Page 24 of Wicked Surrender

“Then she'd better buckle up and be ready for more,” I said.

All week, I’d been tormenting her in person. Posting rumors about her online was a good pastime too. When my buddies joined in, though, that was when I knew she’d have to cave sooner or later.

I wanted to see her fucking cry.

Maybe that was the ultimate test. That would be the reward I worked toward. Even if she didn’t tell Dean Chen how shitty I was treating her, I’d know that I harmed one of his loved ones, just like he’d ruined one of my loved ones.

Tit for tat.

Eye for an eye.

If I wanted to exact precise revenge like that, an eye for an eye, I’d need to work harder to ruin Laura’s life, and that would require more than what I was doing with my friends. They’d been a huge help in smearing her name.

Dennis headed up the lies online, calling her a slut and an easy lay.

Ever since she caved to say the wordssexandfuck, I couldn’t tell whether she was a virgin or not. whether she was a prude or not. She stuck strictly to tutoring every session with so much focus that I couldn’t tell what else she was like behind the studious academic angle. Regardless of whether someone had ever fucked her before, or if she had an iota of sensuality in her, everything that got shared about her was the typical crap that would tear any woman down. Relentless cyberbullying would make anyone upset.

Kevin and Rory helped too, always on my side. Every new thing they spread as a rumor was worse than the one before. But still, I wasn’t getting any backlash for it.

Doesn’t Chen know?

Later, the next day as we walked on campus, Dennis gave me another idea that I hadn’t considered about my new target.

“Maybe she’s not saying anything or telling her dad because she wants it all to die down. You know, if she fights back, it’ll make it worse?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t in any mood to quit. It still pissed me off that she seemed to be waiting for me to quit the tutoring sessions. I showed up. And I would continue to show up, even if for no other reason than to piss her off. Her immediate tendency to guess I’d quit felt too much like being pushed aside and dismissed. Just like my parents always did.

“I heard her boyfriend is getting annoyed about it, though,” Kevin said.

“Wait.” I stopped short, looking at him. Then I couldn’t help but bark a single laugh. “Herboyfriend?”

They all nodded, smiling and amused at my disbelief.

“She has a boyfriend?” I asked.

I hadn’t dug too deep to learn much about her, coming on too strong from the beginning to attack and slander without any care for how correct I was.

“Yeah.” Kevin nodded. “Some pre-med about to graduate.”

“Laura—Second-Best Chen—actually has a boyfriend?” I couldn’t believe it.

She’d never given any indication that she wasn’t alone and single.

The more I tried to let this fact sink into my brain, the less I wanted it to.

Who the fuck is she with?

I couldn’t picture her with some guy. And I didn’t really enjoy the fact that she wasn’t a virgin. That someone else had done her already.

Wait. Why the fuck should I care?

I laughed again. “Laura has a boyfriend.” It should’ve been a question.

“I think his name is Ethan,” Rory said. “He’s a fucking loser.”

“He’d have to be,” I teased. “To be with her.”

“Actually, there they are.” Dennis pointed them out across the campus square. We were near the entrance to the student hall, to get coffee, but we detoured according to where Dennis pointed.

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