According to one of the other women who had been there that night, Venla had not been informed about the fact that Tucker was married now, and she felt horrible that his wife might have seen those photos.

I turned my phone back off, wishing I’d never read that. I could just imagine who had put the woman up to it. Dear old Grandpa Brighton was probably getting his revenge since I wouldn’t sign his post-nup nonsense. That didn’t change anything at all though, because you could set someone up to seduce another person all day long, but that didn’t make the target fall for the seduction. The fall, that was entirely on Tucker’s shoulders, whether it had been fabricated to set him up or not.

When Luna made it back to me, it must have been obvious that my mood had shifted. She sat quietly, sipping her Mimosa at first. Then she turned to me. “Do you love him?”

“No, I barely know him.”

“Then why are you so hurt by this?”

I don’t know why that question started it, but the damn floodgates opened up and tears didn’t just come pouring out of me. Instead, they were joined by gut-wrenching sobs. Luna moved off her lounger, onto mine, and had her arms wrapped around me as I cried everything out on her shoulder. That’s right, the girl who had spent the past three and a half years hiding every emotion from everyone, lost her shit on a sunny Florida beach for all to see. I would regret that later.

“Oh, Mina, I’m so sorry. Please, tell me what I can do.”

“It’s not him,” I blubbered through my sobs.

“What is it then, and why was he the trigger? Let’s face it, we both know it’s the truth.”

“I’ve never told anyone before,” I admitted. Then I looked up at her, through eyes so glassy from tears that she appeared a blurry blob.

“I promise you that whatever you tell me will go no further,” she swore the words so solemnly that I wanted to believe in them.

“I was a freshman, living in the dorms,” I started, and she stopped me for just long enough to pull the other lounger beside mine so we could sit as close as possible and not be on top of each other.

“Okay, now tell me,” she insisted.

“It was my first time being away from home, even though the university is right there in town, I still got to live away from my family and be my own person, you know?”

Luna nodded at me.

“My best friend went to the same school too, but she didn’t room with me because she was living with her family still, to save money. I roomed with another girl. She was from New York originally. Karly was pledging to be in one of the sororities on campus, but I wanted nothing to do with that scene. I’d grown up around girls who thought they were better than everyone else, so it was just not my thing. Maybe that made me a judgmental ass, I don’t know. When Karly explained to the girls from the house she really wanted to get into, I guess they developed a plan.”