Corrupt

“Kai,” I breathed out, my heart racing as I clutched his sweatshirt and stared up into the dark holes of his eyes.

What was he doing? Why wasn’t he helping me?

“Maybe you want him, then,” I heard Damon say.

Kai’s arms came down around me, and I shot my hands up, pushing away from him.

“Stop!” I yelled and raised my hand back up in the air and came down across his mask.

But all I heard was a laugh as he spun me around and shoved me forward, pushing me onto the ground.

I landed on my hands, pain shooting up my arms as I quickly looked up and spotted the cell phone from Will’s pocket—my pocket—laying several feet away. It must’ve dropped out when I landed.

The damp, cold leaves poked my fingers as I dug them into the wet earth, and my knees were chilled from the ground. I quickly flipped over, trying to keep aware of where they were as I slowly crab-walked backward to get to the phone.

Kai and Damon stood a few feet away, watching me, but then I saw Kai launch and charge straight for me. I yelped as I reached for the phone.

But he landed on me, and I grunted, emptying my lungs as his weight knocked the wind out of me.

“You think you can hurt me, you fucking slut?” he whispered hard in my ear.

“Get off me!” I screamed.

He grabbed the back of my hair and called back to Damon. “Hold her arms!”

“No!” I cried, my stomach shaking as I let out my wail. Despair spread throughout my body, and I began shoving and squirming against him. “Get off!”

Kai grabbed my arms and pushed them up over my head, holding my hands to the ground.

Oh, my God. How could he do this?

He reached for my neck with his other hand to hold me still, and tears streamed down the sides of my face.

But then a loud voice pierced the air. “Enough.”

Kai stilled and turned his head.

I continued to squirm under his weight, but I looked down under his arm to see who had stopped him.

Damon stood back with his fists at his side and his eyes narrowed. He charged over, grabbing Kai off me and shoving him away.

And then he dived down, dragging me up by the sweatshirt. “Stop crying,” he ordered. “We weren’t going to hurt you, but now you know that we can.”

He grabbed me by the back of my hair, and I gasped as he brought me in, his warm breath falling across my face. “Michael doesn’t want you, and neither do we. You get that? I want you to stop watching us and stop following us like a pathetic dog begging for someone to notice her.” And then he shoved me away, disdain written all over his face. “Get a fucking life of your own, Rika, and stay the hell away from us. No one wants you.”

I backed away, looking at both him and Kai and wondering why they were doing this.

A pathetic dog. Was that how Michael saw me?

Tears filled my eyes, but before they had the pleasure of seeing me break, I twisted on my heel and took off. Into the forest and toward home as fast as I could away from them.

I let the pain of the last couple of hours go and barely saw the world around me as I cried the entire way home.

Alone, so one could see.

Present

“SHE’S LYING.”

I looked over at Kai, his narrowed eyes glaring at me.

Michael stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a flat expression on his face.

“Kai was with me,” he stated. “He caught up to me at my house almost as soon as I got home, and we got drunk while watching game footage the rest of the night. He wouldn’t have had time to take you out into the middle of the fucking woods.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s not right. He was there!”

“She’s making it up to save her own ass,” Damon chimed in, stepping up next to his friends.

“And I certainly don’t remember that,” Will added. “There was the warehouse and then nothing. I was drunk off my ass.”

Michael looked away, shaking his head almost regretfully. “Just admit it. You leaked the videos, and we know.”

My heart flipped in my chest. “What? Leaked the videos? You think…” I trailed off, scanning the air in front of me.

We trusted you…

Your tantrum cost us three years…

You owe us, and this has been a long time coming…

I closed my eyes, my lungs emptying. All this time they’d thought…

I looked at them again. “You think I posted the videos that got you arrested? That’s why you’re doing this?”

Oh, my God.

Michael leaned in and grabbed me by the back of the hair. I let out a small cry, sweat breaking out on my forehead.

“You had Will’s phone,” he charged.

But I shook my head. “I didn’t! I would never have done that.”

“You had the phone, because you had Will’s sweatshirt,” he argued. “Damon saw you with it. Say it!”

“Yes!” I gritted out. “Yes, I had the phone, but it fell out of my pocket when I was fighting with them!”

“You weren’t fighting with them,” he growled, his voice stinging my ears. “Stop lying!”

“I swear!”

He shoved me away, and I curled my fingers into my palms. None of this made any sense.

“You’re already caught,” Will said. “Michael says Kai was with him. That’s how we know you’re making all of this up. He wasn’t even there.”

I slammed my fists down. “He was! You all were, except Michael! You were passed out in the car, Damon was threatening me, and Kai grabbed me. When I hit him, he just laughed and said, ‘You can’t hurt me. The devil always has my back!’ You were all there, and the phone fell out when I was on the ground!”