by Holly Renee
It didn’t matter what he said about their relationship or lack thereof. I should have never gone there with him. I should have seen every red flag he waved in my face and ran the other way.
But I didn’t.
"He said that you two weren’t really a thing," I said the only thing I could think of. It was the truth, but it sounded so weak coming from my mouth. It sounded so damn shameful and full of complete and total shit.
Both of us knew it too.
"We aren’t what we used to be, but I didn’t think he would do this." She shook her head, and I actually felt sorry for her. "He’s just been so angry since Lucas."
I held my breath when she said his name, but she didn’t go further. She searched my face for whatever she was looking for, and I knew that I was giving it to her. There was no way that I could hide my emotions at that moment. Not after everything that happened with Beck this weekend, not after I kissed him again after what he had done. Now, here I sat facing her, and I knew that I should probably be the one apologizing.
"What happened between him and Lucas?" I asked the question I had been dying to know the answer to. The true answer. Not some bullshit from either one of them.
She opened her mouth, and I stopped her. "The truth, Cami. I can’t handle any more lies."
She nodded her head as she bit down on her bottom lip. "Beck and Lucas used to be close. All of us did."
"And what happened?"
She shook her head, and I felt like I was going to scream if she didn’t tell me. I had enough of all of their games. I wanted the truth. I needed it, and I didn’t care if she didn’t want to tell me.
I didn’t care if the truth hurt her somehow.
"It was Frankie. Beck and I had left a party to head back to my house." She looked up at me, and I knew that she was watching me for a reaction. And I gave it to her. I couldn’t help it. Just hearing about her and Beck together did something to my chest that I didn’t want to think about.
But I couldn’t stop myself from caring about him.
"Beck let Frankie stay because Lucas was there. He had trusted him. He has always been so overprotective with her, and if he hadn’t trusted Lucas with his life, he would have never let her stay."
My stomach tightened with each word she spoke, and I knew that I didn’t want to hear the rest of it. Even if I needed to know the truth, I knew the truth of what happened to Frankie would be much harder to deal with than my own reality.
If what Beck said was true, I didn’t know how I would deal with it.
Right now, I could bury my head in the sand, but once Cami told me what really happened, I would no longer be able to hide from it.
"Frankie used to be obsessed with Lucas. Did you know that?"
I shook my head, but Beck had told me something similar when I found the video. He had said that Frankie had loved Lucas once, but the idea seemed so strange to me.
"She was. She had a crush on him since as long as I could remember. It always seemed harmless, but I think it was becoming more than a crush for her. I think that she really felt something for him, you know?"
She didn’t wait for me to respond. She looked so lost in her own thoughts as if she was so vividly remembering what she told me.
"After Beck left my house that night, he went home, but Frankie wasn’t there. Beck went back to the party to look for her and found her passed out drunk on the couch. She was a mess.
She was so drunk and her clothes and hair were a mess. I wasn’t there, but I heard that Lucas and Beck got into it. Beck was so pissed that Lucas had let her drink that much and just lay there for anyone to bother her. But Lucas didn’t care. They got into it pretty bad, and Lucas told him that he wasn’t Frankie’s protector."
I thought about when I had gone to a party with Lucas myself. I was his stepsister, and he had dropped me like I didn’t even matter. I couldn’t imagine trusting him with someone that I cared about. Not when he was out partying and drinking himself.
Regardless of who Lucas was or wasn’t, he was still just a teenage boy who made stupid decisions. That didn’t mean that he was a monster. Letting Frankie get drunk didn’t mean that he was guilty of all the things that Beck had claimed.
And I didn’t know who I wanted to believe. Part of me hoped that Cami told me Beck was a liar. I wanted her to say that Lucas hadn’t done what he had claimed. I wanted her to tell me that I wasn’t living with a monster in the bedroom next to mine, but a bigger part of me hoped that Beck was telling the truth.
And that was so fucked up and selfish.
But I would never forgive Beck if he had lied about this. I didn’t know that I would ever forgive him anyway, but I knew that this lie would be the nail in his coffin. Somehow understanding his need for revenge after what Lucas had done made what Beck did to me more bearable.
I didn’t forgive him for it, but some small part of me could understand it.
But if he did what he did without reason, I didn’t know what to think.
I would never be able to forgive him even though I knew that I wanted to. I hated Beck. I absolutely hated him for what he had done to me, but I wanted something to happen that would erase what he had done. I was clinging to that hope like it was a lifeline.
Because as badly as he hurt me, I didn’t want to hate him.
I wanted to go back to that moment just before I saw the video on his phone.
I was blissfully unaware at that moment. A complete and total fool, but I was happy.
He had made me happy. Right before he ripped it all away.
"Beck was already so pissed off at him, but it wasn’t until the next morning that we knew the true extent of what Lucas had done." She took a deep breath and I followed her with a steadying one of my own. "A video was sent out to the baseball team, and it was so bad. Frankie was wasted."
She looked up at me, and I couldn’t decipher the look on her face.
