I did not make it upstairs. I could not just go home and go to sleep after such a night. I took out my phone and ordered an Uber. It arrived in less than ten minutes.

While I was in the car, my phone rang. My heart skipped a beat, thinking it was Arthur calling to have a talk. Except it was not him, but Victor, of all people. I didn't pick up, I didn't want anything to do with him. He kept calling, so I put my phone on silent, upset that it wasn't the younger Dullac on the other end of that phone.

My eyes started to sting and I forced the tears back to their tear ducts. I would not cry over that man. Yes, I had done something terrible, and I wasn't proud of it. But he was fucking married. Wasn't that horrible too? It's not just a sordid detail from his life that he had omitted, but a full human being. With whom he had shared a bed, and probably a house. Had they done it in the bed I shared with Arthur so often? In his shower? A shudder ran up my spine as I pictured it.

From shocked and devastated, I switched to furious and unforgiving in a fraction of a second. It wasn't fair that I be treated as the monster of the story when there were, in fact, two monsters. Two monsters who should never have gotten together in the first place. It had been a mistake to even try to be exclusive, and I was going to rectify that immediately.

The Uber dropped me off and I ran up the stairs that led to the frat house. I knocked on the door frenetically until one of the frat boys opened it. I didn't bother acknowledging him. I walked past him, he was too dumbstruck to react, and made my way to the room of the one man who would understand what I needed and not disappoint me. I knocked once. No answer. I could hear some agitation and whispers downstairs. The dude who had opened the door must have started talking. I didn't care, those dumb frat boys could think whatever they wanted. I knocked a second time.

This time, Cedric opened the door. He was wearing nothing but his underwear. Perfect, that'd be much faster.

"Abby, what the—"

"Fuck me," I demanded without preamble.

I pushed him inside the room and closed the door behind us. I held onto his biceps and hoisted myself up so my lips could reach his. As soon as they did, he pulled away.

"What the fuck, Abs?"

"Fuck me," I repeated. "Please."

Even I could hear the desperation, tainted with a bit of madness, in my voice. I did not sound like a sane person.

I tried kissing him again. He let me do it for one second before pushing me away again. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I just really need mind-numbing sex right now and you're really good at that. Just, please, fuck me."

"No!"

My jaw fell open. I did not expect him to refuse.

"Why not?"

"Are you kidding me? We stopped doing that months ago. You've got a boyfriend now, go ask him!"

I was pretty sure I could not call Arthur my boyfriend anymore, not that I'd ever wanted to call him so in the first place.

"I don't care. I need you. Right now. And I need it to be fast and rough." I needed it to be everything that sex with Arthur wasn't.

"I don't know what the hell happened to you but it's going to be a fat no from me, Abs."

I crossed my arms on my chest and looked at him defiantly.

"If you don't do it, I'll find somebody else who will."

"You can't be serious."

"Watch me."

I turned on my heels and exited the room, not waiting for his answer. He did not come after me.

I knocked on Spencer's door and he opened it immediately. He was wearing as little as Cedric, his tan, chiseled chest calling my name. Not to mention the huge dick he was packing in those tight boxer briefs of his. A voracious smile split his face when he saw me on his doorstep, shamelessly ogling his crotch.

"Good evening, Abby. Have you finally come to claim another night of pleasure and debauchery with me?"

"Yes."

He was momentarily surprised, but then his smile grew wider, hungrier. Exactly what I needed. I should have come to him first.

"Lovett, I swear to God, if you touch her, I'll destroy you!" Cedric threatened him from behind me. He had come after me after all.

"Mind your own business, Hickey. You let her go willingly, you can't claim her anymore."

"It's not about claiming her, you fucking dumbass. Can't you see she's obviously not in her right mind?"

People in the adjacent rooms had started to stick their heads out their doors. It was late and we were very loud. And I guess it was not every day that the frat house had a loose woman begging the residents for some good dicking. People needed to see that show in person.

"I'm perfectly fine," I retorted.

"Right," Cedric snarked, then switched to a softer, caring voice. "Abby, what happened? Where did you come from? Where's Arthur? Are you okay?"

No, I was the exact opposite of okay.

"I'm fine. Go back to your room, Cedric."

