Let Me Know (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Marcus

“True or false,” I say to Alejandro as I line up the pool stick with the white ball. “During the nineteen-ninety to ninety-one season, the Chicago Bulls won sixty-five games.” I tap the ball with the stick. It rolls toward the red-striped ball but only nicks it. Alejandro and Matt laugh while Juan releases a stream of Spanish curses.

“False,” Alejandro says, still laughing at the same time Juan says, “You suck,” and then another stream of words slips out that I’m probably glad I don’t understand.

“They won sixty-
one
games,” Alejandro continues, ignoring his friend’s rant. Of the three of us, he’s the only one who understands what Juan is saying.

Outside, the wind howls against the cracked window, reminding us that even though it’s basketball season, it’s too fucking cold to play it unless you have access to indoor basketball courts. And in my old neighborhood, that’s as likely to exist as Santa in a Speedo.

“Hey,” I say to Juan, “some of us were too busy studying in high school to have time to master the game of pool.” That’s complete crap. I’ve always sucked at the game, even after Ryan tried to teach it to me. He was the pool champion. But that didn’t bother me. I was the pool stud. Girls didn’t care how good I was at the game. It was how I handled my own stick that counted, but I’m hardly explaining that to the guys.

Matt surveys the balls, walking around and checking the best possible angle to shoot from. He’s nothing like his two friends. Whereas Alejandro and Juan are loud, athletic and always ribbing each other, Matt is quiet, and sports isn’t his thing.

With the exception of pool.

Matt hits the cue ball and it slams into the red one. The red ball steamrolls into a pocket. Juan groans again, but this time keeps the cursing to himself.

My cell phone rings from my back pocket. I pull it out and check who’s calling. Amber.

“Hey, Kitten, what’s up?” I haven’t seen her in the last two days, and my entire body aches to be with her.

Amber doesn’t say anything. The only sound is her jagged breathing. Panic hammers in my chest at all the possible reasons for this. “Amber? What’s going on?”

She lets out a long slow breath. “Have you...have you ever participated in any sex videos?”

I want to lie but there’s no point. She knows or she wouldn’t be asking. “Yes. Last year,” I say, walking away from the guys. I have a feeling this is a conversation I don’t want them to hear. “But it’s not something I’m into normally. Ryan had just died. I was drunk and thought at the time that it was a great idea. Why? What happened?”

“I’m going to text you a link to a video. You need to see it.”

At the pain in her voice, I scrub my hand over my face. I’ve never seen the video. I just know it exists. I also know the girl I did it with had had no intention of making it go public. At least that’s what she told me. I guess I should have known better, but in all honesty, I had forgotten about it until Amber mentioned it.

“Give me a second,” I say. “I’m at the youth center. Let me ask Dave if I can check it out on his computer. I’ll call you right back.”

“Okay.”

Dave’s office door is closed but I knock anyway. Part of me hopes he’ll say no and that’s the end of it until I get home. But the other part wonders why Amber’s upset. It happened well before I met her. She’s gotta know that.

“Come in,” the former marine says, sounding distracted.

I open the door and enter. Dave’s attention is focused on the computer screen. A jumble of documents is spread across his desk. “What can I do you for?” he asks, not looking up.

“Can I check something on your computer for a second? Amber wants me to look at something on the internet.”

“Sure, knock yourself out. I could use a break.” He stands and lets me take his chair, but it’s obvious he’s not going anywhere. I don’t blame him. It’s
his
computer after all.

I stare at the screen, summoning all my strength. Having Amber and Dave watch me screw a girl doesn’t exactly make it to the highlight of my day.

“You want a coffee or something?” Dave asks after a few seconds.

I nod, and once he leaves the room, enter the URL. The page opens to a still shot that is definitely me, wearing only jeans. The video isn’t new but the download is. It went live five hours ago. I click on Play.

The picture isn’t the best quality, due to the poor lighting, but it’s clear enough to see what’s going on. The girl steps on to the screen and runs her fingers down my chest. Although that night is a vague memory, I do remember a few vivid details about her that cause a shudder to race through me. While I have no complaints when sex gets a little rough, her preferences went way beyond that. I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk. I told her I wasn’t interested and she had been fine with it.

Dave enters the office as the video progresses from me kissing the girl to me tearing her clothes off and her doing the same to me. Neither of us looks concerned at our nakedness. Whereas Amber’s still shy with my seeing her naked and vulnerable, which is a complete turn-on, there’s nothing vulnerable about the woman in the video. Her confidence, even in her drunken state, is obvious.

