Chapter 14
Joycelyn’s POV
When his lips traced down to a spot just below my collerbone, Nathan jerked back as if he’d touched
A live wire.
“What the hell happened to you?” His voice cracked, eyes fixed on my skin.
I smiled with practiced calm, fingertip circling the raised, discolored scar tissue. “This one?”
“That’s where your precious Raven pressed her daddy’s Marlboro against me in the girls locker room after swim practice.”
“And here.” 1 guided his gaze to my right side where jagged lines formed crude letters.
“She said I was Boulder trash who didn’t know my place. So she carved SLUT with her AP Chem compass while her friends held me down. Said it would remind me what happens to scholarship kids who get too ambitious.”
Despite all our nights at his parents‘ lake house, all the hotel rooms after games, thanks to strategic positioning and Nathan’s habit of keeping the lights off, today was the first time he’d actually seen what his ex–girlfriend had inflicted on my body.
His face drained of color as he tried to back away, but I locked my fingers around his wrist.
I pulled his trembling hand down to my left hip, pressing his fingertips against a small, concave patch where the skin texture changed abruptly.
“And this one’s my favorite.” The depression in my flesh felt cool against his fingers. “She got her brother’s Rottweiler to attack me behind the gym. Held my textbooks hostage until I agreed to meet
her there alone.”
Nathan’s perfect quarterback voice disintegrated into something barely audible. “Why would she do something like that?”
“For exactly the same reason you manipulated me all year.”
I studied his face–that flawless bone structure that had earned him modeling offers from three different Denver agencies before he’d even gotten his driver’s license.
12:27
Touchdown PLAY: Cheer Queen vs. Quarterback King
68.4%
Chapter 14
“Think about it, Nathan. Raven’s dad is the principal She has a 4.0 GPA, leadership positions in six different clubs, and her family donates enough to have a wing named after them. She had a hundred legitimate ways to crush some nobody scholarship student. Why would she need to involve you in her revenge fantasy?”
“Because,” I said, watching realization slowly dawn in his eyes, “I’d already destroyed all her other options.”
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