Corrupt(111)

And then he dived down, dragging me up by the sweatshirt. “Stop crying,” he ordered. “We weren’t going to hurt you, but now you know that we can.”

He grabbed me by the back of my hair, and I gasped as he brought me in, his warm breath falling across my face. “Michael doesn’t want you, and neither do we. You get that? I want you to stop watching us and stop following us like a pathetic dog begging for someone to notice her.” And then he shoved me away, disdain written all over his face. “Get a fucking life of your own, Rika, and stay the hell away from us. No one wants you.”

I backed away, looking at both him and Kai and wondering why they were doing this.

A pathetic dog. Was that how Michael saw me?

Tears filled my eyes, but before they had the pleasure of seeing me break, I twisted on my heel and took off. Into the forest and toward home as fast as I could away from them.

I let the pain of the last couple of hours go and barely saw the world around me as I cried the entire way home.

Alone, so one could see.





Present



“SHE’S LYING.”

I looked over at Kai, his narrowed eyes glaring at me.

Michael stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a flat expression on his face.

“Kai was with me,” he stated. “He caught up to me at my house almost as soon as I got home, and we got drunk while watching game footage the rest of the night. He wouldn’t have had time to take you out into the middle of the fucking woods.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s not right. He was there!”

“She’s making it up to save her own ass,” Damon chimed in, stepping up next to his friends.

“And I certainly don’t remember that,” Will added. “There was the warehouse and then nothing. I was drunk off my ass.”

Michael looked away, shaking his head almost regretfully. “Just admit it. You leaked the videos, and we know.”

My heart flipped in my chest. “What? Leaked the videos? You think…” I trailed off, scanning the air in front of me.

We trusted you…

Your tantrum cost us three years…

You owe us, and this has been a long time coming…

I closed my eyes, my lungs emptying. All this time they’d thought…

I looked at them again. “You think I posted the videos that got you arrested? That’s why you’re doing this?”

Oh, my God.

Michael leaned in and grabbed me by the back of the hair. I let out a small cry, sweat breaking out on my forehead.

“You had Will’s phone,” he charged.

But I shook my head. “I didn’t! I would never have done that.”

“You had the phone, because you had Will’s sweatshirt,” he argued. “Damon saw you with it. Say it!”

“Yes!” I gritted out. “Yes, I had the phone, but it fell out of my pocket when I was fighting with them!”

“You weren’t fighting with them,” he growled, his voice stinging my ears. “Stop lying!”

“I swear!”

He shoved me away, and I curled my fingers into my palms. None of this made any sense.

“You’re already caught,” Will said. “Michael says Kai was with him. That’s how we know you’re making all of this up. He wasn’t even there.”

I slammed my fists down. “He was! You all were, except Michael! You were passed out in the car, Damon was threatening me, and Kai grabbed me. When I hit him, he just laughed and said, ‘You can’t hurt me. The devil always has my back!’ You were all there, and the phone fell out when I was on the ground!”

“’The devil always has my back?’” Kai repeated, looking confused. “I didn’t say that. I’ve never even heard that before!”

I shook my head, closing my eyes in despair.

“I have.”

Everyone stilled and turned their eyes on Michael.

“My father,” he said in almost a whisper, looking uneasy. “He says that.”

Heat spread over my exhausted body, and I forced myself to take deeper breaths as I watched him turn his dark stare on Kai.

“Trevor,” he said in a low voice.

Kai’s stair hardened, and Will inched in to find out what was happening.

Trevor?

I thought back to that night. Trevor in Kai’s mask. Would he do that?

Michael turned around, and I saw Damon lock eyes with him.

“What?” he snapped.

“Will was drunk as shit,” Michael challenged. “But you weren’t. You took her into the middle of nowhere instead of directly home, and you knew it was Trevor under that mask.”

Damon blew out a stream of smoke and ground out his cigarette on the island. “You’re taking her side?”