26

Oh God. Jonathan. Jonathan’s going to know who I am. If he doesn’t already know, he will soon. I swallow down the sharp tang of bile.

“Once Dad’s back from his honeymoon, I’ll start putting in the good word about you, setting things up slowly.” My voice is paper-thin to my own ears, the lie tasting like ash on my tongue.

“No games, Catherine!” The thunderous snarl on the other end makes me flinch. “You make this happen now, or so help me God, I’ll start uploading those other little homemade video clips I have for the world to see.”

A strangled sound catches in my throat as icy dread clenches my heart. “You bastard,” I choke out, scalding tears pricking the corners of my eyes. “We were just kids then, you sick, depraved—”

“Can it, Princess!” Chris’s acidic growl cuts me off mercilessly. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the gory details, I just want what’s owed to me. And unless you plan on groveling at my feet and begging forgiveness...” A pause, then a dark chuckle laced with pure menace. “Well, you’ll get yours soon enough.”

Another horrifying thought lashes through me. I haven’t seen it until now, but the truth stands out like a giant red flag. “You don’t want me back…”

“You can wrap those sweet lips around my cock any day,” he says.

I slam my fingers over my mouth. “No, Chris. No.”

“You’ll pay me either way. You can pay with money or your cunt. The choice is yours,” he snarls.

Choice? He thinks that’s a choice?

My panicked brain works overtime trying to find a solution, a lifeline before his threats escalate. “I gave you what I had.”

“You can always ask your boyfriend for more. If you can’t find a way, he certainly did,” Chris says.

My blood ices. I force stiff words from my mouth. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

Unless...my spiraling thoughts catch on a possibility so preposterous, so utterly depraved that I immediately recoil in horror. No, I can’t...he wouldn’t...there’s no way Chris could know but— fragments link up. There’s a reason Chris hasn’t hounded me for a few days. So unlike him. When he wants money, he usually doesn’t let up until he gets it.

“Oh, I can hear those pretty little gears turning in that head of yours, Princess.” The vile sneer in Chris’s tone makes me physically recoil. “How about you ask that handsome professor of yours to cover the costs, hmm? I’m sure he’d be happy to dig into his pockets if anyone should find out about your dirty little secret...Not that he hasn’t helped me before.”

A tremulous breath shudders out of me as the phone line goes chillingly silent. Because Chris’s words have taken on a whole new, infinitely more sinister meaning that I’m utterly powerless against.

My cell pings again. I open a photo to see Jonathan and me in his lecture room. The photo has been taken through a crack in the door. We’re blurred but there’s no mistaking what we’re doing. I’m bent over the podium, my head back, mouth open as Jonathan fills me from behind. His eyes are closed, ecstasy tensing his face as his fingers grip my hips.

Is that what we look like?

“You should really be more careful who you fuck, Cathy.”

“What do you mean ‘not like he hasn’t helped me before’,” I snap, ignoring his jab.

Chris chuckles. “I see I’ve intruded in your personal life. You two should work on your communication skills. I want another five grand in my account by tonight. If I don’t get it, I’ll release another photo. And another. And another…until it’s paid. Good to have you back on campus, Cathy.”

Cathy

Jonathan knows about me?

Jonathan paid Chris?

How did he know?

When did this happen?

How much does he know?

Jonathan never said a word. Not one syllable. Thoughts split my head but no answers magically appear through the thick, dark dread.

I thought Chris had given up when I refused to pay him last time, but I should have known better. I’m delusional. Head-in-the-sand delusional. Chris doesn’t give up.

He’ll never give up.

God, oh God, oh God.

Jonathan knows, he knows, he knows.

My cold fingers strangle my cell as I hold it to my ear. My surroundings slowly filter back around me. I catch someone looking at me and drop my head, covering my face with my hair. I end the call and stare at my cell.

His distance makes sense now. Horrible, drastic sense. Why would he want to be around someone like me?

