Page 71 of Sweet Oblivion

“I asked you, Nash. I asked you if you loved me.” Her breath broke. “I guess I should have realized, but I still can’t believe you did that.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Can’t you just stop? You humiliated me in front of everyone,” she hissed. “And now—what? You want to be friends?”

“I don’t want to be friends. You’re my girlfriend.”

But Aya had hung up. She hung up on me. I stared at my phone, my mouth gaping.

I still stared at it when Cam and Chuck reentered the room.

I looked up at them. “She hung up on me. She said I humiliated her.”

Chuck’s face turned pensive. “The pictures were bad.”

“But…”

Cam worked his jaw. “You gotta stay in front of these stories. Now that you’re a known name, you’re going to get news.”

“But Aya didn’t believe me.”

Cam pulled up a site and pressed play. I watched me, clearly wasted, screaming, “I don’t want you.”

Lindsay’s triumphant smile preceded her arms wrapping around me. She repeated the words to Aya. The camera panned to Aya’s devastation. The video cut out.

“It’s on YouTube,” Chuck said. “It’s already got tens of thousands of views.”

I licked my dry lips and shook my head. “She has to know I’d never hurt her.”

“Does she? Cuz from this angle, that’s exactly what it looks like,” Cam said.

I met his gaze, feeling desperate. “What do I do?”

He sighed. “Get better. Get a lid on this, best you can. That’s what Asher’s label’s PR team is for.”

“But Aya…” I closed my eyes. “I’ll have to do those things to get her to listen to reason.”

“Pressing charges against the mean girl would go a long way,” Chuck added.

When Cam shot him a look, Chuck shrugged. “I hate bullies. You know that.”

“I already filed for Nash,” Steve said, stepping back into the room. “In fact, there’s a detective here who wants to talk to you.”

For the next two days, I had to work through lawyers and all sorts of other BS just to get Lindsay charged with the drugging. Luckily, everyone at the party had a phone—and had used it to film me—so the case against Lindsay might just stick. Except that her parents had shipped her back to England as soon as they’d learned about the incident, no doubt hoping to avoid extradition.

But as much as I wanted Lindsay to pay, I was more worried about Aya. She hadn’t taken another one of my calls or answered my texts.

And I had to deal with my mother’s tear-filled messages, but I held firm, refusing to see her. Steve looked more and more pissed each time he returned to my room, no doubt frustrated with my mother’s drama.

Well, that made two of us.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I called and begged Hugh to go to Aya’s house and check on her. I was still stuck in the damn hospital bed, unable to leave, thanks to my heartbeat, which still popped up irregular from time to time. My medical team refused to let me go until my EKG was normal.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Steve asked as I ended the call.

I’d risen from the bed, and he hovered nearby. He’d become an autocratic asshole since Brad had spilled my mother’s secrets, and I couldn’t stand his self-importance, or his supposed—and fake—interest in me.

“To the bathroom,” I said. My insides felt like they’d been dipped in acid.

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