Page 85 of Wicked Surrender

I frowned, keeping my panic at bay as I turned to face the massive screen hanging down from the ceiling.

Behind me, shining on the canvas dropping low, was not the slideshow presentation I’d spent so much time perfecting.

The title of my review of the cancer drug trials wasn’t up there.

Instead, something so horribly cruel was there for the enormous audience to read. An alternative file had been put in my place for the judging panel to consider.

The Review of the Second-Best’s Regrets.

The illustration of a medical sign wasn’t in the corner. A large photo of me in a promiscuous pose was waiting instead.

Oh, fuck.

I froze, realizing the bullying wasn’t over yet.

Everything before this was child’s play.

Thiswas what it’d take to ruin my life.

28

JASON

My blood turned to ice. Deep thumps of my heart matched the drone of my pulse that roared in my ears as I stared straight ahead.

Silence filled the room while dread sank heavily in my stomach. My arms and legs weighed me down as shock kicked in.

Images of Laura showed behind her as the autoplay feature kicked in. Every one of them was a terrible option to show here, with academics and judges. These images weren’t the kind that should be shared publicly at all.

Bearing resemblance to the ones that had shown at the Professors’ Nightmares show that I busted up, I knew without any thought or guesswork where these had come from.

As the entire crowd watched Laura stand there stiff and stunned, low laughter sounded to my side.

“This is awesome,” Dennis said, cracking up and covering his mouth at her humiliation on the stage.

His voice came next, in a voiceover as the slideshow began.

“You fucking asshole.” I stood, reaching over to grab the front of his shirt. Before he could react to my taking hold of him, I reared my hand back and punched him right in the face.

Dennis’s booming voice cut out as someone in the IT department had the mind to stop it. Rory was seated a couple of chairs down, chuckling, and as I scrambled to get out of this row, I paused to give him the same treatment I had Dennis.

Fuck.

Fuck this.

Laura, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

I’d never told my friends to quit it. I assumed that when they realized I had stopped targeting Laura, they would give it up too.

They had no issue with her. The only reason they’d ever gone after her was because I had instigated it all. Because I thought I had a just cause. They didn’t. And in my miserable existence of wishing I could try to make things right with Laura again, I hadn’t stopped to consider that they might have continued with it.

Running down the aisle, I damned them both for taking it this far.

Murmurs sounded throughout the large conference room, and it urged me to run faster to reach the stage.

Laura had yet to move, and with a sharp ache in my chest, I wished this had never happened. I cringed and wanted to rage at the world that she had to be hurt yet again.

She didn’t react to my hurrying toward her. She didn’t do anything as I took the stairs two at a time. And when I dashed across the stage with the wish that I could shield her from the rest of the world, she hung her head and didn’t fight or flee.

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