28. Jason
28
JASON
M y blood turned to ice. Deep thumps of my heart matched the drone of my pulse that roared in my ears as I stared straight ahead.
Silence filled the room while dread sank heavily in my stomach. My arms and legs weighed me down as shock kicked in.
Images of Laura showed behind her as the autoplay feature kicked in. Every one of them was a terrible option to show here, with academics and judges. These images weren’t the kind that should be shared publicly at all.
Bearing resemblance to the ones that had shown at the Professors’ Nightmares show that I busted up, I knew without any thought or guesswork where these had come from.
As the entire crowd watched Laura stand there stiff and stunned, low laughter sounded to my side.
“This is awesome,” Dennis said, cracking up and covering his mouth at her humiliation on the stage.
His voice came next, in a voiceover as the slideshow began.
“You fucking asshole.” I stood, reaching over to grab the front of his shirt. Before he could react to my taking hold of him, I reared my hand back and punched him right in the face.
Dennis’s booming voice cut out as someone in the IT department had the mind to stop it. Rory was seated a couple of chairs down, chuckling, and as I scrambled to get out of this row, I paused to give him the same treatment I had Dennis.
Fuck.
Fuck this.
Laura, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I’d never told my friends to quit it. I assumed that when they realized I had stopped targeting Laura, they would give it up too.
They had no issue with her. The only reason they’d ever gone after her was because I had instigated it all. Because I thought I had a just cause. They didn’t. And in my miserable existence of wishing I could try to make things right with Laura again, I hadn’t stopped to consider that they might have continued with it.
Running down the aisle, I damned them both for taking it this far.
Murmurs sounded throughout the large conference room, and it urged me to run faster to reach the stage.
Laura had yet to move, and with a sharp ache in my chest, I wished this had never happened. I cringed and wanted to rage at the world that she had to be hurt yet again.
She didn’t react to my hurrying toward her. She didn’t do anything as I took the stairs two at a time. And when I dashed across the stage with the wish that I could shield her from the rest of the world, she hung her head and didn’t fight or flee.
“No,” I said, too quiet for anyone but her to hear as I skidded against the podium. Pushing aside her papers, I sought the computer that would power the presentations. The monitor showed the file name in a dialog box, but no amount of typing on the keyboard would halt it from running. Inappropriate images—all doctored or made up—rolled one after the other on the enormous screen.
“Stop,” I growled, as if the computer would hear my command and obey.
I had to prevent this from continuing.
I had to end this torture.
Frustrated that I couldn’t find a button to override the autoplay, I gripped the device on the lower part of the shelving unit and yanked it hard. It was wedged in there, secured with bolts. I couldn’t toss it aside and break it, but I loosened something to the point that the screen behind me went blank. A huge sheet of black showed now, with a singly blinking command line of a device no longer connected.
Heaving deep breaths from the adrenaline rush of sprinting to her rescue, I jerked my head around to face her.
She deprived me of doing that. With her head still hung low, her long, black hair curtained her face.
Shame.
Humiliation.
Hurt.
So much sorrow.
All of them radiated from her, and I cleared my throat to fix this, to repair all this damage that she never deserved in the first place.
I couldn’t give up. Not on her. Not on my fervent wish to make her happy again.
Narrowing my eyes under the spotlights, I scanned the crowd and tugged the microphone toward me. It screeched and squealed from my rough movement, but I didn’t pause to care. All I cared about was changing the trajectory of what just happened.
“What you just saw…” I shook my head, seeing Dennis and Rory walking out of the room, their hands on their faces. “Is my fault.”
Taking blame for this prank wouldn’t fix anything, but if I could avert the attention from Laura to me, I would do it. I would step up each and every time to do right by her. I was far too late to start that, but from here on out, I had to make amends.
“That slideshow didn’t belong up there. And it is my fault that it was made. But it was not supposed to be something for you to view.”
I licked my lips, seeking out the rows where the judges sat. Their eyes were all on me, open wide with a mixture of shock, alarm, and anger.
“This incident is not what Laura Chen wanted to have happen up here. It was not her intention to sway the purpose of her presentation. This is not her fault, and it is a shame that this incident can precede the work of an intelligent and brave woman. I request—I beg of you—to give her another chance to share her hard work.”
I dragged in short, rapid breaths, unable to tamp down this beast of anxiety and anguish. “Give her another chance,” I instructed.
A second chance was all that could start to make this right.
She needed to have the stage to present what mattered to her.
Because that was the only second chance that would be happening. Hers.
Not one she’d give me. She’d made it clear all week long that she was done with me. Laura had zero intent to listen to me or forgive me, and I knew that asking for either wasn’t fair after all I’d done to her.
I wouldn’t get a second chance with her, but even though I blew it, I wanted to fight for her, to insist that she wouldn’t suffer from me and my cruel temptations ever again.
“Let her start over,” I told the judges before taking a big step back, almost stumbling away from the podium.
Dizzy and clumsy, I staggered back again until I reached for Laura’s hand.
I tried.
I stepped up.
And I wanted to take her aside somewhere private to tell her why. I braced myself for a moment of her time to plead with her once more to hear me out.
“Laura,” I whispered, not caring how desperate I sounded. Just being near her again messed with me, urging me to lean into her and hold her close until everything could be good between us again.
She lifted her soulful gaze to me slowly. Then without a word, without a single gesture, she turned and walked right off the stage.
Leaving me there alone, breaking my miserable, dark heart into chipped pieces I’d never piece back together again.
It was over.
Just like I feared.
She meant it when she said she was done.
Before, I hated the burn of her dismissing me.
And now, I understood how much worse it was to have had her and lost her than her pushing me away before I could get close and savor her sweetness.