Chapter 4 #2
“He didn’t see me. He was too busy choking on the guy’s dick to notice I was standing right there. I didn’t stay to watch the rest.”
Brielle leans forward, eyes hard. “But that wasn’t the end, right?”
I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Not even close. The next morning, he was all sunshine and small talk, as though the night before never happened. He was in the kitchen, barefoot and whistling, making coffee like we were lovers on a weekend retreat. He was smiling and happy as fuck. Said it was a shame I wasn’t feeling it and maybe we could give it another shot sometime. ”
Marissa’s face pinches. “Another shot?”
“He said I looked so peaceful on the couch, he didn’t want to wake me. So, he left me there instead of carrying me to bed.” My grip tightens around the glass, knuckles aching. “He told me Callum had already left for work, but we were welcome to stay.”
Marissa huffs. “But you said something, right? You didn’t just let that slide.”
“Oh, I said something.” I pause, the memory nearly souring my stomach. “I told him what I saw. Every detail. And he laughed. Actually fucking laughed. He swears I must’ve been dreaming during a drunken stupor. Claims I passed out on my own and nothing happened because he would never pressure me.”
The girls trade knowing looks.
“His weak ass story is I made it all up. Like he hadn’t been on his knees with a cock in his mouth while I stood there watching him choke on it.”
“That’s fucking diabolical.” Eden says, her eyes wide.
“Oh, it gets better. On the drive back, he doubled down and said I was projecting. I made it all up because I felt guilty for dragging my feet.”
Marissa makes a strangled noise. “That’s a full-blown mindfuck.”
According to him, I was tipsy and spiraling. Said I imagined the whole thing.
God, I wish I had dreamed it all. Because the truth is abominable. The man I loved drugged me just so he could get on his knees for a man he met on an app. Let him bend him over and fuck him in the ass while he planned on me being unconscious three rooms away.
I let that sit. Let it rot in the silence. Let it hurt.
“A few ounces of whiskey doesn’t knock me out. I’ve never blacked out in my life. And it damn sure never made me hallucinate.”
Brielle lifts her glass with a crooked grin. “Please. LSU didn’t raise a lightweight. It turned your liver into a certified weapon.”
“Fair.”
Eden blows out a breath, jaw tight. “Shit. And there’s no way to prove it. It’s been too long. Whatever they slipped you is long gone.”
Do these women know me at all?
“Oh, I got proof. The second he dropped me off, I booked it to a clinic and got a tox screen. Benzodiazepine. Date-rape drug.”
The table detonates.
“What the fuck?”
“He drugged you. That’s not a misunderstanding. It’s a felony.”
“Shit like that can stop your heart.”
“Believe me, I know. Everything y’all are saying is true.”
Marissa’s eyes are bright with shock. “How are you so calm right now?”
“I’ve had time to absorb this. You’re still in the shock phase.” I take a drink of whiskey. “Of course you’re outraged. As you should be.”
The whole thing is just fucking outrageous. But me? I’ve burned through the initial rage. What’s left now is sharper, the kind of calm that cuts.
Marissa reaches across the table, her fingers closing around mine. “Seriously, are you okay? Physically? Mentally? What did the doctors say?”
“I’m fine. No lasting damage.” I pause, something heavy pressing behind my ribs. “Except for the trust. That’s gone, burned to ash and scattered.”
Their expressions shift—sympathy and fury, braided together.
“Please tell me you’re done with him,” Eden says.
That one’s easy. “Fuck yes.”
“Good,” Eden snaps. “That fucker doesn’t get a second chance.”
“Damn right,” Brielle adds. “You don’t come back from drugging your girlfriend and sneaking off to suck dick and get railed while she’s passed out in the next room.”
Marissa tilts her head. “Tell me you at least burned his shit.”
“Not yet.” I smirk. “Definitely thought about it, but I’d rather see some homeless guy strutting down Bourbon Street wearing his favorite hoodie.”
I stare into my empty glass, wishing it were still full.
“The strange part is… I haven’t cried. Not once.”
Eden scoffs. “That piece of shit doesn’t deserve a single tear.”
Crying has never been my thing. Not because I’m unshakable or made of stone. It’s something colder.