"You heard the lady?" Spencer added with sass. "Go to bed, Ced."

"Spence, I'm serious. Do not touch her. I'll call the cops on you if I have to."

"Who the hell do you think you are?" I yelled at Cedric. "You don't get to meddle with my life!"

"I am your friend and that's my job to stop you from committing the worst mistake of your life!"

The worst mistake of my life was agreeing to date a dude who turned out to be married. That and sleeping with his dad. Sleeping with Spencer would definitely not be a mistake.

"What about Arthur?" He asked. "What would he think of your fucking Spencer? You guys just started dating properly, don't cheat on him already!"

There would be no cheating and Arthur would think nothing about it. He had made that very clear. He was done with me. And I with him.

"Arthur can go fuck himself," I spat.

Spencer put a protective arm around my shoulders and pulled me inside his room. Cedric put his hand flat on the door to keep him from closing it.

"Abby, I don't have the faintest idea what's going on with you and your Ginger Dude right now but you're clearly not fine. Don't do it. It's just one fight. People fight all the time. Don't ruin everything over one fight."

I didn't reply. He clearly didn't know what he was talking about. I retreated a bit further inside Spence's room.

"What about your symbols?" He kept trying to dissuade me. "You made such a big deal out of sleeping with Arthur again and now you're just going to give that away to Spencer? There's no coming back from that, Arthur will not be so special to you anymore. You will regret that tomorrow."

As I had mentioned, Arthur didn't give a shit about feeling special to me anymore, and neither did I. If he was sad, he could go find some comfort in his wife's arms.

"Thank you for caring, Cedric, but I'm fine. Goodnight."

Ced cast a final murderous look at Spencer before the latter closed the door behind us and locked it. I heard Cedric hit it with all his strength, again and again.

"I'm not kidding, Lovett, I'm going to break down this door! And after that, I'll call the cops."

Spencer chuckled and ignored him.

"Sigrid. Someone go and get Sigrid," is the last thing I heard Cedric say before I turned my undivided attention to the lovely, almost-naked Spencer Lovett.

He looked me up and down twice, taking more time as his eyes raked over my breasts, before settling on my face.

"You look gorgeous tonight, Abs." I was still wearing the gala dress.

"Thank you."

He took my hand and removed my silk glove, then he did the same to the other hand. He held my chin between his thumb and pointer finger and tilted my head up. There, in the softest way possible, he put his lips on mine. There was no urgency, no fire, no passion. Just pure, undivided tenderness. His unoccupied hand landed on my waist, pulling me closer, but it did not go lower.

That was not what I wanted. I wanted dirty sex, something to take my mind off the disaster of that night. I didn't want something slow and romantic. I had had enough of slow and romantic with Arthur. I cupped both his cheeks and brought our mouths closer, deepening the kiss. He smiled against my lips and obeyed my request for him to be less gentle.

He eventually pulled away, and, with a twirl of his finger, asked me to turn around, which I did. One hand on my shoulder, the other between my shoulder blades, he grabbed the little tab and zipped my dress down all the way to the apex of my butt, where the zipper ended. He slid the sleeves off my arms and let the dress fall at my feet. He put a kiss on my shoulder, then my upper back, then my lower back. I felt him crouch behind me. His lips grazed against my butt cheek, sending shivers that I felt all the way to the back of my neck. He let his fingers wander down to my ankle and carefully undid the buckle that tied my high-heeled sandal together. He lifted my foot and removed my shoe. I moaned a little in relief when my bare toes touched the floor. He repeated the same process on the other foot, and then he stood back up behind me.

With one finger, he traced a line along my spine. My whole body shook with shivers. He brought his lips to my ear and breathed deeply. That sensation alone made me whimper. God this guy was good.

On the other side of the door, Cedric had stopped banging on it, but I could hear a lot of agitation, people coming and going in the corridor.

Spencer's hands went to my hair and he proceeded to remove one by one every single pin that held my updo together. Once my hair fell in my back, he massaged my scalp with the utmost dedication, melting away the soreness of hours spent wearing a tight hairstyle.

At last, he moved south, his fingers meeting the band of the strapless, push-up bra I had worn for the occasion – that dress deserved to show off some cleavage. With a dexterity rarely matched, he undid the bra and let it fall to my feet too, joining the pool of forest green that my dress had made around me. With two knuckles on each hand, he softly grazed the sides of my breasts in painfully slow movements.

