Something reeks so badly of foul play that I can barely breathe.
“Um,” I utter as the high-pitched buzz in my ears morphs into a steady, bass thump. “I um…”
You have to tell her about the messages. You have to tell him, too.
Officer Miller lifts his bushy, salt-and-pepper brows expectantly. “Did you have any questions for me, Mr… I mean, Your Highness?”
I force a dry, weak chuckle. “There’s no need for the formalities.” I cough again. “I… um…”
I look at Isla again, who still hasn’t even moved, and something that feels like a red-hot poker drives itself through my heart. It’s so intense that I absently drag my fingertips across the buttons on my shirt in an attempt to wipe it away as I stand up.
“I received text messages from her phone three days after that date,” I finally say, and saying it out loud seems to solidify the reality of this situation in my own mind, and my stomach twists so violently I nearly double over. I’m immediately so sick that I become lightheaded.
The kind of sick that results from the realization that you may have made a terrible, life-altering mistake.
And, after eleven long, wretched years, it’s suddenly crystal clear that I did.
Officer Miller’s features lift with interest. “Did you? Do you recall what they said?”
I look at Isla for even longer this time. She shows no reaction of any kind to the information. I know that, in my fevered haze a couple of weeks prior, I told her that our relationship ended as a result of those text messages, but I recall the vagueness of my informing her, and I can’t be sure if she’s making the connection between this incident and those messages.
But the connection is clear enough in my own mind, and I recall every unspeakable thing I’ve done to her as a result of my anger over what I believed she’d done, and I nearly sway on my feet under the weight of how wrong I was.
How cruel I was.
How many transgressions I committed against her because I believed she was guilty as sin, when in reality, she had been victimized by punks who… what? Thought it would be funny to ruin a relationship by sending fraudulent messages from her phone and including a photo that, in retrospect, is obviously visual evidence of rape?
How naïve, and stupid, and gullible I was to actually believe it.
“I actually…” I start to say, but then my face flushes cold as my stomach turns again.
I’ve looked at that photo so many times that I have it burned into my brain.
Under the pretense of what I previously believed, it does look like she was engaging the two guys in the photo. But now… and I’ll have to look at it again—and I’m going to have to look at it again—it seems like it was something else entirely.
“Mr. Sterling?” Officer Miller’s voice shakes me out of my racing thoughts. “You were saying?”
I blink to clear my vision. “Yes, I was saying I actually still have the phone that the messages were sent to.” I take a wobbly step away from the sofa. “Excuse me for a moment while I retrieve it.”
“By all means.” He waves casually at me, and then turns to Isla. “I’m sure this information is unpleasant, and you may be in a bit of shock. That’s normal. I would recommend seeking out some form of therapy to help you process it.”
Isla doesn’t acknowledge him as I step into the bedroom, and yes, she will absolutely be in therapy after this. I will probably need therapy, too. That is, if I don’t hang myself first.
Sifting through my luggage, I locate the phone and power it on. Opening the message thread causes my hands to shake, and even though I’ve looked at all of it countless times, it suddenly looks different.
The photo…
The one I thought was of her having a sordid threesome… it no longer looks like that at all.
She’s slumped and contorted into an awkward posture, with one guy holding her hips while the other is holding her head in place with two fistfuls of her hair. Her arms are draped limply over the edge of a bed that I know from every time we’d done a video chat wasn’t hers. Someone totally uninvolved snapped a perfectly framed, perfectly clear picture of it. Her eyes aren’t even open.
This wasn’t my girlfriend cheating on me.
This was the love of my life being raped by strangers after she’d been drugged to a state of unconsciousness.
The slew of text messages that accompanied it are suddenly and glaringly obvious that they were sent by someone else.
Full of typos, and lazy abbreviations, and shitty punctuation.
Isla never texted like that.
She never called me babe.
She didn’t even have her phone when I received them.
This was a set-up. Or a prank. Or a cruel joke. Or something I can’t even comprehend right now.
But what it’s clearly not is what I believed it was for eleven years.
The justification for all manner of mistreatment during the brief time we’ve been married.
But most of all, it’s glaring evidence that I failed to do what I’d vowed my entire life to do, and then one of worst things imaginable happened to her.
I swear on my life that I’ll keep you safe forever.
My stomach twists again, and the bile surges up my throat, and I drop the phone back in my suitcase because I have to sprint to the toilet and vomit.
After retching and dry-heaving until I’m empty and my vision starts blacking out at my periphery, I stand up straight and attempt to pull myself together.
Returning to the living room, I see that Isla is still as stiff and stoic as she’s been the whole time, and I could fucking cry. But I don’t, and I merely hand the phone to Officer Miller. I stand perpendicular to both sofas, cross my arms over my chest, and stare at the ornate rug beneath my polished Oxford shoes.
A distinctly indignant huff exits his mouth. “Well.” I glance at him in time to see him blink and scroll through the message thread. “That is pretty incriminating evidence.” He looks up at me. “And you never received any kind of response from her or any additional contact?”
I swallow thickly. “I attempted to call her as soon as I received those, but her phone was turned off. I um…” I cut a glance at Isla, who has raised her face slightly as her shoulders begin rising and falling under the weight of deep, silent breathing. “I called her for weeks, but never reached her.”
My response to all of it suddenly makes little sense, because why didn’t I just fucking go?
Why didn’t I get on the first fucking plane to New York?
Why did I just let her go like that without even trying to speak to her in person?
I can’t believe my own stupidity and naivete, and it’s abundantly clear that I have grievously wronged Isla so severely that I’ll never be able to atone for such sins. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.
“From the looks of it, it seems like it’s just a sick prank. Unfortunately, incidents like this at college campuses… ones in which sensitive photos and videos are circulated out of simple maliciousness… aren’t all that uncommon.” Officer Miller gestures at me with the phone. “I’d like to admit this as evidence and reopen the case. Digital forensics might be able to find these guys with a photo like this.”
I nod hastily. “Of c—”