"She could barely keep her eyes open, let alone make a decision for herself. You could clearly see it was her in the video, but it was hard to tell who the guy was at first. He was touching her. He was up her shirt when the video started, but it got worse. He went down her shorts, and she didn’t stop him. She couldn’t if she had wanted to. She was so out of her mind."
I closed my eyes and tried to block out the vision in my mind.
"The video never showed Lucas’s face, but it was him. He had on his letterman jacket and you could hear his voice. The guy who recorded it kept saying all these derogatory things to her. They kept talking about how badly she wanted it. How she had been after his dick for so long, and Lucas kept answering. He was touching her and talking about how badly she wanted it even though she was barely awake."
I felt like I was going to be sick.
"Beck was so damn furious. No one could calm him down. The moment he saw the video, he went straight to your house. He wasn’t thinking. If he had just taken a moment to think about the repercussions of his actions, he might of—" She looked truly upset now. "I don’t know. I like to think that maybe he wouldn’t have done what he did."
"What did Beck do?"
"Lucas hasn’t told you any of this? Your father?" The way she said it made me feel like an idiot. I lived in the same home as them, but I knew far less than the people on the outside.
The people I should have been able to trust the most were complete strangers to me, and I hated that she knew it.
"No." I wouldn’t lie and pretend like I knew what had happened. I didn’t want to leave out one single detail because she thought I might know the truth.
"Beck beat the shit out of Lucas." She scanned my face as if she was searching for a reaction, as if she was searching to find out what I truly knew. "When Lucas opened the door, Beck didn’t give him a chance to explain. He took every bit of his fury and pounded it into Lucas’s face. They barely managed to pull Beck off of him. When the police arrived and took one look at what Beck had done, they arrested him on the spot."
I shook my h
ead because nothing she said made any sense. "If Lucas did what you say and Beck retaliated, how are the two of them just walking around school like nothing ever happened? How do they not have consequences for what they did?"
"Boys like Beck and Lucas don’t get in trouble, Josie." She looked back out to the field, and I had no idea what she was thinking or how she felt. Cami was almost as good as Beck when it came to hiding her emotions.
"So what? Nobody cared. They just let Lucas be a fucking monster and not have to own up to it?"
"Oh, they cared." She looked back at me. "Mr. Clermont was even angrier than Beck, but he’s a businessman. He knew that he needed to protect Frankie, but he also had to protect Beck from what he did. Beck was being charged with aggravated assault, Josie."
My gaze snapped up to hers.
"Joseph… your dad, was furious. He was so sure that Lucas wasn’t in that video. He was adamant, but he was also determined that Beck would pay for what he had done to him."
"So, what happened?"
"Mr. Clermont was pressing charges against Lucas. Both of them were completely ready to destroy each other’s sons, and it wasn’t until Mr. Clermont’s lawyer stepped in and told him that he should make a deal that things changed. Unless you knew Lucas, it wasn’t clear that it was him in that video, and he was worried that he wouldn’t be charged."
"How do you know all of this?"
"Who do you think was there for Beck after everything happened? I was there for him, and I was there for Frankie. Frankie was so fucked up. She was miserable and confused, and she didn’t want to be around anyone. Frankie was the one who convinced her dad to make a deal with yours. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think he ever would have."
All I could think about was Frankie, and her gentle smile and kind eyes. I couldn’t imagine anyone hurting her. Let alone someone who was meant to be my family.
The thought of Lucas hurting her, of him doing what she said, made my stomach roll, and the contents of my lunch threatened to spill over. When Beck had said it, I tried to block it out. He was angry, and I tried to chop up his words as simply that. Pure anger and revenge.
I hadn’t truly allowed myself to believe them to be true.
But here was the truth staring me in the face once again.
Lucas had done what he said, and Beck had tried to retaliate against him by becoming the same kind of monster. He was so lost in his own anger that he couldn’t see how fucked up that was.
But I could.
Cami had no reason to lie to me. She had nothing to gain from me finally knowing the truth.
"Beck and I have always been close, but after everything that happened, the two of us grew in a way that was different. Frankie wouldn’t talk to anyone besides me, and Beck relied on me to help bring her back to who she was before your brother."
Her words made the hair on my arms stand and my back straighten. While she was telling me the truth, she was also throwing that truth straight in my face. She wanted me to know exactly what role she had played in Beck’s life and the role that me and my family had played.
I shook my hand and lifted my backpack onto my back. I needed to leave. I needed to get away from her before I said something I knew I would regret. The things she had told me made me feel so angry and confused and hurt, and I didn’t need to add any of the feelings I did or didn’t have about Beck to the mix.
I couldn’t handle it all.
"I need to get to class." I stood, but Cami wasn’t finished.
"You should know that I didn’t think he would go this far." She looked away from me, and it looked like she actually had enough decency to be ashamed of herself.
"How far exactly did you think he’d go?" I tightened my hands around the straps of my backpack and made my way down the bleachers until we were eye level. I wanted to see her face when she told me the truth about what Beck had done to me.
