It took me way too long to figure out what I was looking at, and as the realization dawned on me, the feeling of nausea I’d been battling intensified about a hundred-fold, and I gulped frantically, trying to fight back the bitter bile that was burning its way up my throat.
The last thing I needed to add to the public embarrassment I was going through was to lose my lunch in front of the entire very-crowded cafeteria. Not that there was any lunch to lose—I’d felt so wretched as I’d hauled myself out of bed and into classes, that I’d skipped breakfast. That was almost worse—dry retching and choking on next to nothing would be even more of a hideous spectacle.
“How...? Where...?”
“Oh what, you haven’t seen it?” She didn’t even try to contain her delight at uncovering this sparkling gem of gossip. She stopped just shy of rubbing her hands together with glee, but only just.
I shook my head, dumbfounded. Coherent speech wasn’t an option at that point.
“Well, you must have been living under a rock, as you’re surely the only person who hasn’t. It’s all over The Vine—HU’s internal social media network—and we also all got an email.”
Not a rock as such, but a heavy boulder of guilt and shame, and a hangover that had me leaving late to lectures, and forgetting my phone in the rush to get out the door. I hadn’t been on social media all day. Fuck.
I ran from the cafeteria, and just barely made it into a bathroom cubicle in time to hurl the bile that had been building up into the toilet bowl. When I was done, I slid down the wall to the floor, gross though it was. I had way bigger fish to fry than worrying about bathroom germs.
I drew my legs up, rested my elbows on my bent knees, and hung my head between them. My breathing was ragged, and each breath seemed to tear at my throat like I’d swallowed a string of razor blades. I stayed that way for a while, both hiding and trying to calm down.
I wasn’t sure exactly how long I was in there, but when I emerged sometime later, I felt slightly more in control, though no less freaked out.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I jumped a mile in the air, and my heart was beating so fast and hard, I was sure it was about to tear out of my chest. I clamped my mouth shut, as I felt the bile rise again. I didn’t want to have to sprint back into the bathroom.
“Kane.” My voice was a dry croak.
“Yeah. We must stop meeting like this. I messaged you a few times, but got no answer, so I figured I’d come looking for you, given that everyone’s talking about the video. Having an idea of the Engineering classes for the day, it wasn’t too hard to track you down. In fact, you’re kind of like a real life Gretel from Hansel and Gretel, except instead of walking into the forest leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, you’re doing the walk of shame around campus leaving a trail of pointing fingers and wagging tongues in your wake.” The grin on his face just about broke me.
“How can you stand there and smile about it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“What do you mean, why wouldn’t you?”
“Umm... which part didn’t you understand? It’s a pretty simple concept. I see no reason not to smile.” He shrugged with faux nonchalance.
“There’s a sex tape of us circulating on college social media.”
“I’m aware.” Why the fuck did he sound so smug?
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Like I said, why wouldn’t I be? Fox and I look great, and so do you. We make a hot trio.”
“What the hell are you talking about? It’s a video of us having a threesome, and now the world has seen it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s nothing new for us—the threesome part, I mean. Why do you think we have the rooms set up like an apartment? I’ll give you a clue: it’s not so that we can study together. Three-ways are kind of a thing for us. I mean, we do fuck separately—as you’ve already experienced—but that tends to be the exception, rather than the rule. More often than not, it’s a family affair. It’s kind of how we’ve always rolled. Since...” his face took on a strange expression momentarily “...Since forever.”
I had no idea what was going on. It was as though I’d been zapped to another dimension, but nobody had told me. Everything was the same as it did in the normal world, except for the weird things Kane was saying, and everything about his body language. I couldn’t fathom why he was so different to how he’d been on previous occasions. It was like he’d had a total personality transplant.
“But how did they take the video?” My head was totally scrambled as I struggled to figure out the situation.
“Who?” Kane looked at me as though I was a moron.
“Whoever filmed it and leaked it.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh no, you have it all wrong. We filmed it.” What the fuck is going on?
“But then how did it fall into the wrong hands?”
“There you go with all your crazy assumptions again. There are no ‘wrong hands.’ Or if there are, they didn’t have their fingers in this particular pie. Nope. This was all us. Fox and me.”
“What the hell?” I leaned heavily against the wall, largely to stop from falling over. “But I don’t understand. Why would you film it in the first place, and how did it get onto The Vine?
“Hmm... well, why film it is simple, DIY porn is the best kind. Haven’t you ever been on Porn Palace? It’s full of that real-life shit. We’re hot; you’re even hotter. We’ll be beating off to that footage for a long time to come, no pun intended. And as for how it came to be on social media, I would have thought that would have been pretty obvious by now. It’s not exactly rocket science.”
“It was you.”
“Bingo. Wow. I can see why they’re throwing that Fellowship money at you. You’re obviously not short of a brain cell or two.” The sarcasm wasn’t even thinly veiled. “Although actually, you’re not quite right. It was Fox, not me. Same-same, though.”
“But...”
“Why?” He finished the sentence for me. I nodded, unable to form even simple words. “Hmm... why indeed?” The look on his face as he sneered the words at me was absolutely terrifying.
It was like he was a different person from the one I’d met up with, and then slept with a little over twelve hours previously. The way his features contorted with anger was downright scary. “All will be revealed in time, but for now, let’s just say that karma is a bitch, and she’s headed your way with a pitchfork in hand.”
As he stalked away, I was left a stunned wreck, slumped against the wall. What the hell just happened?
Chapter 19
Kane
“So how was she? I mean, how did she seem?” Fox was pacing the living room like a prisoner in solitary confinement.
I gave him a sidewise glance. While I knew and understood his motivations, and I was down to help him do whatever he felt he needed to do to get revenge or closure, or whatever, I couldn’t help but wonder if what he was doing was healthy.
Scrap that, I knew it wasn’t, but I was beginning to seriously question whether it would bring him the peace he thought it would, or if it was going to open a whole new and different can of worms that would only fuck him up more than he already was.