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Chapter 19
It’sas if the walls have closed in on me with wide, screaming mouths, and they’re all coming at me with Liam’s voice.
At the same time, that nude picture of me looms in my sight, and I finally let out a horrified sob, then lurch to the ground to pick up my phone and bag. I run down the hall away from Cage, and there’s a door at the end of it…need to get to it…hope it leads to a place where I’ll never see him again…
I crash through the door into a dim lot, but he’s right there behind me.
“Karini! What the hell is going on?”
He catches up to me then whirls me around to face him. I don’t want to look at his face to see the disgust there, and I keep my head down as I pull away.
But there is no getting away from this. No matter where I run, I’ll always see that picture and I’ll always know how stupid and weak I was before I met Cage.
“Karini,” he says again.
This time there’s something in his tone that forces me to look up at him, even as I cradle my arms over my stomach. I’m gripping my phone and my bag, feeling as if they’re all I have anymore, because everything is about to disappear if Liam does what he’s threatening to do with those photos.
Dox me. Make them go viral all over the Internet.
As Cage stands in front of me with his hands fisted at his sides, his expression stormy and confused, I fight back more sobs.
“That picture…” he starts to say. Then anger completely takes him over. “That message. Who is it from?”
No hiding anymore. Nowhere to go.
“I messed up so badly,” I say.
But it goes beyond that, because now that I think about it—now that Liam seems to have run out of patience and he’s really going to screw me over—this might even affect Cage’s deal with Igor. He’ll question Cage’s judgment in choosing a “girlfriend” if my naked body is plastered everywhere online.
“Oh my god,” I moan, “I really messed up.”
I start to cry, my body shuddering with every sob.
“Karini,” he says again, softer this time, with an emotion that sounds deeper than I’ve ever heard. But crap, I don’t know anything. And I’ve dragged him into my bullshit. I’m a disaster, and I wish he would just go.
Yet he doesn’t, and that makes me even more upset. Everything starts to spill out of me as I keep staring at the ground.
“There was only one guy who was ever serious about me.” My words rattle in the night air. “At least I thought he was serious. But… God, he was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“What do you mean?”
Cage’s anger is back, and I think it’s directed toward Liam. But how long will that last once Cage realizes exactly what I did?
When I don’t answer, he asks, “Karini, who is this asshole?”
I hold my arms over myself tighter. “His name is Liam Phillips. I met him before summer break at a music show in a club. He was…” I shake my head and stay hunched over. “He was older. Almost thirty. Way more experienced. That night, he was near the front of the stage, king of the club. Women were all over him. But then he looked at me, and for some reason, he smiled. Then he walked over, and I…”
I slowly look up at Cage. He’s so tightly wound that I have to take a step back. Is he jealous? Or is there something more happening with him?
“Keep going,” he says in a voice so deceptively calm that it makes me shiver.
“Liam bought me drinks,” I finally say. “I’d never had a guy do that for me before. I was so flattered, and when he came right out and said that he wanted me, I didn’t know what to do at all.”
Cage closes his eyes for an anguished moment, as if he’s picturing how pathetic I was. Or maybe he’s remembering the other night when he told me how gorgeous and desirable I am, and it pains him to know that I’ve never believed that.
And never believing got me into this trouble.
“What else?” he says in that low, dangerous tone. He opens his eyes, and his gaze burns with a terrible fire.