"Spencer," I whined. "I'm gonna need you to be faster than that. I want more. I need more. And I need it now!"

His hands fell to my hips and, in one brisk movement, he had my ass crush on his crotch. On his very large, hardening penis. I could feel his piercing through the fabric. Oh my. I needed that thing to be inside me right this instant. As if he had heard my thoughts, he started grinding against my ass. I let out a moan. He chuckled against my neck, sending more warm air in my ear.

"Wait here for one second, baby. Don't turn around," he murmured, and I had to squeeze my thighs in anticipation of what he had planned for me.

I did as I was told and I didn't turn around as I heard him go around his room, opening several doors and drawers. When he came back, he gave my butt a firm squeeze and he kissed me right behind my ear.

"Arms up, babe," he commanded, and I executed, eager as ever.

And suddenly, I found myself being put a shirt on. It was swift and agile, I didn't see it coming until Spencer's shirt was already on me. I turned around and the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He was not having sex with me that night.

"I'm sorry, Abs. I've dreamt about the day you'd come to me for a rematch, but I can't do that to you when you're in that state. Cedric is right, you're not okay."

I don't know what caused it. The sting of the double rejection, maybe. Or perhaps it was the fact that even Spencer, who was a proud slut with standards lower than the Mariana Trench, thought that I was too messed up to have sex with. And definitely, my relationship with Arthur burning down to ashes in the span of one night did not help.

Whatever the reason was, I started crying. Not just one small tear escaping my eyes. Loud, ugly, snotty sobs. Spencer wrapped his arms tight around me, lodging my face in the crook of his neck, and he slowly lowered us to the floor.

I shook against him, my body moving of its own volition. I could not stop it. Could not stop the waves of sadness hitting me every single second. When it was not waves of sadness, it was short bursts of anger.

"Why didn't you say so instead of making me believe you would?" I asked between two sobs. "Why did you let Cedric threaten you if you knew you wouldn't do it?"

He raised a shoulder and let it fall slowly. A pitiful shrug. Not his usual sassy shrug.

"Pissing off Hickey is my favorite pastime. And you would have gone looking for another guy if I had straight out refused."

"I could still do that," I challenged him.

He snorted.

"Sure. We're a bunch of horny dogs but we're not that bad. Nobody in their right mind would want to have sex with you when you look that upset. And even if they did, I'd like to believe my presidential power would stop them. Sorry babe, not even your pussy is worth losing the Sigma membership over it."

That had the merit to make me laugh a little. And then I cried some more. Spencer held on to me silently, letting me cry without asking questions.

After a while, he suggested that we go onto his bed; it would be more comfortable than the floor. He got up first and gave me his hand to help me up. As I followed him to the bed, he tossed me a piece of fabric. It was a pair of black boxers.

"Wear that," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I'm a respectable man but I am, after all, just a man. I've seen the thong you're wearing under that shirt. Please make it easier for me to respect you and wear the damn boxers."

I chuckled. The thong I was wearing did make my ass look fantastic. I slipped the boxers on and joined Spencer on the bed.

"Is it because of your redhead?" He asked me as I nestled against his side.

I slowly nodded. A ball in my throat prevented me from talking.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

This time, I shook my head. I was in no condition to speak, and Spencer was not the person I would want to share that with anyway. I was too ashamed. Partly because of what I had done with Arthur's father, and partly because I felt like a fool for having let myself fall for a dude who was already married. All those months of going back and forth, all the struggle, that was embarrassing enough. The dude having a wife all that time was just the cherry on top of the cake.

I cried, and cried, and cried some more while Spence held me tight. The few times I thought I had finally run out of tears to shed, an image of Eleanor and Arthur kissing, or worse, would suddenly appear in my mind and start the waterworks again. Sometimes, the image was me and Victor, which made me nauseated. And Spencer, as the sweetheart that he was, just lay there in silence, comforting me as I drowned his shoulder.

A loud knock on the door startled us both.

"Open the door, Spencer, and stay the fuck away from her!" Sigrid yelled from the other side. What she was doing at the frat house, I didn't know.

