Betrayal - Chapter 26
Monday
The first thing I heard was the laughter as I tried to pull more pictures off the lockers. I grabbed more printouts, but it was no use. There were too many of them.
“She’s such a whore,” Isabella said from somewhere behind me. “I can’t believe she’s sleeping with James and Matt. And now she wants to take on even more clients?” She laughed. “Oh my, it even says she’s affordable. I bet her going rate is a dollar.”
All her minions laughed.
I tried to ignore them as I got down on my hands and knees to pick up some of the printouts from the floor.
“Slut,” someone said.
“I knew she was a prostitute.”
“One of the cheap ones too.” More laughter spread through the hall.
“She’s even on her knees right now.”
My tears burned my eyes as I crawled around on the Empire High floor.
“Baby?” Matt’s voice in the hall made my tears run even faster down my cheeks.
I tried to pull more of the pictures into a pile on the floor. Not that it mattered. He’d seen them. He’d seen me in my underwear holding James’ hand. And even though I’d told him about what happened that night, seeing it was a million times worse. “I’m sorry,” I choked.
“Come with me,” Matt said. He grabbed my hand to pull me to my feet.
“I’m so sorry…”
He pulled me toward the closest bathroom. I tried to ignore the rude words being thrown our way. Matt seemed to be handling it better than I was. I thought he’d be pissed, but he was so calm.
“Look, she’s holding someone else’s hand now,” some guy said.
Matt ignored him, sidestepping to pull us closer to the bathroom.
But then the guy added, “I wonder how much her escorting services go for?”
And it was like Matt snapped. He let go of my hand so fast that I didn’t know how he had time to wrap it around the guy’s neck. “Say another word about my girl and you won’t be able to recognize yourself in the mirror.” Matt shoved the guy backward, slamming him against a locker.
I swallowed hard. I guess he wasn’t as calm as I thought.
“Show’s over!” Mason said from somewhere behind us.
I turned to see him hit his fist against a locker a few times to get everyone’s attention.
“I said show’s over!” he yelled. “Everyone get to class.”
Matt pulled me into the closest bathroom and locked the door behind us.
I could still hear the laughter in the hall.
I thought Matt would be pissed. I thought he would have screamed at Isabella and started to pull the pictures down too.
But he had been eerily composed until that guy had basically called me a prostitute.
He seemed calm again now as he pulled me into his arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Can you breathe?”
His words just made me cry harder. He was angry. But he was more concerned about whether or not I was having a panic attack.
“Baby, look at me.” He grabbed both sides of my face. “Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not okay. Isabella is trying to freaking ruin my life. She wants you to leave me. She said she was going to turn everyone against me. I can’t handle being on edge all the time. I feel like I’m about to lose my mind.”
“Isabella can do whatever the fuck she wants. But she’ll never tear us apart. And she’ll never break you down. Do you hear me?”
I nodded. I wanted to believe him. But Isabella was hellbent on ruining us. On ruining me. And it wasn’t a fair game. Instead of fighting fire with fire, I’d stopped fighting altogether. I swallowed hard.
“Are you sure you can breathe alright?” he asked.
“I’m okay.” I shook my head. I wasn’t okay. Not really. “Isabella’s framing me. But I didn’t put those pictures up, Matt. I didn’t…”
Matt winced. “I know you didn’t. Come here.” He pulled me back into his arms.
“She’s never going to stop,” I said.
He didn’t respond. He just held me for a few minutes in silence. Until the laughter in the hallway died away.
“Give me your phone,” he said. “Enough is enough. You’re supposed to call your security detail if Isabella ever does something. You can’t let this one slide.”
I didn’t want to stop Isabella with my dad’s help.
That always made everything worse. I wanted to freaking fight back myself.
But Matt and I had already had this conversation.
He’d said I was better than Isabella. And I wanted to show him that I was.
I didn’t want to stoop to her level. I didn’t want to become her.
So I pulled my cell phone out of my blazer pocket and handed it to him.
He lifted the phone to his ear. “Hey, it’s Matt.
There’s been an incident with Isabella.” He tried to give me a reassuring smile.
“Some inappropriate pictures. She’s upset, but no, I’ve got it covered.
” He looked over at me and pulled the phone away from his ear. “Do you want to go home for the day?”
I shook my head. I refused to let Isabella drive me away from school. Her games weren’t going to make me leave.
“No, she’s okay,” Matt said.
I noticed that there was a hole in one of the knees of my tights. Crap. That didn’t look good when there were jokes going around about me being on my knees.
