I nodded slowly as I sat on the recliner. “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.”

Cam ran a hand over his jaw. “This is why you stopped dancing?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “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...” I raised my left arm. “My mom was so pissed.”

He stared at me, as if he couldn’t comprehend the last thing I had said. “She was mad because you…” Trailing off, he shook his 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?

I nodded again. “Whoever came up with the saying you can’t escape your past really knew what they were talking about.”

The muscle popped faster in Cam’s jaw. “What else has been going on, Avery? You said this Blaine,” he spat the name out, “was in jail? But who’s been messaging you?”

Leaning forward, I pressed my forehead into my open hands. My hair slid forward, shielding my face. “I’ve been getting these messages since August. I just thought it was some asshole and ignored it.  And my cousin has been trying to reach me, but I ignored him too because… well, for obvious reasons. I finally talked to my cousin over winter break, the night before I came over to your apartment.”

“The night of the fight?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was trying to get in touch with me to tell me that Blaine had been arrested for doing the same thing to another girl at the start of summer. He actually apologized. That meant a lot to me, but… I didn’t know that this girl had been the one whose been contacting me this entire time.” Taking a deep breath, I told him how it all came about with Molly.

When I was done, Cam was shaking his head. “What happened to her is fucking terrible and I’m glad that bastard’s ass is going to jail. Better yet, he should be fucking castrated, but what happened to her isn’t your fault, sweetheart. You didn’t make him do that to you or her.”

“But by me not telling anyone allowed him to do it again.”