Page 14 of The Enemy of My Enemy Is… My Fake Boyfriend?

I needed some time. I needed some kind of strategy. But most importantly, I needed to wallow.

Never in my life had a guy cheated on me, and it totally messed with both my heartandmy head. Chase had been the opposite of everything I'd thought he was, making me question my judgment and taste in not only men butallpeople.

And even though I hated him now with my whole soul, the terrible things he'd said, his parting words, rang around in my mind like a death knell.

WasI shallow? Was I dumb?

The fact that we'd been together for two years and that he'd known me better than anyone else in the world and still thought all of that about me? It killed me inside. Especially because he'd put a voice to my worst fears.

It hurt more than the cheating. And that hurt like hell. Like hell burning. Like hell burning into a white-hot ember. Like...

Oh, crap. I was trying to be smart and come up with something poetic and cultured, but it was no use. Ididsuck.

There was a sudden knock on the door, making me jump from my well-worn spot on the couch. I hadn't ordered anything, wasn't expecting a soul.

"Open up, Aria-saurus Rex."

Relief flooded through me at the sound of my big sister Annalise's voice, not to mention her favorite childhood nickname for me. I knew she'd never leave, so I walked to the door and opened it up to findbothof my sisters standing there, frowning at me, concern etched into their features.

"You told her, didn't you?" I said, glaring at Annalise.

"Yep. I sure did. And I'm not going to apologize for it."

Resigned to my fate, I turned around and headed right back to the couch, flopping down and pulling the blanket up to cover me.

They both followed me, sitting down on the chairs, their gazes taking in the disgusting mess of half-filled glasses and food containers on my coffee table, the empty pizza cartons on the floor, the scattered dirty tissues everywhere that I couldn't be bothered to pick up.

There might have even been a few tiny fruit flies buzzing around. Once those things got going, it was nearly impossible to get rid of them.

I saw them exchange a glance, a worried glance.

"So I'm guessing you didn't really have the flu, did you?" Annalise started, her tone somewhat soft like she was trying her best to be gentle with me.

Rearranging the blanket over my legs, I stalled for a beat. "I've definitelyfeltsick."

"Oh, you poor thing," Astrid said. "I feel horrible that... that I always pushed Chase and said such nice things about him, and he turned out to be so awful."

I shot my little sister a look. "Youdidn't do anything. You shouldn't feel bad about that."

"I still can't believe he cheated on you," she said, wringing her hands together in her lap.

Of the three of us, Astrid was the most sensitive, and our whole family had always protected her. Even as little kids, Annalise and I banded around her and did our best to keep the bullies away. Sadly, we didn't always succeed, especially because some of her classmates would go out of their way to be cruel about her weight.

"I can't either. I never in a million years thought he'd do something like that."

"The next time I see him..." Annalise said. "I swear to God he better hope there isn't any cutlery around because I will hold that bastard down and carve his eye out with a dull, rusty spoon."

That made me smile, the image of my teeny, scrappy sister tackling Chase. The corners of my mouth didn't know what to do with a smile, the muscles out of practice, and it soon faded, along with the conversation.

I thought about telling them everything that had happened afterwards, all the terrible things Chase had said to me, but something held me back... namely pride. I hated, absolutely hated, thinking about all those awful, mean, terrible words. AndI hated even more how much they still stung a week later, ringing around in my shallow head on repeat like a broken record.

Annalise had clearly told Astrid everything she knew, all the sordid details of how I'd seen Chase screwing his assistant, so at least I didn't have to deal with that again, saying it all out loud. At some point, though, I'd have to tell my parents. And I dreaded it, that constant sick feeling in my stomach spreading whenever I even contemplated it.

The silence stretched out, weird and foreign for the three Stratton sisters who usually fought for a word in edgewise, and I looked up from my gloomy thoughts to see the two of them eyeing each other like they were trying to have a very important wordless conversation.

"What? What's going on?" That sick feeling now reached all the way down to my toes. There wassomething, definitely something horrible happening that I didn't know about. "What? What is it?"

They exchanged a glance again, Annalise taking a big breath. "So I take it you haven't been keeping up with the news or social media?"

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