Page 134 of The Forever Play

“You sick fucks!” I shouted, launching myself at Williams like a feral dog.

I hadn’t even planned on coming upstairs, but I’d had way too much to drink and needed to piss. The downstairs bathroom was a cloudy weed den, and I could hearpeople screwing in the tub. So I came upstairs and passed the doorway, glancing through the crack and jolting to a stop. When I saw what was going down, I sobered up in an instant.

My knuckles caught Williams off guard, and he stumbled back.

Hodgkins tried to grab me, but I fought him off with a snarl, pouncing back on Williams, who was the biggest culprit in my eyes.

Who the fuck treats his girlfriend that way?

My insides raged as I managed to pin Williams down. He was the bigger man, but I was running on pure fury, and my fist became a powerful piston, driving into his face one blow after another.

Hodgkins eventually ripped me off and held me down while Boyle kicked the shit out of my thighs and stomach. Williams was out of it, lying prone on the floor while his loyal teammates hammered me until the police showed up.

The second the cops crowded into the room, Boyle started yelling that I was trying to rape Williams’s girlfriend.

“He roofied her!” Boyle shouted. “That asshole was raping her! Look!” He’d pointed at the unconscious girl, still fully exposed. “When her boyfriend tried to stop him, he went feral and knocked him out!”

Williams was just coming to, groaning in agony as I was rolled onto my stomach, my hands roughly cuffed behind me.

“You’re under arrest for assault and battery. You have the right to remain silent…” The rest of my rights faded into a hot fuzz as my face was smooshed against the carpet and Boyle kept spouting off heinous lies about what had gone down.

As I walk into Football Frat and climb the stairs, I realize that I will never get over this.

I may not have touched Williams’s girlfriend, but how many other girls had I touched my freshman year? Had all of them been willing? I was so fucking out of it at some of those parties, how would I really know?

I sat in that jail cell and hated myself with every fiber of my being.

I yearned for Sienna but knew I didn’t deserve her. I still didn’t know why she’d ghosted me at that point, but I knew as I rested my head back against that concrete wall that I couldn’t stay at Kelsey U. My path to self-destruction was about to drop me off a fucking cliff.

If I was accused of the lies they said about me, I was toast.

It was my word against theirs.

Pulling out my phone, I slump onto the end of my bed, my fingers shaking as I call Monica.

She was the one who paid my bail. She was my legal counsel.

She saved my ass.

“Hey, bro. Heard it was a tough game tonight. You doing okay?”

“She knows,” I rasp. “She knows the truth now.”

There’s a horrible pause and I sniff, waiting it out as my eyes burn. Resting my head in my hands, I fight the urge to start fucking weeping.

“How’d she take it?” Monica’s tone is soft and calm, the way it always is.

I usually find it soothing, but not tonight.

Shaking my head, my voice breaks when I say, “She looked at me like I was the scum of the earth and then took off.”

“What?” Monica’s voice gets sharp. “Did you tell her everything? What parts does she know?”

“It doesn’t matter, Mon.” My voice sounds old and rusty. “It’s over.”

“No, no, no,” she snaps. “Tell me exactly what you said to her.”

“I’ve lost her again.”

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