Chapter 24
Sam
Idon’t look back because if I do, I’ll completely fall apart. Not just crack—I’ll shatter into a thousand jagged, bleeding pieces of some stupid girl who thought she mattered to him.
My boots hit the tile with quick, desperate smacks. Loud in my ears, loud enough to drown out the sound of my heart breaking.
The looks on Aubrey and Lola’s faces when they heard what Jace said. The sick twist in my gut when it landed.
Bonus if he fingered me on the school grounds.
I stumble into the bathroom, fingers scrambling for the first stall door. I slam it shut, lock it quickly, and drop onto the cold toilet seat before my knees give out.
It feels like my ribs are being pried open with a crowbar. Every breath has to fight through the pain. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the words are carved into the backs of my eyelids. Over and over. Each one a knife. Each one proof I was nothing more than a fucking game. A bet.
My nails dig into my thighs. I want to scream. Rip the door off the hinges. Punch a hole through every mirror out there until I don’t have to see her anymore. That girl. The idiot who let him touch her. Who let him make her feel wanted, needed and fucking special.
And the whole time he was thinking about a damn bet?
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes so hard I see stars, but it doesn’t stop the tears or the way my shoulders shake. And it sure as hell doesn’t stop the heat burning through my skin from the inside out.
He touched me. Crawled into my head. Into my heart. Into my fucking pussy. First time I’ve ever had sex with someone, and it didn’t mean a damn thing to him. Now I’m just some pathetic goddamn punchline.
I should’ve known. Hell, the warning signs weren’t subtle. They were neon-lit and screaming, and I still walked right into it with open arms and no helmet.
I let him in anyway.
Now I’m locked in a bathroom stall, mascara streaming down my face, chest torn wide open, while he stands out there, smug and golden, wearing that perfect fucking smirk.
Damn him for making it look easy.
And damn me for giving him the knife.
I gag, swallowing it before the sob can claw its way up my throat. God, I’m such a fucking idiot.
There’s still this traitorous part of me that wants to believe him. That Jace made it up and Reece didn’t sell me out for two hundred bucks and a high five.
But the words are there, hanging in the air, and I can’t swallow them down.
Hoping it was all a lie doesn’t change the truth I heard with my own ears—that night, at that party, those words he said to Jace. It doesn’t erase what just happened in the hallway. It doesn’t soothe the burning in my chest or stop the shame from crawling under my skin.
Footsteps echo across the tile.
“Sam… are you in here?” Lola’s voice filters through the stalls, gentle and careful, as if she already knows I’m cracked right down the middle.
I stay quiet. Words are a luxury I can’t afford at the moment.
A second later, Aubrey’s voice cuts through the silence, razor-sharp.
“Out. All of you. I don’t care if you’re crying, pissing, or plotting your next fuckboy disaster. Get the fuck out.”
Footsteps scatter. A few whine softly. No one dares to talk back. Aubrey’s name still holds power after what she did to Tia.
But that’s the thing about Aubrey. She’s fierce, not cruel. She can be mean when she has to, but she’s kind where it really counts. And right now, she’s both for me.
A door slams shut, hard enough to rattle the hinges. Then silence. Thick and pulsing. The quiet built on girl-loyalty, fury, and the friendship that bleeds when you do too.
I exhale. The kind of breath that fights its way out, kept inside through heartbreak and humiliation.
I hear two taps on the stall door. Gentle. No force. Just a quiet backup waiting to catch whatever mess steps out.
My fingers tremble as I fumble with the lock. It clicks open.
I step out.
Eyes red. Pride in pieces. Heart barely hanging on.
But still standing on my damn feet.
Lola’s face shows pure fury. Aubrey stands next to her, gentler but just as intense, her gaze sweeping over me as if she’s checking for bruises that aren’t visible on the skin.
Lola tilts her head, disgust evident in every word. “That motherfucker, Jace, he’s a dick. You know that, right?”
A laugh slips out of me. “What because he said out loud what I already knew was happening?”
She stills. Completely.
Aubrey blinks, the color draining from her face. “You knew about the bet?” she asks, voice soft.
I nod once. That’s all I’ve got.
Aubrey moves closer—careful, gentle, like you would when approaching something already broken. “Sam…”
“I heard them at Michaela’s party,” I say, lowering my voice because if I raise it, I might start screaming. “I was going to the bathroom. Reece didn’t know I was there. He said something to Jace about a bet.”
“That was weeks ago,” Aubrey says, horrified. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
I lift one shoulder. “I was embarrassed. Then, when we hooked up, he told me there was no bet. And when he didn’t go around bragging that we fucked, I convinced myself…”
Lola doesn’t hesitate. “You believed him.”