“Thanks,” Matt said and hung up the phone. “They said they’d pull her out of school for the rest of the day. Not sure what will happen after that.”
“Okay.”
I watched Matt loosen his tie. He pulled off his blazer and rolled up the sleeves of his uniform dress shirt.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to go get my varsity jacket for you to wear the rest of the day so people know that you’re mine and only mine. Do you want me to grab anything else from your locker?”
That wasn’t what he was about to do. Well, maybe it was. But it didn’t look like the only thing he was planning. I grabbed his arm. “I don’t want you to fight my battle for me.”
He lowered his eyebrows. “It’s our battle, Brooklyn. We’re a team. And no one - no one - talks about my fiancé like that.”
“If you want me to be the bigger person, you have to be too.”
“The things they were saying…” his voice trailed off.
Yeah, I’d heard it too. I’d seen it written.
And now literally everyone at Empire High had seen me in my underwear.
Holding James’ hand. Isabella was trying to make it seem like I was with James so that Matt would dump me.
But Matt had said we were fine. So I should have been able to drop it and move on.
Maybe it was the Pruitt blood in my veins.
Or the fact that I had a mobster father.
But all I wanted to do was make Isabella pay for this.
Hell, I wanted to roll up my sleeves and punch Isabella in her stupid face. But Matt said that wasn’t me. And it wasn’t the Matt I fell in love with either.
“I’ve been patient, Brooklyn. When you told me what happened between you and James.
When you told me you were seeing someone else when we were fighting.
I’ve been trying so hard to be understanding.
But the things our classmates are saying about you?
I’ve been patient with you, but I don’t need to be patient with them.
No one should ever talk to you like that.
And what kind of person would I be if I didn’t go out there and defend you?
I can only take so much. I’m about to snap. ”
I could see that. I knew he had a temper.
And I knew that my behavior had tested him.
I didn’t want him to lose control because of me.
I took a deep breath. “Well, your fiancée doesn’t want you to get kicked out of school.
” I put my hands on his chest. “You said it yourself. Isabella’s not going to break us.
And if you want me to be better than her, you have to be better than all of them too. Because I know you are.”
He ran his hand down his face and sighed. “Fucking Isabella.”
I laughed. “I think you meant…fuck Isabella.”
He laughed too. “You are better.” He ran his thumbs beneath my eyes to remove the rest of my tears. “And I’m trying to be better for you too.”
“I’m really sorry about the pictures of me and James…”
“I don’t care about some stupid pictures. I know you’re not in love with James.”
I smiled up at him. “No, because I’m very much in love with you.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up.
“How long do you think it’ll take for someone to remove all those pictures?” I asked. The thought made tears come to my eyes again. My uncle would have had to clean up that mess. He would have seen the pictures of me in my underwear and all those nasty words. The thought made me mad all over again.
“I’m going to go talk to the principal and make sure he knows what actually happened,” Matt said. “And I actually am going to go get my jacket out of your locker for you to wear. Stay here, okay?”
I nodded.
He placed a kiss against my lips. “Us against the world, Brooklyn.”
I watched him walk out of the bathroom and I leaned against one of the sinks. Us against the world.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out. There was a text from Rob: “So what’s the going rate, Sanders?”
I groaned and texted him back. “Bite me.”
“Oh, I’m planning on it. And we both know I don’t need to pay you for it.”
I rolled my eyes and set my phone down. Rob was funny, but I wasn’t ready to laugh about this yet. Not when there were literally thousands of pictures out in that hall advertising my prostitution services. I pulled my ruined tights off and threw them in the trash.
Another text came through: “Please tell me Operation Disappearing Troll is back on?”
I bit the inside of my lip. I was angry at Isabella. I was so freaking pissed. My phone buzzed again.
“And if so…I really need those blueprints to the Pruitts’ apartment.”
I actually laughed. I had no idea why our pudding prank needed blueprints, but Rob seemed to really think it did.
He’d been bugging me to get them for weeks but would never say why he needed them.
It was tempting to just tell him to do whatever the hell he had planned.
But I wasn’t going to stoop to Isabella’s level.
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. And I wouldn’t go against my promises to Matt.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” I texted back.
“Really? Wait, you are at school today, right? If not, my going rate joke probably landed a little flat.”
I laughed. “I saw the pictures. But I’m not going to stoop to her level.”
“Suit yourself, Sanders. It’s just a prank, though. It’s not like we’re going to get her half naked in front of tons of people. That would just be pure evil.” There was a winky face at the end of his text.
I shook my head. Yes, Isabella was evil. But she’d have to do something a lot worse than this to make me break.