Miss Mable: Do you need me to bring dinner?

Me: Quinn ordered pizza.

Shit. I should not have brought up Quinn.

I see her typing, then deleting, then typing again.

Miss Mable: …your Quinn?

My entire body freezes.

Me: Yeah.

Miss Mable: The estranged one your father forbade you from ever speaking to again, that Quinn?

Me: Correct.

Miss Mable: Good for you.

I almost drop my phone. Is she serious?

Miss Mable: Is there a reason you guys made up?

Me: Several actually, the main one being that… the bitch is back, at our school, as a teaching aid.

Miss Mable: I’m calling the principal right now.

Me: No, don’t. She has too much on us, and now that Dad’s gone, I don’t even know how to begin legal recourse, we paid her off. We have no proof of that, and even if we did, I can’t go into his office, not yet. Just don’t poke the bear. We graduate in less than a month. It’s going to be fine.

It has to be, right? I look up at the giant house. Dad would roll in his grave if he knew the past was being dug up. I wonder what he would do? Pay her off again? Is that what she wants or expects? Or does she somehow want to try to sink her teeth into me so she’s taken care of the rest of her life?

“Look, Ambrose, you’re hot, but you know the real reason I dated you was so I wouldn’t have to go to college; besides’, Quinn’s rich too and just as good-looking, plus his family doesn’t know about our little… moment. It’s better this way, I’m picking him, and he doesn’t want to talk to you ever again.”

“You’re a bitch!” I roar.

“Hey…” Quinn steps between us while we’re arguing in the hallway. “Keep it down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I growl at him.

And suddenly, we’re chest to chest, his eyes are wild. What type of shit does she have on him that he’s suddenly fighting me after everything that went down?

And now they’re together.

Tessa gleams and grabs his arm. “Come on, baby, he’s not worth it.”

“I know.” Quinn sneers. “I know that now.”

“The hell?” I say under my breath, just as my phone goes off in my hand with a snap from Tessa.

It’s a picture of Quinn from a few years ago, with another guy leaning in toward him with a smile on his face. The caption reads, “Not sure what’s going on here, but what sort of friend is Ambrose that he’d out his boy like this?”

“Bullshit!” I scream. “I never sent this photo!”

People around me look afraid I’m going to yell again. Thankfully Tessa had already destroyed her reputation, and since mine was pristine, nobody really believed her, nobody but the one I needed to believe me.

Whatever was once there broke that day, she broke him using me every time, and I had no idea until she left school.