I never truly loved Jon David, not in the marrow-deep way. I loved the version I built in my head—the fantasy of who we could’ve been. I know that now.
And fantasies don’t deserve tears.
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. Looking back on it, every promise he made about that threesome—about it being for me—was bullshit. It was never about my pleasure. He had an agenda.”
Marissa’s brows draw together, lips tightening in disbelief. “You think he planned it all for himself?”
“Yeah.” My voice hardens. “I think he wanted a man. And I think he’d been wanting one for a long fucking time.
But instead of owning that, instead of speaking it out loud, he used me.
I was the shield. The bait. The cover story.
Get me in the room, frame it about my pleasure, and then when something happened between him and the other guy, he could play innocent.
Pretend it just happened in the moment.”
I exhale, cold and furious. “But it didn’t just happen. It was the plan. The only plan. And when I didn’t play along, he drugged me to shut me down and get what he wanted.”
Eden shakes her head. “That’s beyond twisted. That’s strategy. And it almost worked.”
“It was cowardly. If he wanted to get fucked by a man, he should’ve grown a spine—ended things with me and chased his urges like an adult. It would’ve hurt, but I would’ve gotten over it and moved the fuck on.”
I sit back, calm now. Icy. “But he needed a buffer. A cover story. Facing who he is was scarier than drugging the woman he called his girlfriend.”
It’s not sorrow curled in my chest. It’s accelerant. And I’m done pretending I won’t light the match.
“Jon David’s perfect little family would shit a gold brick if they knew he liked cock. But that’s his crisis, not mine. Two men can fuck each other senseless for all I care. What I won’t be is the girl prop in someone’s heterosexual charade. That’s a ride I never agreed to.”
Brielle leans in, nudging my shoulder. “You deserve to be the headline. Not the fine print.”
“Damn right,” Eden says.
Whatever future I built around him has collapsed. “What’s fucked is, I really believed we were going to get married. I thought he was going to propose on my birthday.”
That hits harder than I expected. A slap to the ego.
Makes me feel fucking stupid.
“Fuck him,” I say flatly.
“And the bastard he deep-throated.” Brielle fires back without missing a beat.
“Jon David Bellamy is dead to me.”
Marissa sets her glass down a little too hard. “But he’s not going to get away with this, right? Drugging you? You can press charges.”
“You have to,” Eden urges. “He could’ve killed you.”
“Legally? It’s a shitshow. His word against mine. No witnesses, no smoking gun. Just a drug screen and a timeline no one wants to believe.” I glance at them. “And juries? They don’t show up for women who black out.”
Because the system doesn’t protect women.
Men built it to protect men. And he knows it.
“I’d have to explain why I was there. What we agreed to do. What kind of sex we were planning before everything turned sideways. It’d be invasive. Humiliating. And I’d be the one under the microscope. My career? Burned. My credibility? Gone. I wouldn’t survive that scandal. Not in this world.”
Eden’s jaw clenches. “So he drugs you, commits an actual crime, and just walks? That’s bullshit.”
“I’m not saying I won’t make him pay, but pressing charges isn’t the move. He knows how to game the system.”
Brielle groans. “There has to be another way.”
“I want him to answer for what he did. For thinking he had that kind of power over me.” My gaze drops to the table, hard. “But I can’t destroy him without setting fire to myself. My name. My reputation. My career. All of it would be collateral damage.”
Eden leans in, eyes lit with something dangerous. “Fuck him. You need someone who would burn the world down for you.”
A slow, dark burn coils in my chest—hungry, hollow, begging to be fed.
“I don’t want soft hands and careful love.
I want a man who sees every fucked-up piece of me and still wants it.
Craves it. I want to be someone’s obsession.
Possession. A man who doesn’t just touch me.
He takes me—mind, body, and soul. No questions. No hesitation.”
I lean in. “If a man like that is out there… he can have me. All of me. Let him wreck me. I want to be undone.”
Brielle lifts her glass with a smirk. “The next man you date better come armed. Because loving you? That’s war.”
Marissa’s eyes narrow. “There’s a man out there who’ll crawl through hell for a taste of you.”
Eden smiles, all teeth. “And he’ll gladly burn for you.”
I raise my glass. “To the man who can take every piece of me and survive it.”
The right man won’t flinch.
He’ll kneel.