She laughed, but it sounded broken. “They showed my parents the picture that was taken of Blaine and me at the party and they said that if this went to court, no one would believe the girl in the ‘slutty costume sitting in his lap.’ And my parents, they didn’t want to deal with the scandal. They’d rather it all go away, so they agreed.”

“Holy shit,” I whispered hoarsely.

“It happened so fast. I couldn’t believe what my parents were telling me to do. They hadn’t really talked to me about it before, but they . . . they had been so worried about what everyone would think if the whole thing went public—the pictures and the fact that I had been drinking. I was just so scared and confused and you know, I’m not even sure they believed me.” She tugged her hair back, squeezing her eyes shut. “So I signed the papers.”

Not only did I want to kill the fucker who did this, I wanted to add her parents to the list.

“I agreed to take the money, half of which went into my account so that when I turned eighteen, I had access to it, and I agreed to pull the charges and to not speak about it again.” She lowered her hands as she looked at me. “That makes me a terrible person, doesn’t it?”

“What?” Oh no . . . “You’re not a terrible person, Avery. Jesus Christ, you were fourteen and your parents should’ve told them to fuck off. If anyone is to blame, besides the fucker who did that to you, it’s them. You don’t have any fault in this.”

Relief flashed in her eyes, but as she dropped into the recliner, I knew there was more. Fuck. There was more. “Within days, everyone at school turned on me. Apparently, there was nothing in the agreement about Blaine keeping his mouth shut. He told people that I had lied. That I had done all those things with him willingly and then falsely accused him. Everyone believed him. Why wouldn’t they? I dropped the charges. I wouldn’t talk about it. School was . . . it was terrible after that. I lost all my friends.”

Things started making sense. “This is why you stopped dancing?”

“Yes. I couldn’t stand people looking at me and whispering about what they’d heard or talking openly about it in front of my face. And I did this . . .” She raised her left arm. “My mom was so pissed.”

I couldn’t believe what she had just said. “She was mad because you . . .” I shook my head. “No wonder you don’t go home to see them.”

“It’s why I picked here, you know. It was far enough to just get away from all of it. I thought that was all I needed to do—to distance myself.”

“That message I saw? It was someone who knew about what happened?