Page 12 of Dirty Damage

No no no no no.

My boudoir photos. All of them. Right there in living color on the company chat.

Me in black lace, arched across a velvet chaise.

Me with a sheet barely covering the important bits.

Me looking over my shoulder with bedroom eyes and hair that took an hour to style in a way that suggests someone very rough and very male just spent a while wrapping it around his fist.

The blood in my veins crystallizes.

My lungs forget how breathing works.

The messages cascade beneath the photos:

Is this really Sutton from daycare???

Holy shit who knew she was hiding all THAT under those baggy sweaters

Does HR know about this???

My eyes are now blessed

I drop the phone like it’s suddenly transformed into a venomous snake. It bounces on my comforter and lands face-up, still displaying the photos I’d explicitly deleted yesterday.

Photos that should never, ever have made it onto my company’s group chat.

Who could have done this?!

My first thought is that Drew has found an unusually creative way to ruin my life. My stomach lurches. Acid climbs my throat. The room tilts and spins as I grab my phone again with trembling fingers, desperately scrolling to see how the hell he posted them.

But when I get to the top, I see it wasn’t him at all.

It was…

ME?!?!

I’m an idiot. I must have fat-fingered the Forward yesterday. Instead of sending the pictures to just my sister…

I sent them to every single person I work with.

All eight hundred employees of Pavlov Industries have now seen me with my legs behind my head.

A violent tremor works through my body. I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t process.

Everyone. From the janitors to the executives. From my fellow teachers to?—

To Oleg.

Oh, God. I’m supposed to meet with him today. After he’s seen… after everyone has seen…

What’s worse than Code Red?

I throw the covers back and sprint to the bathroom, just making it before my stomach empties itself. Sweat breaks out across my scalp as I heave, clinging to the porcelain like it’s the only solid thing left in a world that’s suddenly made of quicksand.

When there’s nothing left in me, I sink to the bathroom floor, pressing my forehead against the cool tile.

All I can think as I kneel there and moan is,Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?

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