“Oh, my,” Dave says, which would have been funny if it weren’t for what is happening on the video. My eyes widen as the girl bends over the bed, leaving her ass in the air, and I whip her exposed backside. I didn’t do that. I’m positive. That’s just not me.

But according to the blurry picture of a guy who could be me, that’s exactly what I did.

I bury my face in my hands. The girl’s moans of ecstasy reach inside my chest and clench down hard on my heart, killing all hopes of a future with Amber.

A clicking sound comes from the computer mouse and the moaning ends. I look up to find the video has been closed. But even though I no longer have to look at it, no longer have to see what I did that night, the image is burned in my brain.

“I don’t know what to say,” Dave says. “But from the looks of it, you weren’t expecting any of that.” He pulls up a chair and sits. “You want to talk about it?”

Shame at what I did screams at me, and I bury my face once again in my hands. I can’t bear to look at the disapproving expression that is no doubt on Dave’s face. It’s too much to take in as part of my already screwed-up life.

“I vaguely remember the girl and I vaguely remember us making the video. I was drunk at the time and stupid. But I swear I don’t remember whipping her.”
And God knows what else happened after that.

“When did you make the video? Do you remember?”

“Last summer.” I remove my hands from my face, but I still can’t look at Dave. I stare at the wallpaper of a dramatic lightning storm on the computer screen. “After Ryan died, I was upset and reckless and got drunk. I met her in a bar and went to her apartment. I don’t get why I don’t remember doing that stuff. It’s not my scene. You’d think I’d remember doing that, wouldn’t you?”

“What else do you remember about that night?”

I shrug. “Not too much. It’s not like she was the first girl I’d had sex with. As far as I remember, sex with her wasn’t any different from any other girl I’ve been with. Certainly nothing like in the video.”

“Has Amber seen it?”

I let my head hang, elbows on knees, and nod. “She called me and told me to watch it.” My heart clenches even tighter at what she had to watch, at what this could mean to Paul’s trial. Except none of it is real. Not the whipping at least.

“I don’t know what happened,” I say, “but I swear it wasn’t me doing that stuff.” I look back at the computer screen. “I need to watch it. I need to know what I supposedly did after that.”
Even if I can’t bear to watch it
.

Dave pats my leg and stands. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks.” I reach for the mouse and reload the website as he leaves. I close my eyes. The door clicks shut and I sit unmoving, waiting for the courage to hit Play.

The video is forty minutes. Forty minutes of me doing things to the girl that I’ve never done before, and would never do. I can be adventurous under the covers like any other male, and there are tons of positions Amber and I haven’t tried yet that I have with other girls. But I would never hurt a girl just to get off. Even if she was willing.

The guy does look a lot like me, but the more I watch, the more I’m positive it’s not a repeat of last November with Tammara, when she slipped me a roofie and I didn’t remember her taking photos of her kissing me. This guy isn’t drunk. He’s not stumbling around like I would be for me not to remember any of this.

The girl’s either been videotaping herself having sex with plenty of guys, including one who resembles me when the picture is blurry. Or she hired someone who looks similar to me and staged this video. The setting is the same, or at least the furniture is the same. She took the two footages and spliced them together to make one convincing video.

Now I have to convince Amber of this—as well as the D.A.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Marcus

I return to my apartment two hours later. I haven’t talked to Amber since she called me about the video. I drove to the lake, to where Ryan and I used to escape when we needed a break from life and the hell known as Frank. It was too cold to sit on the beach, so I stayed in my car, staring at nothing, wondering what to do about this new piece of evidence that could be used against Amber. Struggling to remember the girl’s name, and anything else that could help the cops.

After I sat for over an hour, freezing because I was low on gas and didn’t want to keep the engine running, I drove to the police station and explained everything. I’m not sure they believed me. I got the sense they thought I was just trying to save ass with my girlfriend.

But it’s not my ass I’m trying to save. It’s Amber I’m worried about. The media will eat up this new piece of information. I’ve given them the best news story so far. I’ve given the defense a reason to celebrate. I don’t know much about the law, but I do know all the jury has to do is find the psychopath not guilty on all the charges, or find him guilty but sentence him to only a few years in jail—and then he’ll be free to stalk her again. He’ll be free to stalk and kill me, if he so chooses, like he killed Trent. And if there’s the slightest risk of that happening, I know Amber. She’ll disappear from my life to protect me. She’s already done that once before, when she thought the letters Tammara sent her were from the psychopath, and the threats to kill me were real. Except this time she will disappear so the psychopath can’t find her. This time she’ll disappear so I won’t be able to find her. Ever.

I park my car. Chase isn’t home yet. I haven’t told him about the video, but as soon as Amber tells Jordan, my best friend will find out what happened. He’ll know how I screwed up big time, like he’s always suspected would happen one day.

