Chapter 25 #2
No. Absolutely not. Brandon texting me is never good news, which is why I’ve had him blocked for two years. Brandon texting me with a video about Jack? That’s a nightmare I wasn’t prepared for tonight.
I should delete it.
But my finger hovers over the link. And then I’m clicking it because apparently I’m a glutton for punishment and terrible at making decisions.
It’s Jack at a party. I recognize the outfit immediately, the same one from that Monaco video that went viral months ago, the one that caused all his sponsor problems. But why would Brandon send me this?
I’ve already seen the Monaco video. Everyone saw it.
It was everywhere when it first came out.
We talked all about it when Jack first explained what happened.
I’m about to close it when something catches my eye. The video length at the bottom of the screen. Ten minutes and forty-three seconds.
That can’t be right. My finger hovers over the play button.
The original Monaco video was maybe thirty seconds long.
Just a quick clip of Jack standing near a table with drugs visible in the background.
Bad enough for his sponsors to completely freak out, but explainable.
He told me the whole story. Five minutes max, in and out to grab Sofia for Luca, just terrible timing with someone’s camera.
But this is ten minutes. Ten minutes I’ve never seen before. Ten minutes that Brandon somehow got his hands on and decided I needed to see. I can see the likes are already at over a hundred thousand. Fuck.
There’s this pull in my chest, this horrible curiosity I can’t shake.
Like watching a car crash happen in slow motion.
Why would this be going viral again? What’s on this video that wasn’t on the first one?
Some part of me wants to just delete it, block Brandon’s new number, go to bed and pretend this never happened…
I hit play.
Jack walks into the party and immediately starts greeting people like he knows them.
Handshakes and those half-hug things guys do, actually smiling and laughing at something someone says.
He looks comfortable here. Relaxed. Like this is a party he wants to be at, not somewhere he reluctantly showed up to rescue his teammate’s drunk little sister.
Someone hands him a beer and he takes it without hesitation, takes a drink, and keeps talking with people.
My stomach twists. He’s not rushing around looking for Sofia.
Not scanning the crowd like someone on an urgent mission.
He told me that he was in and out. But he’s just standing there talking, laughing with people who clearly know him, looking completely at ease.
The camera pans and I can see that table. The one with cocaine on it, people bent over it doing lines like it’s casual background noise at a house party. Jack’s standing right there. Not doing lines but chatting with people who are.
This doesn’t look like a rescue mission. This looks like Jack at a party doing exactly what Jack does at parties. This looks like the cautionary tale about the player who parties too hard and leaves broken hearts everywhere he goes.
The video keeps playing and I can’t look away even though I want to.
Even though some part of me is screaming to stop watching right now, that whatever comes next is going to hurt.
A woman approaches him. Tall and gorgeous in that effortless model way that makes me feel instantly, viscerally inadequate.
The kind of woman who probably doesn’t even own sweatpants, who looks like she stepped out of a magazine spread even when she’s stumbling drunk in heels that cost more than my rent.
She pulls him down and kisses him. The video cuts off right there.
I watch it again. My finger hits replay before I can stop myself, like maybe I saw it wrong the first time. Like maybe if I watch again it’ll be different, it won’t hurt as much, I’ll see something that makes this okay.
But all I see is the easy way he moves through that crowd like he belongs there. The fact that he doesn’t look surprised when that woman kisses him, doesn’t look uncomfortable, just looks like Jack at a party where beautiful women throw themselves at him.
He lied to me. He fucking lied to me.
When he told me about Monaco, he made it sound like he was this reluctant hero doing an uncomfortable favor for his friend. But this video shows he’s not even looking for Sofia in any of it.
And now I’m sitting here questioning if any of it was real. Was Sofia even at that party? He said Luca called him panicking, but what if that was all made up to make himself sound better to me, to his family?
I wish I had Luca’s number. I could just text him right now and ask if Sofia was really there, if Jack really helped her.
But that would be insane. Texting my boyfriend’s teammate at midnight to verify whether my boyfriend lied to me about why he was at a party months ago before we were ever together?
That’s a whole new level of spiral I’m not sure I’m ready to sink to.
Though apparently I’m already watching a video on repeat that my ex-husband sent me specifically to hurt me, so maybe the ship has sailed on the sanity front.
The thing is, if he left this much out about Monaco, what else has he left out?
What other convenient omissions have there been that I just accepted because I wanted to believe him?
How many other times has he told me a version of events that was technically true but missing all the parts that would’ve made me think twice?
I slide down onto the bathroom floor, staring at the paused frame of that woman leaning into Jack, her arms around his neck.
I shouldn’t even be pissed about the kiss. I know that logically. We weren’t together then. He wasn’t mine. I have absolutely zero right to be jealous about what he did or who he kissed before we were even a thing.
But watching it makes jealousy burn through me anyway.
Hot and ugly and so humiliating I want to throw my phone across the room.
Because that woman is exactly the type Jack dates.
The type everyone expects him to date. Models and actresses and trust fund socialites who look perfect in photos and don’t have anxiety spirals about record label contracts while eating cookies on their couch at midnight.
I open Instagram before I can stop myself, searching for the video like I’m actively trying to hurt myself more. It’s everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Posted and reposted with thousands of comments, millions of views. The comments make me feel physically sick.
Bet he’s cheating on that girlfriend lol
Ugh he’s so hot I wish that was me
Once a player always a player
His PR team working OVERTIME trying to clean this up
That poor girlfriend she probably thinks she’s special
Literally the hottest guy I’ve ever seen
Why does he even have a girlfriend when he could have anyone
I’m that girlfriend in the comments section. The woman who fell for the fuckboy’s lines and convinced herself she was different. That he’d changed for her. That she was special.
The tears start and I’m furious at myself for crying. I’m twenty-six years old. I survived Brandon. I spent two years in therapy rebuilding everything he systematically tore down, learning to trust my instincts again, learning to stand up for myself, learning that I’m enough exactly as I am.
And here I am sitting on my bathroom floor at midnight crying over a guy who makes women feel special until he gets bored and moves on to the next city, the next race, the next gorgeous woman who thinks she’s the exception.
All the warning signs were there from the beginning.
The reputation that spans continents. The lifestyle of constant travel and parties and beautiful women throwing themselves at him.
The fact that commitment-phobic Formula One drivers don’t suddenly transform into relationship material just because they met some bartender from a small town in Washington.
But I fell for him anyway. I believed him when he said I was different, when he said this was real, when he looked at me in that cabin in Banff and told me he loved me like it was the easiest truth in the world.
And now I’m on my bathroom floor at midnight, crying over a video my vindictive ex-husband sent me specifically to twist the knife.
I was such an idiot to think I was the exception to Jack Midnight’s pattern.