Page 77 of Hard Lessons
Elliot had paid this guy not only to watch Chase, but to watch me, too. My body was burning up from the inside out. I felt betrayed. I felt lied to. I thought Elliot trusted me, but those emails just proved that he didn’t. Not really. Not if he had to pay someone to make sure that I wasn’t running to anyone else.
It felt like a punch to the gut when I read the email that started the thread.
32,
Just meet her at the location. When she gives you the cash, give her the paper. You’re free to keep the money she gives you, and I’ll pay you on top of that for your time. As for your question about why I’d sell a paper I wrote myself to a student… To put it simply, I have some unresolved issues with an old friend of mine. He took something from me, so I’m taking something from him: his little sister.
Finally learning the truth was eye-opening, but it made me sick. I thought that Elliot was falling in love with me. He was justtrying to get his revenge on my brother all along. He used me, and I let him. I let him use me over and over and over, all the while falling more and more in love with him.
This made more sense to me than the story he’d been telling me. Suddenly, it made sense why he seemed to hate me at the beginning of the year. It was because he did hate me. He hated my brother for sleeping with the woman he thought he was going to marry. And he hated me because I’m the one who pulled him away from her, giving my brother the opportunity he needed to take what he wanted. All this time, and I’d been nothing to him but the cause of his pain and the target for his anger.
I didn’t bother closing out of the things I’d opened on his computer. I rushed back to the bedroom, where I changed as quickly as possible. I left the heels, sweater, and glasses lying on the floor. I turned my phone off so he couldn’t call, and I left his apartment before he could get home.
It was cold outside, and the sun had gone down. The wind was picking up, and the temperature continued to fall as the seasons transitioned from fall to full-on winter.
I crossed my arms over my chest and tucked my chin as I walked as quickly as I could back to my place. I used my anger to push myself to walk faster. I stayed focused on getting home and getting out of the cold, but the moment I stepped into my warm apartment and pressed my back to the door, the tears flooded my eyes and ran down my cheeks.
I should have listened to the voice in the back of my head. I never should have trusted him. I never should have accepted his deal to stay in school. I told myself I was doing it for my dad, to make him proud, but my dad never would have been proud of me for trading my body, and when you get down to it, that’s precisely what I did. I was so desperate to stay in school that I was willing to give him anything he wanted. I had given him my mind, my obedience, my virginity, and my heart.
He didn’t cherish it or care for any of it either. He played with me. He broke me. And I knew that when he got home and found everything I left open on his computer, he’d be laughing his ass off, knowing he got exactly what he wanted all along.
He didn’t love me. He never cared about me at all. All he wanted was to break me so I’d go crying to Gabe about how his actions caused me to get hurt. But I wasn’t going to do that. If it were up to me, Gabe would never know that I’d been having a secret relationship with the friend he stabbed in the back all those years ago.
I wouldn’t let him win.
ELLIOT
My dick had been semi-hard since that picture she sent me. Stepping onto the elevator in my apartment building, knowing exactly what I was about to walk in on, made my cock fully come to life.
When the doors opened, I took one step off the elevator and had to stop and adjust myself. My jeans had my erect dick pinched painfully. After making a minor adjustment, I was able to carry on down the hall to my apartment door.
I slid the key into the lock and twisted, but there was no resistance like there would be if the door had been locked. I hated the thought of her being inside alone, nearly naked, with the door unlocked for just anyone to walk in on. I made a mental note to tell her to try to keep it locked, even if she was inside.
I walked in and tossed my keys on the table before turning and locking the door behind me.
“Honey, I’m home,” I called out, jokingly.
We’d been playing house for around a month, and I was really getting used to having her around. I liked knowing that I’d have someone to talk to about my day. I enjoyed having dinner with her every night, even when it wasn’t anything special. Most nights, we ate on the couch, in front of the TV, in nothing but ourpajamas, but I loved every minute of it. What I loved more was having her in my bed all night long. Waking with her beside me was better than I ever imagined it could be.
I expected to see her shoes and bag by the entryway table like usual, but that spot was empty. I shrugged it off and pushed my way deeper, rounding the couch and going to the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine to share. There was a bottle that we’d opened the day before, so I pulled it out of the fridge and removed the cork. I tossed it aside, knowing that what was left wouldn’t last another evening. I drank directly from the bottle as I exited the kitchen and moved across the living room.
“Ready or not, here I come,” I called out, moving down the hallway. I expected her to be in the bedroom, but I stopped when I saw the door to my home office was cracked. Confused, I pushed against it until it was fully open. I looked inside and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
My desk was set in the back, center of the room, and my computer in the corner so I could see the empty chair on the other side. She wasn’t anywhere else in the room, so I shrugged off the feeling of worry that had started to eat at me and turned to continue into the bedroom. I took another swig from the bottle as I came to a stop outside my closed bedroom door.
I grabbed the knob and twisted as I pushed. The door opened to an empty room. I frowned as I stepped in. I thought she’d be on the bed, but when I found it empty, I looked around. The sweater she’d had on in the picture was wadded up and lying on the floor next to a pair of high heels.
I set the bottle of wine on a table as I walked over to pick up the sweater and shoes.
“Evie? Are you here, baby?” I called out, stepping into the closet. She wasn’t inside, but I put the sweater and shoes away before turning and walking out. I checked the attached bathroom. When I still couldn’t find her, I turned to… I don’tknow, look somewhere else, even though I’d already looked in every room of the apartment.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened in my office. The door was always shut, so the fact that it was left cracked made me wonder if she’d gone inside. A panic rose inside of me, even though I didn’t know why. I hadn’t hidden anything in there that I didn’t want her to find. I moved into my office and started walking around it slowly, taking in everything to see if there was anything out of place. I couldn’t find anything.
I didn’t know what was going on. The last I heard from her, she was planning on teaching me a lesson, so why wasn’t she there? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and plopped down in the chair behind my desk. I thought maybe she’d just run out to get something. I was in the middle of calling her when the light from my computer screen caught my eye. I guess falling into the chair caused enough of a jar that it woke the computer.
My mouth fell open when I saw everything that was open. There was stuff there that I hadn’t left open. The stupid fucking paper that I wrote to trap her into our agreement was there. I had it open but minimized because I was staring at it while trying to figure out how to come clean about everything. I knew the truth had to come out to keep it from popping up when I least expected it, ruining everything. But apparently, I was too late because that’s exactly what happened.
Not only did she find the paper that she purchased, but she also found the emails between me and the student I was paying to do all my bidding. The last email she read was the one where I drunkenly said I was going to use her to get back at her brother, who fucked me over.
