“The reason that I went to go stay with our grandparents wasn’t what Mom and Dad told you. I went to stay with them because I was pregnant.”
And there it is. It’s out. Her secret.
Any power I held over Bridget drains away along with the color in Warren’s face.
He looks at his sister and his brow furrows so deeply that I can barely see his forehead anymore. I hear Chase and Sterling shift uncomfortably on their feet, their own silence as telling as any words.
“They didn’t want me to stain our family’s reputation—that precious reputation—so they shipped me off to stay with our grandparents.”
“So …” Warren says, his own voice faltering. “So did you …”
“Did I have it? Yes, Warren. I did. Then I had to come back home and pretend like none of it had ever happened—like I hadn’t just gone through an agonizing birth and an even more agonizing act of giving up my baby just so that I could come back here to all of this bullshit.”
All three guys stared at Bridget in silence and shock.
Utter silence.
I don’t realize what’s wrong with that until I see Chase glance sideways over my shoulder and my gaze follows to see that something else truly awful has happened.
Somehow even more awful than what’s already unfolding in front of me.
The entire hall full of people is silent and staring at us. All of the students, faculty, and members of the review board that are here, all staring straight up at us as if we are the hired entertainment for the gala.
I look around frantically to see how in the world they could possibly hear what we are saying from where we are all the way on the stage. And that’s when I see it—the control panel that I accidentally bumped into when I took a step back earlier. All of the lights on the panel are lit up green.
The microphones are on, broadcasting every one of Bridget’s words throughout the hall. Everyone in the whole hall has heard her.
Every. Last. Word.
Everyone here, including the review board, just heard all of it. I give Chase a look of panic and try to stumble off the stage to at least take this discussion elsewhere, but Bridget doesn’t so much as budge.
That wild look in her eyes says it all.
It’s too late anyway … Why stop now?
“Want to know the fun part of all this?” Bridget says. “The only part that I am actually going to enjoy telling you about? Aubrey knew about it. She knew about my secret and she used it to blackmail me. She’s been blackmailing me this entire semester, ever since we got back. She took the most traumatic event in my life and used it to torture me. Why do you think I let her sit at my table and invited her to my party? Why do you think that I gave her all my old clothes and didn’t protest at all when she took my volunteering assignment? Do you really think that I would just do all of those things out of the kindness of my heart for a girl like her?”
That was the most convincing and believable thing that she said. Warren knows his sister, hell all three guys know Bridget’s personality, and all of them know that she wouldn’t have done any of that stuff if she hadn’t actually been blackmailed and forced into doing it.
I look over at Warren, and at the blank and emotionless expression on his face. He looks back at me but not in the same way that he had just moments ago.
Now his gaze is cold and hard and bitter.
“How could you?” he snarls at me vehemently. The tone in his voice doesn’t even sound like him anymore.
I’m still falling inwardly. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe he can go from professing his love for me one moment and then looking at me with daggers in his eyes the next.
“I get it that you don’t like my sister, and I get it that you wanted to pay us back for how we treated you last semester. But how could you do something so … so vile?” His voice cracks again. “I thought you were different.”
“Warren, I’m sorry,” I say as I start to hear the desperation crawl into my voice. “I hadn’t intended to fall for you, or for any of you. By the time I realized what a mistake I made … it was too late to go back and fix it.”
“That is no excuse for what you’ve done,” he says, looking at me as if I am despicable to lay eyes on now. “You’re a snake, and I can’t believe that I even trusted you for a minute.”
“Warren, please,” I say as I reach out my hand to touch his arm.
He backs away, and he isn’t the only one who steps back. Sterling and Chase do as well.
“Guys come on,” I say. “I know that what I did was wrong, but you have to admit that almost everything you guys did to me last semester was wrong too.”
“Nothing we did to you ever came close to this,” Warren says. “You lied to all three of us about it—even as we were trying to help you.”
I get ready to say something else, but I can see the review board members approaching the stage out of the corner of my vision. I can’t deal with all of this at once. I need a minute to breathe.
I scramble to duck and hide behind the pulled curtain and in my confusion and chaos, I nearly
