“There were two girls in the video, James.” I rubbed the back of my neck.

Hearing the words from me might have been worse than watching the video herself. When Dallas said she knew, I thought she’d seen it already.

Then again, if there was a video of her, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach watching it.

“Okay.” Bailey drew in a shaky breath. “Okay…okay. Can you, um, provide a little context?” She quickly added, “I don’t want to know everything. Please don’t give me your usual blunt honesty. Can you give me a high-level idea of what happened?”

I let out a long breath. “The video doesn’t paint me in the best light. I was fucked up out of my tree, like every year on the anniversary of my dad’s death. This girl Nikki and I were fooling around and smoking a joint. And Kristen was there too.”

Her brow crinkled. “Nikki? Like Kevin Richmond’s girlfriend?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know they were together then.”

Bailey nodded, her expression neutral and her demeanor far more understanding than I deserved. She watched me silently, so I pushed through the discomfort and forced the words out.

“Then Kristen pulled out her phone and started recording without my permission. I got mad and told her to stop. She said she was just messing around and told me she would erase it. Then she pretended to, but I was too out of it to realize she didn’t.” What a fucking idiot. How could I not have known?

“So you were violated.” Bailey’s voice was skate-edge sharp.

“I mean…I guess.”

“You were, Chase. Are you hesitant to admit that because you’re a guy or because there were three people involved? Do you think you deserved it?” Her gold-flecked eyes searched mine. “You still had the right to privacy.”

“That’s what I thought. I guess Kristen had other ideas.”

“That crazy bitch,” she said under her breath. “When did you find out?”

“After our last game. Then I met with Dallas’s dad to talk through legal issues. My plan was to bury it and find the courage to tell you once it was taken care of.” I swallowed, dread surging.

“But…” she prompted me.

I swallowed hard. This was going to be like dropping a bomb on her head all over again.

According to the texts Vincent sent while I waited for Bailey, it didn’t look like Luke had dragged her into things the way he’d threatened to. So far, he’d sent the clip to people she knew simply to make me look bad—and, presumably, to put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. But that didn’t make telling her about how her world nearly got destroyed because of me any easier.