Chapter 21: Chapter 21

Amy

~“You’re precious to me.”~

The words are like music as they play over and over again in my head.

Tristan isn’t a Marvel villain. Why on earth would he execute such an elaborate and painstaking plan when he’s the campus god? He can have any woman he wants. It makes no sense that he’s been so obsessed with taking me down that he’d spend weeks earning my trust.

Maybe there really is something to what his mom said last night. Maybe I’ve misjudged him all along.

Elizabeth misjudged Mr. Darcy in a lot of ways. She was right about some things, but he wasn’t a villain either. Just a really flawed man. A flawed man capable of change.

Maybe Tristan is too.

A knock on the door makes me jump. God, I’m just staring at a blank screen thinking about Tristan. Once again, he’s distracting me from my fanfic. After setting my laptop down, I hop out of bed and walk toward the door. My roommate probably forgot her key again. When I open the door, I nearly jump out of my skin.

Harper.

“What are you doing here?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from far away.

“I need to talk to you,” she says, and something in her voice tugs at a deep, distant memory. She used to do this in high school. Show up at my house needing to talk. It was almost always because I hurt her feelings over something I considered minor. She’s sensitive, and I liked that, because it made her warm and loving. But her sensitivity also made her rage against me.

“I mean, this is weird,” I say, “but okay. Come in.”

She walks into my room like she owns the place, promptly plopping down on my bed. She reaches out and smooths the rumpled comforter. “You still never make your bed.”

Her smile is a little wistful, and it makes a flicker of anger rise within me. How fucking annoying that she shows up here unannounced and acts like she didn’t brutally reject me during the most angsty and vulnerable time in my life.

I cross my arms over my chest. “How do you know that’s not my roommate’s bed?”

Her smile grows as she shakes her head. “Because it looks like a Victorian grandmother would sleep in it.”

I smile against my will. “It looks like Elizabeth Bennet would sleep in it.”

Harper grins, and my smile falters. This is wrong. I’m reminiscing with her after she’s been cruel to me.

“Can we just get this over with?” I ask as I walk over to my desk chair and sit down. “You obviously have something to say about Tristan.”

Her eyes narrow. Something about her expression feels smug, and I don’t like it.

She crosses her legs and sets both hands on her thigh. “There’s something I need to tell you, and I think it’s going to hurt.”

A sharp pang shoots into my chest. Oh fuck, I don’t think I want to hear this.

“Just say it.” My voice is small.

“Fine.” She stares at me for a long moment, and even after all these years, I can still read her.

She’s drawing out the suspense on purpose.

She smiles ever so slightly, a flicker of her lips because she can’t help herself. “You know Tristan and I are still sleeping together, right?”

Her words are like a punch in the gut, but I’m somehow able to keep from flinching.

“I knew you probably wouldn’t believe me, so I brought evidence.” Harper reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone. After swiping for a moment, she hops from my bed and holds the screen in front of me.

It’s a picture of Tristan in his bed. Shirtless. Those huge arms are wrapped around a pillow, and his pretty lips are parted in sleep.

“I took this last night. Look at the time stamp.”

My breath catches in my throat, and the world around me starts to sparkle and buzz with stifling electricity.

The time stamp is correct. She took this just a few hours after Tristan dropped me off.

“I was in bed with him,” she says, and now I don’t question the smugness in her voice. This reminds me of what she used to sound like when she got a better grade than me when we were kids.

~Don’t react. Don’t show her how much it guts you to know he really is a liar.~

I take a breath as slowly as I can so she doesn’t see how much I need to calm myself before I speak. “I just need to know one thing.”

“Sure,” she says as she sits back down on my bed.

“Are you guys plotting something? Something like when you read my fanfic? Are you both using the game to embarrass me on the campus YouTube channel?”

She scowls. “How the fuck could you ask me that? Do you think I’m a monster?”

I wave a hand, and my tummy flutters at how flippant I must look to her. Like it doesn’t hurt that they would scheme to humiliate me. “You’ve done it before.”

“How can you equate that with embarrassing you in front of the whole school? Yes, I read your fanfic in front of a few people. Is it really that embarrassing?”

I grit my teeth. “You know it was.”

I can still hear her voice, and the laughter around us muffling it. It intrudes my thoughts when I write sometimes. I couldn’t write for a month after it happened.

Her lips curl into a snarl. “He’s always had a sick crush on you, and you loved it. You gave him your pen name so he could read your smut and fantasize about you. And you only did it to hurt me. It was your revenge.”

Bafflement expands within me like a balloon. “I had no idea Tristan would read it.”

She scoffs. “You tried to steal him from me from the very beginning. As if you even could. He might have a kink for girls like you, but he’d never make you his girlfriend.”

~Oh fuck. That hurts.~

She’s always known how to cut deep.

“I don’t want to be his girlfriend.” My voice is empty.