I meet her eyes, shame burning hot in my chest. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I did.”
The bathroom door swings open again, and the air quickly turns rancid. Thick with cheap perfume and hostile energy.
Nicole struts in as if she’s on a runway nobody asked for, her two backup dancers flanking her, both trying too hard and failing even more. She doesn’t bother hiding the smirk ripping across her face.
“Well, well,” she purrs. “So much for Little Miss Virgin.”
My stomach flips over.
Nicole flashes a grin, all teeth and venom. “Or should I say… Reece’s winnings?”
Lola tenses up next to me, anger simmering just below the surface.
But it’s Aubrey who really steps up fast.
She marches straight up to Nicole, eyes blazing. “Get the fuck out. You and your crusty-ass lashes and whatever festering STD is leaking out of your mouth today.”
Nicole blinks, showing a flicker of real shock before that smirk slides back onto her face.
“Aw. How cute. Trying to intimidate me?” Her voice drips with sugar, but a hint of poison is evident.
“Hate to break it to you, bitch, but I’m not Tia.
She might piss herself when you raise your voice, but I don’t scare that easy. ”
Aubrey’s jaw snaps tight. Her fists curl, knuckles white, her whole body vibrating with the urge to launch Nicole straight through the damn mirror. But I know she won’t touch her.
Aubrey still feels guilty about what she did to Tia. Even if Tia deserved every harsh word, Aubrey hated what it made her become.
Nicole lets out this high-pitched, try-hard laugh, tosses her over-processed straw-blonde hair, and struts out like she didn’t just shit all over the floor and call it perfume.
Her small posse hustles behind her, heels clicking, trying to keep up but stumbling over their own egos.
They follow her like cheap perfume, clutching their phones, their drama, and whatever bits of mean-girl power she allows them to have.
Lola shakes her head, disgust clear on her face. “I swear that bitch is one tampon short of a crime scene.”
A laugh slips out of me. It’s small, shaky, hardly there. More breath than sound. But it’s something.
Aubrey moves closer, her hand touching my arm.
“We should get to class,” she says, eyes searching mine. “Are you okay, Sam?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
She pulls me into a hug, arms tight and firm. “Jace is an asshole for saying what he did,” she murmurs into my hair. “Reece isn’t any better, but at least he knocked Jace on his ass for running his mouth about you.”
That’s all it takes.
The burn climbs up my throat. My eyes sting, heavy with everything I’ve been holding back since the hallway.
I’m really not okay. Not even close.
But I nod anyway because if I stop moving, if I let myself really feel it, I’ll collapse right here and I won’t know how to put myself back together again.
We shove the bathroom door open, and the hallway hits us all at once. The noise, bodies, and the sharp sting of fluorescent lights on raw nerves.
And then I see him.
Reece.
Leaning against the lockers as if he’s been there the whole time, waiting. His eyes catch mine instantly, the way they always fucking do. There’s something there... regret, panic, maybe both, but I don’t care.
My chest clamps down so fucking tight it pushes up into my throat, raw and burning.
He looks like shit.
Good.
“Sam,” he says, voice rough and broken.
I don’t stop. I walk right past him as if he’s nothing more than noise I refuse to listen to anymore.
“Sam, fuck, wait—”
His hand wraps around my wrist.
I rip it away so quickly his fingers barely brush my skin. “You don’t get to touch me.”
His mouth opens, jaw working, but whatever he’s trying to say dies in his throat. I don’t wait for him to find his voice.
“You should walk away, Reece,” Lola says, stepping in front of me, shoulders squared, eyes daring him to test her.
If I weren’t hurting so badly, I’d be smirking at her because this isn’t the same girl who used to shrink under Tia’s shadow. This is new-Lola energy. Try-me-and-bleed-for-it energy. That mess-with-my-girl-and-I’ll-bury-you look in her eyes—that almost makes me proud despite all the fucking pain.
Aubrey’s already moving, slipping between Lola and Reece before things escalate. “Not now, Reece. Give her some space.” She hooks her fingers around Lola’s arm and pulls. “Come on.”
Reece remains rooted to the floor, frozen in place.
I keep walking, even though something inside me still aches for what we almost became. For the version of him I allowed myself to believe in.
And fuck, I hate that it still hurts. And even after everything, some pathetic part of me still wants him to fix it.
By the time I reach class, I’m hollow. Scraped clean. Stripped down to nothing but skin stretched over what used to be a girl.