"I knew that he wanted his revenge. Beck hasn’t been the same since that day. He’s been so damn angry, and even though the thought of him getting close to you killed me, I knew that he needed this. I thought he was just going to make you fall for him then make you look like a fool. I didn’t know—I didn’t think—"
"So, you were okay with him using me, just not to the point that it also made you look bad."
She bristled, and I knew that I had hit my mark with her. Cami cared what people thought of her. I feared she cared about that more than she cared about anything else.
"I don’t care how it makes me look." She stood. "I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I let him take it this far. I should have stepped in. I should have stopped him before you got so hurt."
I hated Cami. When I had first met her, I was so envious of how she looked and acted and how everyone looked at her, but now I wasn’t envious of one single part of her. I didn’t covet the lies she told or the secrets she kept to keep her perfect little sham of a life going.
I didn’t want any part of it.
"I don’t get it." I walked past her with my pulse racing like a beating drum.
"Get what?"
"This whole thing." I turned back to her and waved my hand in her direction. She still looked so beautiful, so well put together, even though she might as well have been falling apart. "Why do you think this is okay? Your relationship with Beck. The lies the two of you tell. Your affair with a married man."
Her eyes sparked with anger, or maybe even fear, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to tiptoe around her when she hadn’t given a shit about me at all. She had just admitted to knowing what Beck was going to do to me. She knew, and she hadn’t cared.
"That’s just another one of his lies." Her gaze shifted away from me as she spoke, and I knew that she was full of shit. She just didn’t want the girl who had nothing left to lose to know her dirty little secrets.
Her secrets were in danger in my hands.
We both knew that to be true.
"We both know it isn’t." I shook my head and took a step back from her. I was tired of playing games with her. With all of these damn people who I shouldn’t have cared anything about.
I was thankful that she told me the truth about what happened between Beck and Lucas. About Frankie.
And even though I wished it wasn’t, I knew that what she said was true. Lucas was responsible for the terrors that she claimed, and deep down inside of me, I had known that to be true since Beck had told me.
And I wanted to kill him.
I had always hated my last name simply because I hated my father. It was a wound that festered and festered with every single moment that he wasn’t the father I needed him to be, but now it was different.
I was really and truly ashamed to be a Vos at that moment.
I had never been more ashamed of anything in my life.
My father was an ass and a terrible dad, but even I didn’t think he was capable of this. I hadn’t thought he was capable of letting Lucas get away with something so terrible.
"So, what? Beck hurt you, so now you’re going to use what you know against me?" She was so smug as she said it even though I knew that idea scared her, and every part of me wanted to tell her yes. I wanted to throw it in her face that Beck had betrayed her too. Even if it wasn’t in the same way he had betrayed me. Even if it didn’t even register on the same scale.
She had trusted him, and he had taken that trust and smashed it.
And I wanted her to taste that betrayal over and over again like I did every day. I wanted her to see it when she looked at him. I wanted her to feel it whenever she and Beck did whatever fucked-up things the two of them called a relationship.
But I wasn’t like her.
I was nothing like these fucking people, and I wouldn’t allow them to make me into the horrible people they were.
"I won’t." I shook my head. "I’m not you. I’m not Beck. I don’t give a shit who you’re fucking, Cami. Just stay the hell away from me."
I turned my back to her, and I headed straight in the directi
on of the locker room. I knew that Lucas would more than likely be there, and I couldn’t go another moment without talking to him. I had to look him in the eye and find out the truth from his lips.
I needed to hear him say it. I needed him to stop lying to me for one damn second.
Because that was all he and my dad had done since I had been here. It was no wonder his mother was nowhere to be seen. I would be ashamed to show my face too if I were her.
If I knew what my horrible son had done, and still looked people in the eye and pretended that he was something he wasn’t.
He had already taken my father’s last name when my father and his mother married. He wanted to erase everything he could from his former life, from whoever he was before he became a Vos, and now I truly wondered why.
I thought that he had wanted it simply because of the power it evoked.
My last name was short and simple and so damn powerful in a town like this.
And Lucas had reaped the benefits of it. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a Vos by blood. He was much more my father’s son than I had ever been his daughter.
A decision my father had made on his own.
A decision he would have to live with for the rest of his life.
"For what it’s worth." I hesitated as she spoke from behind me. "I am sorry for what he did to you. I wish I could go back and stop him."
"But you can’t." I swallowed all of the other things I wanted to say to her. I swallowed down the urge to tell her to go straight to hell and take her fake-ass apology with her.
I didn’t need or want an apology from her. It would do nothing to change what happened. I wouldn’t forgive her for the role she played, and if I was being honest, some part of me hated her for what happened far worse than I hated Beck.
With him, I at least had some small insignificant understanding for why he needed to get revenge. It didn’t mean that I would forgive him. I knew that I wouldn’t. But I could still understand it.
Even if he did go about it in the most fucked up way possible. I knew that what he did to me didn’t even compare to what Lucas had done, but for someone who was so angry over those acts, he sure did come close to replicating them.
