doesn’t end there, though. Now that I’m aware of it and the video evidence of my showdown with Sean has spread around the school, I keep catching snide remarks about being Devlin’s live-in whore throughout the rest of the day.
“Here comes Pretty Woman,” a boy in my study hall announces, grinning at the wave of titters.
Nina’s in my study hall. She sits in front of me instead of taking her usual seat with Bailey. I spend half the period shooting her bleached blowout a fierce glare, unable to get any homework done.
When Nina turns around to make the move she clearly has been wanting to, I’m ready for it. I set my notebook aside and cross my arms. She gives me a tight, prissy smirk.
“You can suck up to Dev all you want.” Nina curls her manicured fingers around the back of her seat. A cruel, triumphant look flashes in her eyes. “Even ride his dick as much as I hear you have, but here’s the thing, Raggedy Anne. It won’t last forever. Guys like Devlin don’t settle down with trash they picked up on the street.”
My nails dig into my blazer. “Why don’t you worry about yourself, Nina.”
She shrugs. “I’m trying to help you out, girl. It’s not my fault. That’s just the tea.”
“Thanks.” Fuck you.
Even prepared for the attack, her words sting because they’re true. It casts everything I’ve been doing in sharp relief. I’ve been playing house with Devlin, but it started with a lie.
Devlin turned me into everything I never wanted to be, forcing me across the last line standing that held my dignity intact.
Revenge doesn’t end with happily ever after. My mistake was forgetting that.
Thirty-Five
Blair
It takes almost all night, but I can’t hold it in anymore. I have to know, right now, if this is real or not. If the rumor is truer than the feelings taking root in my being.
The feelings I thought might be love.
I was an idiot.
Gnawing on my thumbnail, I slip from my seat on the stool at the kitchen island. Devlin’s back is to me as he organizes ingredients for a smoothie. We’re supposed to go on a run, but I need to get this off my chest before the doubt eats me alive.
“So, Sean said something funny today.”