Each step toward the building feels like the world is shaking under my feet, eager to knock me down and keep me there. I need a beer. I need several beers, but that won’t solve fuck all. Being numb won’t solve fuck all. If I knew someone from the computer science department, I’d ask them to analyze the video. At least then I’d know something is being done about it. But who am I kidding? Amber’s mom won’t ignore it. She’ll be on top of it to prove it’s not authentic as soon as she learns I’m not the only guy in the video. I need to call Amber and tell her the truth about that night, or at least the truth as best as I remember it.

Shit, Amber’s barely holding on as it is, and now my past is coming back to destroy her. The video is one more reminder of how she deserves someone better than me.

I enter the building, and the shaking under my feet becomes a full out earthquake, easily measuring seven on the Richter scale. Amber’s mom is standing in the lobby, and based on her scowl, she doesn’t have good news. She’s dressed in a business suit under her designer winter coat. Slung over one shoulder is a briefcase-style leather bag. Her chin-length blond hair is slightly damp from the falling snow.

“I need to talk to you,” she says, her tone as warm as a winter blizzard.

The coldness of her words reaches inside me and turns my blood to ice. Inwardly, I shudder. “If it’s about the video, it’s not what it looks like. I’ve already told the cops that.”

“I would rather not discuss this here.” She nods at the locked entrance door, indicating she would prefer to discuss it in private. I’d prefer that, too.

We ride the elevator to my floor in silence. I can’t be bothered with small talk, and she’s not in the mood for it, either. The tension is so heavy, I’m surprised we haven’t surpassed the elevator’s weight restriction and crashed into the basement.

After what feels like several hours, the door bangs open and I lead Amber’s mom to my apartment. I open the door, and her disgust coats me like mud when she sees where I live. Chase and I aren’t slobs, but our place is a far cry from what she’s used to. Our furniture is worn, scratched and mismatched.

Smoky looks up from his carpeted tree, meows, and goes back to sleep. His tree is the nicest piece of furniture that we own, which is sad when you think about it. Until now, I didn’t care. What we had was functional, even if it isn’t always comfortable. But for Amber’s mom, this is a reminder of where I came from, how I was brought up in the projects, and how she wishes I would crawl back there and leave her daughter alone.

I don’t invite her to sit. I suspect she wouldn’t want to even if I offered.

“I want to you stay away from my daughter, Marcus.”

“The video is a fake.” My tone lacks all hint of life, my insides slowly fracturing at what she’s suggesting. “Parts of it are me, but the S-and-M parts aren’t. I told the cops what happened. They’re looking into it.”

“That might be so, but the damage has already been done. The fact you even made the video suggests your obvious lack of judgment. A lack of judgment that I cannot risk, will not risk, destroying Amber. She’s already been through enough. She doesn’t need you adding to her stress, too.”

“But I love Amber.” I struggle to keep my tone calm, to keep it from revealing what this conversation is doing to me. Though she is partly right. It was due to faulty judgment on my part. I shouldn’t have agreed to the video for any reason, and if I could take it all back, I would. “I’d never do anything to hurt her. I would do anything for her. But you have to realize I never intended for the video to be released. My brother had just been murdered and I was angry and upset. I got drunk and made a mistake.”

She flinches at the part about my brother being murdered, but the movement is small, barely noticeable. “Your reasons for making the video are not relevant. You did, and now it’s hurting Amber.” What she doesn’t say, but we both know is true, is the video is hurting Amber beyond the court case. She was forced to witness me having sex with another woman, even if the video was made before I met Amber. She knew about my man-whore reputation before she started dating me, but watching me in action is probably a million times worse, especially since most of it was a lie and she doesn’t even know it.

“I have connections at the university,” Amber’s mom says. “Connections who won’t be happy at what your video could mean to the school’s reputation. For you, this could mean termination of your scholarship.”

If she were a vampire, she couldn’t have drained blood from my body as fast as she did with those simple words. I remain silent. There’s no point saying anything; she hasn’t finished with where she’s going with this.

She unzips her bag and removes some papers. “If you continue to see Amber, I will ensure that you are removed from the school. But if you cease your relationship with my daughter, I’ll smooth things over with the school, and your scholarship will remain intact. Do I make myself clear?”

Perfectly. I’m being forced to choose between the girl I love and the promise I made my brother. The promise I made to pursue a future he was deprived of because of our circumstances. He gave up everything when he moved away from home, taking me with him to keep me safe. But how can I give up Amber? She means everything to me, too. She’s my reason for living, my reason to keep fighting against what Frank did to me.