“You do. If only to take him from me. You never really cared about me. You picked me as your best friend because I liked Jane Austen, who I now think is totally overrated. Especially compared to the Brontes. ~And~ you thought you were smarter than me. You’d never be friends with someone smarter than you.”

Her pettiness eases the tightness in my chest. “Harper, this is such a dumb conversation. I feel like we’re in high school again. Why don’t you just go? I’m sick of you.”

She hesitates for a moment before sticking her phone in her purse and walking toward the door. When she sets her hand on the knob, she turns to me. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”

I jerk back. Are her eyes glistening? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I was going through the hardest time in my whole fucking life. You didn’t give a shit. All you cared about was not having someone to watch fucking ~Poldark~ with you.”

Even in my turmoil, I want to smile. Watching period dramas with her was one of the highlights of my teenage years. Even now, after all the ugliness that unraveled between us.

“I lost my dad, Amy. You have no idea what that’s like.” Now her eyes are sparkling with tears.

My chest tightens. “You’re right.”

“I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even my mom. Not even Nick. I just wanted to fall into a dark hole. Tristan was the person who got me out of it, because he didn’t force me to fucking talk. He was a quiet, comforting presence, because he knew it was what I needed.”

I let out a shaky breath. “He’s more sensitive than me, I think. Better at reading people.”

Which is how he knew all the right things to say to me.

Her eyes flash. “Yes, he is. But you know what? Nick didn’t just ignore me. Neither did my mom. They were there for me—grieving with me—even when I wished they’d both go away.” She wipes under her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “You just let me go, because you didn’t give a shit about my dad. Or me. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

I’m in a fog when the door slams behind her.

It isn’t true. I wasn’t selfish. And even if she did want me to fight for her, how could I have known that?

She chose Tristan.

But did I also choose myself?

I’ve learned that when I’m rejected, I reject back. Like when I concocted a ridiculous revenge plan to take down Tristan. An icy river of chills flows through my veins.

No.

Not ridiculous, after all.

Turns out Tristan really is the liar I thought he was from the beginning. He really is a Marvel villain. The thought of him leaving me last night only to invite Harper over immediately after makes my stomach roil. Here I was replaying his words in my head. ~“You’re precious to me.”~

And that same night, he fucked Harper.

I’m not precious to him. It really must all be a prank. How could he look at me with stars in his eyes and kiss me tenderly only to fuck someone else that same night? And not just anyone, but Harper.

After all our history, he knows how much it would hurt me if I ever found out something like that, and last night, he said he’d rather die than hurt me.

He’s a liar.

My revenge plan is back on. There’s no way I’m going to allow myself to be humiliated in front of the entire school. No. I’m going to take Tristan down first.

I stand up from my desk and start pacing the floor. He won’t be expecting me to fuck him and leave him, not when he’s pretending to want “something” after the game is over. His plan really must be what I suspected all along. He wants me to fall for him so it will be that much more devastating when he doesn’t pick me in the end. I wouldn’t just be losing a ten K scholarship then.

I’d be losing him too.

He knows how utterly charming he is. He knew he could win me over.

He almost did. Because I’m a fool. But he won’t get the satisfaction of seeing me blindsided and hurt.

I rush to my bed and grab the phone buried in the comforter. It takes me only a moment to pull up our text thread.

Me: Can I come over tomorrow night? We can cuddle and watch Poldark ☺

A giggle escapes from my chest, but then Harper’s shaken voice echoes in my head. She was really hurt, and even after all she’s done, I shouldn’t be mocking her by choosing Poldark of all shows as the background soundtrack while I fuck her deceitful lover’s brains out. Tristan might even show her this text. Cruel and jaded as they both are, she probably knows that he’s planning to have sex with me as part of his plan to take me down.

Oh well. It’s done.

Tristan responds within thirty seconds.

Him: I love that idea. I’ll get popcorn.

Vengeful glee bubbles up inside of me.

Me: Make sure you have condoms.

Blinking dots appear at the bottom of the screen, and I smile. He’s probably baffled by my candor.

Him: How about you come over now?

A cackle escapes my chest.

Me: I’ll be over in thirty.

Him: It’s going to be the longest half hour of my life.

My stomach flips over as I toss my phone on the bed. This is good. If I get this over with now, I can harness my anger to ward off the anxiety. I might not be good in bed, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not pursuing me for good sex.

But maybe I can give him wild, angry sex. Ride him and scratch his back and scream. And when I leave in the middle of the night, he’ll wonder who this shy little nerd really is, and why she wasn’t fragile enough to be cracked.

He has no clue that I’ve known all along that he’ll never give me that scholarship. What will he think of a girl so thoroughly bored with him in bed that she gives up ten thousand dollars just to get away from him?

He’ll hate it. I’ll bet no one has ever told him he’s boring in bed before, and someone who thinks he’s a god will probably become frantic trying to figure out what went wrong.

He’ll never know. And the mystery will haunt him for years to come.