Chapter Thirteen
His heart a cold, clay lump at the bottom of his stomach, Sean hit replay for the third time. The shock wasn’t as great this time as when the image of Kristin—his sweet Kristin—first appeared on the video having sex with Zoe.
Her long, sexy legs were splayed wide, knees bent up by her ears, opening herself to Zoe’s mouth and tongue and fingers. Her voice moaning out instructions that would bring her to pleasure faster. Her face in full-blown rapture when satisfaction gripped her. Her calling out his name in joy.
It was a scenario he had witnessed a dozen times but with one exception: it had been his face in her pussy, his mouth drinking her sweet honey. It had been his tender loving that put the look of perfect bliss on her face and made her call out his name.
His stomach turned as he watched the woman he thought was his pleasure her lover. She rolled over and dove into her roommate’s cunt like she was a woman starved for the taste, her hand reaching for her own insatiable clit. Her ass rose up in the air and she rocked forward and back, the way she did when riding his cock. Zoe screamed out her pleasure, followed by Kristin’s low moans.
There the video stopped. He started to watch it again, but knew there was no need. The images were burned into his retinas, his brain, his heart, like a hot brand that had labeled him a fool.
She had fooled him good and made him think she loved him. That he was the only one for her.
“Oh, fuck me.” He cursed aloud, then louder, then roared it at the top of his lungs, a long, drawn-out moan that bounced off the walls of his room and down the hall.
****
Kristin read Sean’s text again, looking for clues between the letters as to what happened to make him end their relationship.
“Kristin, we’re over” didn’t give her much to go on, not the first time she’d read it and not now. If she could just talk to him, hear his voice, get him to open up, she could clear up whatever misunderstanding must be playing out.
She dialed his number again. Her call went to voice mail after a couple of rings. He was refusing her calls.
“Sean, I don’t know what’s wrong, why you’re mad at me…if you’re mad. Oh, God, I don’t know what you’re feeling, but I—” Her voice broke; she swallowed back tears and tried speaking again. “Please, call me.”
The words of Sean’s jilted lover, the one Randy sent to her, flooded her mind. “He’ll fuck you then dump you…End it now before he breaks your heart.” Never in a million years had she believed he’d do the same to her. But he had. He had fooled her good, made her think he loved her. She never saw it coming. She dropped her phone in her jacket pocket, covered her face with her hands, and cried.
“Kris?”
Kristin felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up into Mason’s worried face.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, and quickly wiped the tears from her face with her fingers. But there were too many, and they kept coming. “No.”
“Aw, babe. C’mere.” He hugged her to his chest and let her cry.
After a moment, she pulled back. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to stop crying.”
He pulled a couple of paper napkins from the fast food bag in his hand. “Here, take these.”
She took them and dabbed her eyes, but the flimsy paper couldn’t tackle that much moisture.
“I’ve never seen you cry, except when your grandpa died—Oh, man, did somebody die?”
She shook her head, but her mind was screaming Me! The second I read Sean’s message. “Sean and I, uh, we broke up. Actually, he broke up with me. I’m not taking it well, obviously.”
He squeezed her arm. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t know.” She gave a hopeless little shrug. “He didn’t tell me why he broke it off. If I understood why, I think I could deal with it better, you know?”
“Yeah, no one knows that better than me.”
“What do you mean? Who dumped you?”
“Well, Zoe.”
“What?”
An awkward little laugh gurgled in his throat. “You knew we broke up, right?”
“Yeah, but she said you broke up with her.”
He shook his head.
“I’m confused.”
It was his turn to shrug. “We went to my room after the movies that night, started, you know, making out like we always did. Afterward, she told me we were through and left. No explanation. Won’t return my calls. Won’t talk to me. She looks right through me now, like I’m not there.”
Kristin put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“That girl is trouble with a capital T—wild, rude, and impossible to control—and that’s exactly what I loved about her. I miss her. But I’m moving on. And you will, too.”
She sighed, her breath shaky. “I don’t think I can.”
“I know it feels that way.” He hugged her then eased back. “Hey, I hate to desert you, but I gotta get to class. Call me later and we’ll grab some food, talk, get drunk, whatever.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
He was a couple of steps away when she called out his name. “Would you take her back, even after what she did?”
He nodded. “In a heartbeat.” He waved to her with his bag of food and headed across campus.
On her way back to her room, she thought about what Mason had told her. Zoe always had a motive for her actions. The question was, why break up with Mason and then lie about it that night? What was she up to? Kristin wondered whether she had succeeded in getting what she wanted from the action. Knowing Zoe, she had…and left behind a trail of dead or wounded souls.
Mason’s comments also made her wonder whether there was a connection between Sean breaking up with her and Zoe’s admission that she had recorded the two of them having sex and that the laptop with the videos was now in the hands of a stranger. Had Sean seen the video? Was that why he wasn’t talking to her?
If he broke up with her simply because she’d been with a woman, then maybe he wasn’t the right man for her after all. No, he’d just come out and ask her about it. She was sure of it. He said he loved her, and when you love someone, you don’t just toss them away.
But something had happened between their night of passion and this morning. But how could she fix it if she didn’t know what it was? If he wouldn’t even talk to her? If she had to track him down and ambush him to get him to talk, that’s what she’d do. She wasn’t going to let go of the love of her life that easily.