"Sounds like Cedric called for backup," Spencer whispered to me, a smile evident in his intonation.

He kissed my cheek and left me in bed as he strutted to unlock the door and opened it on my two best friends.

"What did you do? Is she okay? Did you sleep with her?" Sigrid barked as she got sight of Spencer.

"You'd better not have laid a single hand on her!" Cedric added.

Spencer got out of his room and closed the door behind him. I could still hear everything.

"Wow, get off the high horse, Hickey. Of course I didn't do anything to her, I'm not a fucking moron. I did what you failed to do, which is calming her down and putting her to bed. If she had gone to another dude's room, she wouldn't have been so lucky. Try thanking me for that. I can't believe you let her walk away from you in that state!"

It sounded like Cedric took a step closer to Spencer, ready to start fighting.

"Guys!" She interjected. "Now's not the time for your stupid sausage fight. Spence, is Abby okay?"

There was a pause.

"No. I've never seen her like that. It's really bad."

I guess one could say that it was, indeed, really bad. Still, he didn't have to speak of me as if I wasn't right there.

"Did she say what happened? What was she doing before coming here?" Sigrid asked.

"Have you met her? Of course she didn't say anything. I just know it has something to do with Arthur."

"I suspected so. Is she asleep?"

"No. She doesn't seem to be able to drift off with all the crying."

"She's crying?" Both Cedric and Sigrid asked.

"Yeah? Is that so hard to believe? She's pretty upset."

"Abby doesn't cry," Sigrid explained. "Unless Josh is mentioned. What did this motherfucker do to her?"

"We can go and find out," Cedric suggested. "We know where he lives."

"Let me check with her first. If she agrees, we storm his place at dawn," she said in the steadiest, sternest tone.

I swear, sometimes she was truly scary.

Spencer did not come back into his room, instead I saw Sigrid's white-blond head peek from behind the door. All it took was one good look at me for her to come rushing to the bed I was lying on, in fetal position. She pulled me upright and hugged me tight, our backs resting against the headboard.

"Tell me if I need to go murder him," she demanded, her tone soft, yet still icy.

"He—He—" I stuttered, struggling to speak normally as I kept being interrupted by my own sobs.

"That's okay, baby. Take your time."

It took me a few more minutes to regain some kind of control over my sobbing. When I felt like I could speak all right, I said the words that I had not dared say to anyone, both out of shame and out of anger.

"He's married," I barely managed to say steadily before melting into more sobs.

I didn't see Sigrid's face, my vision was too blurry from the tears and my head was tucked in her shoulder, but I could easily imagine it. I could imagine her eyebrows dropping low on her light-blue eyes, her nostrils flare, and her jaw tense up. I could see in my mind how her devastatingly beautiful face had turned into devastatingly dangerous in the span of one second. Her hold on me tightened. She took a long, sharp inhale.

"I'm going to kill this son of a bitch. You know that, right? I will end him for doing that to you. After all the effort we and his friends have put into setting you up with him, you're telling me he's had a wife all along? What's wrong with him? And why didn't Theo, or Val, or anyone mention it?"

I asked myself the same question. All his friends knew. They had to. They had given him some weird looks the one time that I had mentioned Eleanor in their presence. I should have picked up on that.

"I . . . There's more."

I had to tell Sigrid about it. I couldn't unleash her on him without her knowing all the details of the story.

"Is there? What else could he possibly have done?"

"It's not him, it's me."

"What happened, Abs?"

"He knows."

"Who knows what?"

I took her hand in mine and, for the first time, looked her in the eye.

"Sig, you're not getting it. He knows," I repeated with an inflection that should remove any confusion.

I could see the understanding slowly form on her features. It took her a few seconds, but she got there.

"Oh, baby," she said in a soothing voice while hugging me even tighter. "It'll be all right, tell me what happened."

So I explained the whole night to her. Starting from him showing up at my door looking dapper in a tuxedo with green accessories that matched my dress, and finishing with him dropping me off in my parking lot like garbage. It took me much longer than necessary, for I had to wait for my sobs to get under control before I kept talking. And there were many sobs. It was like those years spent not crying were all catching up on me. She did not interrupt me and let me tell the whole story. She held her breath when I mentioned the kiss with Victor but she did not comment. I mentally thanked her for that.