My cell rings and Jonathan’s name flashes on the screen. I said I would call him when I landed and I haven’t.

I won’t.

I can’t.

I have to.

Things will never be the same between us again, no matter how desperately I might wish otherwise.

The cases begin to cycle on the conveyor belt. I stand back and let the crowd take their cases and depart. I stand until my one case circles around. People from the next flight begin to filter in to wait for their cases before I take mine, blindly walk outside and hail a cab. Dread and heartache war within me as I give the driver my address and settle into the back seat. I want nothing more than to rewind time and somehow prevent this entire catastrophic event from cracking our world.

But I can’t do the impossible.

I wonder if Jonathan paid Chris before our weekend. Black oil coats my stomach and I gag.

“You all right, miss?” The driver shoots me a concerned glance via the rearview mirror.

I plaster a smile on my face. “Never better.”

The campus sprawls ahead, a looming monolith of brick and concrete that was once my safe haven, my sheltered academic cocoon. Now it feels more like a minefield waiting to detonate. We pull up in front of my building. I pay the driver and slide from the back seat.

Need to see him.

I don’t wait to drop my case inside. Instead I grip the handle, knuckles white, use the weight to center me and force one foot in front of the other across campus. Students stop and stare. I see them look at me, even with my head down and hair covering my face.

Word gets around quickly on campus. And why wouldn’t it? I’m big, juicy gossip. The center of the very thing I’ve avoided for so long.

The cacophony of whispers and furtive glances prickle over my skin. Each murmured utterance, each poorly-veiled stare in my direction, slices through me anew—a stark reminder that my private world has been blown irreparably wide open.

I keep my expression calm. But deep down, anguish claws at my throat as flashes of that searing image—Jonathan’s euphoric expression as he takes me from behind—sear through my mind. I can’t unsee it, can’t unhear Chris’s words. My worst nightmare and reality combine.

Chris knows about us.

Jonathan paid Chris.

Everyone knows who I am.

A ragged breath shudders out as I finally reach the door to Jonathan’s office. I wait for students to pass behind me before I draw in a fortifying breath and muster the strength to rap my knuckles against his office door. The door swings open and Jonathan is there right in front of me.

I want to launch into his arms. Want to cry. Want to rage. Want to love.

For a suspended moment, he just...stares, those ocean blue eyes drinking me in with surprise, bewilderment, happiness before morphing into shuttered caution as realization dawns. I thought I’d masked my expression, but he’s seen something there. Something I can’t hide. Dread plunges into the pit of my stomach.

“Professor Black?” My voice cracks on the formal address, and I hate how it makes me feel...diminished somehow, like the easy intimacy we’d built has already crumbled to ash. “I was hoping I could speak with you about our dissertation now that I’m back?”

I make sure to raise my voice enough that the words carry down the corridor. The words are pointed, deliberately audible for anyone who might hear and assume this is simply a casual visit between student and teacher. But we both know the truth.

Nothing will ever truly be casual between us again.

Jonathan’s throat works convulsively before he gives me the smallest of nods, expression still carefully impassive as he steps back to let me enter the office. But I don’t miss the reflexive way his gaze darts up and down the corridor first in both directions, checking for any potential observers. “Of course, Miss Evans. I have a few minutes.”

The sight is a vice around my heart, constricting until I can scarcely breathe. I know he’s simply reverting to our old patterns of discretion and caution, the ingrained habits drilled into us by necessity. This time, the gesture feels less pragmatic, more...shame-laden somehow. Like he’s putting up those boundaries to protect whatever tattered shreds of propriety he can salvage between us.

My vision blurs with a film of scalding moisture. Because this visceral, devastating ache lancing through me is a death knell—the beginning of our inevitable, irrevocable end.

Chris’s reach has corroded more of my life.

The tears slip free as Jonathan closes the door firmly behind me, sealing us into the sanctuary that’s about to shatter into a million jagged pieces.

