My eyes widened. Holy shit, the voice belonged to a girl. The person who was calling me and most likely emailing me was a girl.

A girl.

Who knows what I expected, but I sure as hell didn’t expect a girl.

I could only say one word. “Why?”

“Why?” The girl coughed out a dry laugh. “You have no idea who you’re talking to, do you? You didn’t even read a single email I sent you? Not one?”

She was questioning me? “Well, when I saw the content in a couple of them, I decided to not torture myself.”

“I’ve been emailing you since June, trying to talk to you. There was nothing wrong with the first couple of emails I sent you. If you just read one of them, you would’ve seen that. Then again, why should I even believe that you didn’t read them since you have such an infamous background of telling the truth.”

Plopping down, I frowned. “Who are you?”

“God, this is fucking unbelievable. My name is Molly Simmons.”

My eyes widened. “Molly?”

“You sound like you recognize my name. I guess you did read the emails.”

“No—my cousin told me about you.” I was on my feet again, pacing. “I didn’t read your emails. I’m not lying about that.”

“Well, that would be the first time you told the truth if that’s the case,” she said, and I heard a door slam.

I didn’t know what to say. Shell-shocked—I was absolutely dumbfounded. “I don’t know… God, I’m so sorry for what you—”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” she cut in, her voice razor sharp. “I’m sorry means absolutely fucking nothing to me.”

My mouth hung open as I shook my head, which was stupid, because it wasn’t like she could see any of that.

“You’re a fucking lying whore. Because of you—”

“Hey! Seriously. You’re calling me a whore? You have to see how messed up that is.” My hand tightened around the phone. “Honestly, every single disgusting message you have sent me is messed up. And I don’t even understand why you’d do this.”

“Why?” Her voice turned shrill. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes!”

There was an audible breath. “Tell me on thing. What was true? What you told the police or what Blaine told every one?”

I sucked in a breath.

“Which is it, Avery? Because if it was true, why did you drop the charges knowing what he was capable of? Because you had to know that there was something wrong with him and that he’d do it again.”

My shoulders caved in and I whispered, “You don’t understand.”