"You're okay, baby. You're okay. You're going to be okay," is all she said, intercalated with some soft shushing to soothe me to sleep.

I eventually drifted off and only half woke up when Spencer took the spot Sig had vacated next to me, and he spooned me as tightly as he could. This man was a godsend. Truly. And he was into me. He would make me happy, I was sure of it. And yet I couldn't get myself to like him like that. We had almost had sex again, that night. If it were not for my distraught state, and maybe Cedric's threats, he would have been totally game. I would have had sex with him a second time and that would have massively raised his hopes of dating me. I cried some more when I realized how close I had been to irrevocably hurt my friend.

* * *

I woke up alone in Spencer's bed. His side was still warm so he couldn't have been gone for long. My eyes were heavy and puffy, and more sensitive to light than usual: the typical symptoms of somebody who cried themselves to sleep. I got off the bed and entered Spencer's ensuite – being the president gave him ensuite privilege that most other members did not have. One look in the mirror was all I needed to confirm what I knew already. I looked terrible. Dried mascara was caked around my eyes and down my cheeks, my eyeshadow had disappeared, probably smeared on Spencer's pillow, and my lipstick had migrated down my chin.

I used Spencer's soap and washed my face. It already felt so much better. Then I decided that I needed to wash my body as well, so I took the liberty of using his shower. When I got out, wearing the same clothes I had worn for the night minus my underwear, Spencer was back, sitting on the edge of the bed next to what looked like breakfast on a tray. He was wearing a white T-shirt and navy sweatpants. He looked up when he saw me.

"Wow, I am never wearing that shirt again without thinking of you in it."

That made me smile. Spencer was such a sweetheart.

See Arthur? It's not that hard to just say that! No 'I've got many similar shirts' nonsense.

Ugh. Life would be so much easier if I just dated Spence, really.

"Breakfast?" He offered.

So easy.

I took a bite off one of the croissants piled up on a plate and a swig of orange juice. I also poured myself a large cup of hot chocolate.

"Thank you for getting those for me," I said before taking another bite of the pastry.

He had a sheepish smile. "I didn't get them myself, I had one of the newbies go on an errand. I paid, though. And I put the tray together."

I rolled my eyes. I shouldn't have been surprised. First-year frat boys were basically the senior members' servants.

"It's good enough, I guess."

We ate in silence, enjoying the perfect butteriness and flakiness of the croissants that had been sourced from the bakery shop a couple blocks away. Even though he still radiated his usual soft, golden retriever energy, I could sense Spencer's serious gaze on me. He was gauging me, monitoring whether I was going to break down again.

"Are you done scrutinizing me?" I said after I finished my breakfast

"Can you blame me? I'm not sure what you pulled last night, but that shit was scary."

"Come on, it wasn't that bad."

He arched a skeptical brow at me. "You cried, babe. I was told you don't do that. And you begged me to have sex with you."

"When you say it like that, he does sound bad, doesn't it?"

He let out a chuckle that didn't reach his eyes. He still watched me intensely. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I need to talk to Sigrid first. She's the only one who knows the full story."

"I'll go get her for you," he automatically offered, already getting off his bed.

"Wait," I called after him, barely aware of what I was doing.

I stood up too and stepped towards him. I snaked my arms around his waist and hugged him tight. I rested my forehead on his sternum. He did not hesitate to hug me back and he bent at the neck to kiss the top of my head.

"I'm so sorry, Spence. I really am. I should not have come on to you like that."

He chuckled. "Babe, there are worse things that you can do to me than ask for sex."

"I just . . . I feel terrible for leading you on. I know you'd like more, and I know I can't give you more. It was unfair of me to entertain you."

"Save your words for Hickey, Abs. I'm not stupid enough to love you."

I frowned.

"What?" He said. "Like, I love you as a friend, but I know there is no point for me to love you as anything more than that. Rest assured that you're nothing more than my friend. Even though I'd definitely bang you in a heartbeat. You just say the word."

I laughed a true laugh. It felt wrong, but so good. "Thank you. For being such a good friend to me."

"Anytime, babe."

He placed a final kiss on the crown of my head and left to go get Sigrid.