“Cathy...” His low rasp wraps around the syllables of my name like a caress, sending traitorous little tendrils of wanting shivering through me despite everything. Jonathan’s gaze bores into me with scorching intensity. That familiar heat I used to crave now feels like being pinned beneath a searing spotlight.

“You paid him.” The accusation slips out in a tremulous rasp before I can stop it. “Chris. You paid him off.”

Jonathan doesn’t flinch or try to deny the ugly reality. He merely gives me a solemn nod, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly. “I did what I had to in order to protect you, Cathy. To protect us.”

Anger and bewilderment war within me in a volatile cyclone. “Protect me? From what, exactly? The guy’s been blackmailing me for years!”

“Years?” He steps toward me, arms reaching for me but stops when I step away. He can’t touch me. “I…didn’t know that.”

I’ve already said too much. Given away more than I wanted to. “You don’t know a lot of things.”

He swallows hard, his gaze flitting over my face. “I did it for you.”

“And you thought paying the degenerate would make him just... give up and go away? That’s incredibly naïve, Jonathan.”

Using his name with no pretense feels like picking at a healing scab—unnecessary and pointed. But I’m hurting and lashing out is currently my only salve, even if deep down I know it’s only delaying the inevitable.

Because Chris will never stop. That hideous truth is one of the few certainties left in this rapidly deteriorating situation. He made that abundantly clear, his threats about those ‘other photos’ lingering like a cancerous shadow over everything we are...everything we were.

My chest constricts hard enough to steal the breath from my lungs. “Tell me you didn’t think throwing a few thousand his way would be the end of it.”

Jonathan releases a harsh exhalation, sounding every bit as pained and cornered as I feel. “Of course I knew it was only a temporary solution. That’s why I warned him in no uncertain terms that it would be the one and only time.”

One stark disbelieving look from me seems to drain all the fight from his broad shoulders, because he knows the truth just as acutely as I do. There is no ‘one and only time’ when it comes to someone like Chris.

“Five thousand dollars though?” The words slip out. “Where did you even get that kind of money?”

Jonathan shifts almost imperceptibly, gaze skittering away from mine like he can’t quite meet my eye anymore. He’s keeping something from me, another gut-punch of a secret just waiting to detonate.

“That’s...not important right now,” he deflects in a tight rasp. “What is important is those photos of you on the internet at the wedding. Your father...your father is Dominic Fowler. Was that...was that Chris’s doing too?”

Bile burns at the back of my throat. He’s seen them. He’s seen the photo of me. But of course he has. It’s hot news. Gossip no one could resist.

“I...”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth about who you really are?” His gruff voice pulls me from my tailspin, laced with an undertone of something that sounds perilously close to reproach. “If you’re Dominic Fowler’s daughter, surely that means you have access to resources, connections to put a stop to someone like Chris, once and for all.”

The statement detonates like a grenade between us, reawakening the smothered embers of resentment and hurt burning in my chest. “Are you kidding me right now?” I practically spit out the words.

Jonathan blinks, clearly taken aback by my venom. But I can’t find it in me to care or moderate my response anymore. Not when every inch of my soul has already been carved open and laid bare.

“You think I’d ever stoop to asking my father for bail-out money to coddle some sleazy no-one’s depravity?” I demand. “Give me a little credit, Jonathan. Or did you think that’s the sort of entitled, spoiled brat you’ve been tangling with this whole time?”

He has the good grace to look sufficiently chastised, even shaking his head slowly as hurt flickers through those soulful eyes. “No, Cathy, I didn’t mean—”

“Because if so, you’ve been deluding yourself into seeing only what you wanted all along.” I barrel onward, needing to unleash this scathing torrent before it consumes me from the inside out. “The sweet, coddled poor little rich girl who’s oblivious to the shady inner-workings of her family’s empire rather than—”

“Cathy.” Jonathan’s voice washes over me, grounding and gentle despite the razor-sharp anguish surely etched into my features right now. “You’re not like that. I know you. I see you. The real you. I would never think any less of you for anything.”