My Ex’s Roommates: Chapter 51

“One more! Just one more!” Vance slapped me on the back and grinned. “We fought as a team so we party as a team!”

I couldn’t say no to the guy. He’d done more than his part in taking down Jake. It’d been beautiful to see his giant body sack Jake again and again. I looked over at the table I was sharing with Dylan and Silas and nodded. “One more! That’s it, though.”

I chugged my last beer of the night and fist bumped Vance. He was drunk enough that he let me slip away without a demand for more beer. Everyone was drunk and having a great time. How could they not be? We’d taken Jake down. As much as I normally would’ve been all over the idea of getting wasted and acting a fool, I had something better waiting for me at home.

I stopped next to our table and rapped my knuckles against the top. “We’ve done our part.”

Dylan swore and nodded. “Thank fuck. I just want to get home and show Harper-”

“What the fuck?” Silas sat up, phone in hand, and I watched as his face went from angry to something beyond furious. I’d never seen him turn the shade of red he’d turned.

I leaned over to see his screen. “What’s up?”

“Check your fucking school email. What the actual fuck? How?!” Silas shoved his phone at me and turned on Dylan. “Did you send that fucking message?”

The loud bar faded to nothing as I read the words under the picture. It was the calm before the storm and it only lasted until someone knocked into me from behind and laughed obnoxiously loud.

“I’m calling right now!” I didn’t recognize the drunk asshole behind me but I saw the same picture of Harper with us on his phone. “I knew that uppity bitch was just a whore all along.”

I saw red. I grabbed his phone and crushed it in my hands before yanking the guy up by his throat and shoving him into a wall. Pinning him there, I got in his face and screamed. “Say it again! Call her that again and it’ll be the last word you ever fucking utter.”

A few guys from the team grabbed me and pulled me off the guy but I shrugged them off and spun around, seeing the phones out, knowing they were all reading the worst things about Harper. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t smash all of their phones. It was too late.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Dylan grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the exit.

“I guess I wouldn’t hate being naked with my best friend if we had a hot piece of ass between us.”

I tried to swing around to find who said it but Silas was behind me, shoving me forward.

“Cheers to Harper Monroe! She sacrificed her holes for tonight’s win!” The laughter that followed filled me with ice.

Dylan and Silas had help getting me out of the bar, though, and deep down I knew that beating the shit out of everyone in the bar wouldn’t help. Once the muggy night air filled my lungs I let out a roar of anger and shoved everyone away from me. Vance and a few of our other teammates held up their hands and backed away, doing their best to show me that they weren’t a threat.

“I didn’t mean to send it.” Dylan’s quiet voice might as well have been a shout right to my ear. His words were like shotgun blasts as they sank in. “I put my phone in my pocket and I must’ve… Jesus. It’s right there. I sent it. I did this.”

“We have to get home and try to fix this somehow.” Silas scrubbed his hands down his face before fishing his keys out of his pocket. “Come on. Maybe she hasn’t seen it yet.”

“I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry, guys. I like Harper. She’s nice.” Vance frowned. “If you need anything, let us know. We’ve got your back.”

None of us knew what the fuck we would possibly need. We couldn’t begin to understand the consequences yet.

My stomach twisted on the drive home. I was terrified of what we’d find. “We all thought about sending it.”

Dylan slammed his hand through the dash of Silas’ truck. “I fucking did it, though! I knew better. What the fuck is wrong with me? I didn’t mean to send it but I did and now… Jesus, she’s going to hate me.”

“It was an accident. We’ll explain it and we’ll do whatever we have to do to fix it.” Silas ignored the hole in his dash. “There’s no other option. We have to fix it.”

The first sketchy guy I spotted close to the house I didn’t think twice about. It was a college campus and those guys weren’t too uncommon. I was too busy exploding inside myself anyway. The second strange looking guy made me sit up. When we pulled into the driveway and saw two men arguing next to the front door, though, I knew. The message had given Harper’s address, our address, and offered her up on a silver platter. There were men showing up at our fucking home to have a chance with her.

Silas put it together a second before I did and he was out of the truck, charging the two guys at our door with murder in his eyes. He grabbed one of them while the other scrambled away. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“She wasn’t answering her phone! We just came to see if it was for real!” The smell of the guys’ piss was too much. Silas screamed at him to get the fuck away from our house and to never come back or he’d kill him.

I couldn’t stop shaking. Anger filled me so violently that I started to chase after the guy, wanting to beat the life out of him, but Silas grabbed me.

“Harper first.”

As soon as we stepped inside, I knew she was gone. The normal warmth and life that filled the house was missing. Still, we called her name and searched for her. I ran up the stairs and barged into her room, hoping I was wrong, hoping she’d be sitting in bed, glaring at me for scaring her. She wasn’t.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, I held my head in my hands. “She’s gone. She left.”

Silas came in and looked around. After opening her closet door, he swore and slammed it shut. “We can’t even call her. Her phone’s off and the fucking voicemail is already full of god knows what. Call Casey. They were together.”

I dialed my sister’s number and waited impatiently for her to answer. When her voicemail picked up I called right back. I was desperate and I needed something, anything to show that Harper was okay. The sixth time I called, Casey answered.

“What? Did my not answering not clue you in that I’m busy?” I knew my sister well enough to know something was wrong. The words were the same she would’ve said no matter what she was feeling but there was an edge to her voice that wasn’t typical.

“Is Harper with you?”

After a second of hesitation, Casey answered. “No.”

“You can’t fucking lie to me, Casey, I’m your twin brother. I know your tells. We’re coming.” I stood up and motioned to Silas and Dylan. Casey’s was just a five minute drive. We’d have Harper back in less than ten minutes.

“Don’t come here.” Casey lowered her voice. “I love you, Carter, but you guys fucked up. She doesn’t want to see you right now and that’s her right. Leave her alone. She’s safe here since no one knows she’s here and if you three come banging on my door, all the assholes who’ve been calling and texting her will know where she is.”

My throat tightened and my fingertips went numb. “We have to see her.”

“Too bad. You can’t.” Casey growled under her breath. “Goddammit, Carter. What were you thinking? One of you just had to send that picture to Jake to rub it in, didn’t you? Well, I hope the three of you are proud of yourselves. I wouldn’t be surprised if Harper never wants to speak to any of you again.”

I stared down at my phone after Casey hung up on me and shook my head. I didn’t accept that answer. Harper wasn’t walking away from us that easily. She couldn’t. Not when she had my heart in her fucking hands.

Dylan ran his hands over his head and backed out of the room. “It’s my fault. I’ll… I’ll figure it out. I’ll find a way to tell her it was my fault and that neither of you had anything to do with it.”

Silas let out a bitter laugh. “Just because you accidentally hit the button doesn’t mean we weren’t all sitting there feeling great about ourselves, wanting to send that picture. Any of us could’ve done it. We were being fucking assholes. We should’ve fucking known better.”

My phone buzzed with a notification and I looked down to see a message from my parents telling me how proud they were of me for winning the game against USC. I dug my palms into my eye sockets and let out a frustrated shout. “I can’t just sit here. I have to do something.”