She came into the room a couple minutes later. She helped herself to a glass of orange juice and sat on the bed. I sat next to her, crossing my legs under me.

"We can either talk about it," she said, "or we can say 'fuck it' and never speak his name ever again. We can also get some fatty burgers and watch crappy movies all day. It's up to you."

Whatever I chose, she was there with me.

"I'll take you up on the burgers and movies offer, but I'd like to talk about it as well. I need . . . I don't know, your opinion? Your advice? Anything. I just want to understand this mess of a situation."

She took a swig of her drink and clasped her hands on her knees.

"All right. I'm sure you know what I want to say first."

I bowed my head in shame. "I shouldn't have kissed Victor."

"Hell, yeah you shouldn't have. That has got to be your stupidest move. Ever."

"But I rejected him!" I defended myself. "Arthur caught us at—"

"I know, babes. I just needed to get that out of the way. Now that I've said my piece, I need to ask you what you want."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you want to forgive Arthur?"

"Aren't you supposed to say he's a piece of trash and offer to kick him in the balls for me?"

"I can certainly do that. But is that what you want? I have the feeling from the way you told your story that you are not as mad at him as you are at yourself. That you hate yourself so much for what you did with Victor that you would consider forgiving the lie about his marriage and calling yourselves even."

I pondered what she'd said for a few seconds. Did I really want to forgive him? Was I able to? Would I ever forgive myself for sleeping with Victor? I made excuses for myself, some more valid than others, to be able to live with what I had done, that didn't mean I hadn't felt terrible about it every single day. Forgiving myself would be an uphill battle. And would he ever forgive me? Victor was the only person Arthur so obviously disliked. The rest of his family wasn't far behind, but Victor was the worst. Would he ever see past the betrayal? Did I want him to? I had been betrayed too, after all. What was easier? Forgiveness or a never-ending grudge? God knows I knew how to hold a grudge.

"Would that be bad," I questioned Sig, "to want to be even? Can we even consider ourselves even?"

She took a moment to think this through. "It's hard to say. You fucked his dad, which is level ten of fucking up, but you did it before you were together, so it's not like you cheated on him – except for that stupid kiss. That gives you mitigating circumstances. As for him, he's been married all the time he's actively pursued you, and he did not mention it, which is also level ten of fucking up. But he is separated from the wife, which is also a mitigating circumstance."

"Right. So what does that mean? What's the conclusion of that?"

"I'd say you fucked up more but you had better intentions than he did. You never intentionally lied to him or hurt him on purpose. While he lied to you consciously about his marriage."

"Does that make us even, then?"

"It's not black or white, babes. Some will find the marriage thing to not be a big deal since Arthur and his wife have separated anyway, while others would never tolerate that. Similarly, some will find that screwing his dad is forgivable since you did not cheat, but others could never overlook that."

"That does not help me."

"The bottom line is that there is room for it to go either way. There is not one person objectively better than the other. That's why you need figure out what you want, what you can forgive, and what you can live with."

"I don't know what I want. I'm furious about his marriage. I can't get my head around it. He's married. All this time, I've been the other woman."

She looked at me from beneath her eyelashes, her eyes saying what her mouth didn't speak: 'That didn't bother you when you were other woman with Victor'.

She had a point.

Except that the situation with Victor was different. So very different. With Victor, it had been purely physical, and I had refused to do it while he was with his wife. He then had come to me saying that he was separated from bloody Magdalen. It might have been morally questionable, but there had been no lying, no deception. With Arthur, on the other hand . . .

I let out a loud, long sigh.

"You don't have to decide how you feel about it right now," Sigrid said. "Take your time to process. Let the emotions fade, and then you can make a decision."

I grumbled. She was right, but I was the kind of person who liked an immediate resolution.

A knock on the door cut the conversation short.

"What?" I barked at the door.

"It's Cedric . . . and Spencer, apparently. Are you guys done? Can we come in?"

"I hope you guys realize that you're the only people I'd ever allow to make me ask permission to enter my own bedroom," Spence chimed in and that made us laugh.

Sigrid arched a brow at me, giving me the choice to refuse them entry if I wanted to.

"Come in," I called out to our two friends.

Cedric entered first, he took a croissant from the breakfast tray and sat on the bed, with Sig and I. Spencer took his desk chair and rolled it next to us.

"Want to explain yourself after the stunt you pulled yesterday?" Cedric snarked as a greeting.

He sounded pissy but his eyes were kind, worried. His face was questioning but not demanding. He wanted to know why I had caused such a mayhem in the frat house, but he would not force the answer out of me. Spencer looked slightly worried, but, mostly, he looked like he was about to hear the hottest tea. He would not be disappointed.

I decided it was time to come clean to Cedric – and I guess Spencer? – and tell him all the stuff that had happened between Arthur and me that he didn't know of. The good and the bad.

"Quick question," I started, addressing both men, "how would you react if I told you I slept with your father?"

"You'd be dead to me," Cedric replied instantly, not even taking the time to be shocked by the question, at the same time as Spencer shrugged and answered, "I'd ask for a threesome."

As one, our heads turned towards Spence. He raised his hands in defense.

"Chill out, guys! It was a joke. I don't know how I'd react, I'd probably be shocked, but ultimately I would be fine, I think. Why?"

Sigrid looked at me knowingly. 'See?' She seemed to be saying.

Ced pieced together the puzzle much faster than Spencer.

"Tell me you did not do that," he implored.

"What? What did she do?" Cute, lovely Spencer was being clueless.

"You slept with Arthur's dad, didn't you?"

While I slowly nodded, Cedric's eyes widened in disgust at the same time as Spencer burst out laughing. The latter raised his hand and high fived me. The former, however, looked at me as if I had killed a member of his family. Sig slapped his shoulder to shake him out of his trance.

I could tell he wanted to tell me exactly what he thought of my actions but, out of respect, or friendship, or love, he didn't.

"Why did you cry, then?" He asked instead.

That was a fair question."

"Right. Do you remember my boss at the store? I've told you about her."

"Super-hot but has a stick up her ass?" He repeated the description I'd made of her many times. "What's her name . . . Elizabeth?"

"Eleanor. But yes, that's her."

"What about her?"

I heard Sigrid brace herself for the reaction of the two men. She had the same expression on her face as when we watched reality TV shows.

"She's got a husband," I said.

"Not too surprising," he replied, not quite connecting the dots. "And?"

"Well, can you try to guess who that husband might be?"

Cedric's brain clicked at the same time as Spencer's. The former had eyes round as saucers, the latter, to my surprise, laughed louder.

"I'm sorry," Spence said between two bursts. "I can't help it. Your life is more dramatic than a telenovela."

And he kept on laughing. I couldn't blame him.

"I'm torn between berating you for fucking his dad and storming his place to demand an explanation," Cedric commented.

"My thoughts exactly," Sig agreed.

"I'm aware of how much I messed up and the last thing I want is to give him the satisfaction of having my friends have a go at him. So, thank you very much guys, but you'll do neither."

I picked up my phone from my bag that had been lying on the floor all night. The battery was dead so I plugged it on Spencer's charger. As soon as it had enough power to switch on, it started ringing with all the notifications I had received last night. A lot of them were missed calls from Sigrid, and slightly threatening texts about what she would do to me if I slept with Spencer.

"I was at home when Jeremy called and told me that I needed to come here ASAP," she explained. "Then Ced took the phone and told me what was going on. I had to try anything to keep you from throwing yourself into Spencer's arms."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys," Spencer deadpanned. "I would have never slept with her when she was in that state, I'm not a desperate pervert!"

"No offense, Spence, but you do tend to think with your dick," Sigrid countered. "And that was a risk I couldn't take."

Cedric chuckled while Spencer crossed his arms on his chest, visibly upset that our friends thought the worst of him.

I kept skimming through the notifications on my phone. Here, scattered across the mountain of missed calls from Sig, were a few missed calls from Victor. I had rejected his calls when I was in the Uber, but he had called a few more times after that. I snorted. What could he possibly want?

I swiftly deleted the notifications from his calls before the others could see and I kept scrolling. I could not stop my heart from aching when I failed to see any notification from Arthur Dullac.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A/N: If you thought Abril's character would ever not be tortured, you thought wrong.

As always, next chapter on Friday, please vote and comment.

Love,
Charlie.