Chapter 1

The air in the hotel room was thick with a cloying sweetness, a mix of Ryan' s cologne and the lingering scent of our bodies.

I laid on my side, watching the gentle rise and fall of his bare chest as he slept, a stupid, happy smile plastered on my face. This was it.

This was the moment I had replayed in my head a thousand times since I first developed a crush on Ryan Peterson in freshman year. He was the popular jock, the one every girl wanted, and tonight, he had chosen me.

He stirred, his phone buzzing on the nightstand. He didn't move.

I reached over, my initial thought being to silence it so he could sleep.

But the screen lit up, showing a notification from a group chat named "The Pack."

Curiosity, a stupid, nagging impulse, got the better of me. His thumbprint wasn't needed, the phone unlocked with a swipe.

My smile faltered as I opened the chat.

The most recent message was from his friend, Mark.

"So, did you finally bag the quiet art chick? Miller, right?"

My heart started to beat a little faster. I scrolled up.

Ryan' s message, sent just an hour before he had come back to the bed and held me, was a picture. It was a photo of me, asleep, my face peaceful, my hair fanned out on the pillow. It was an intimate, private moment. Below it, his text.

"Mission accomplished. Not as innocent as she looks, boys. Played hard to get for years, but she caved pretty easy tonight."

My stomach churned. The sweet smell in the room now felt suffocating, like poison. I kept scrolling, my hands starting to shake. The conversation was a blur of crude jokes and high-fives in emoji form. They were talking about me like I was a conquest, a trophy.

Another message from Ryan popped up at the bottom of the screen, this one from just minutes ago, while I was watching him sleep.

"Gotta keep her sweet for a bit. She' s got that rich stepdad. Might be useful."

The words blurred. A wave of nausea washed over me so intensely I had to clamp a hand over my mouth. This wasn't real. The boy sleeping beside me, the one who had whispered that he' d been waiting for this moment for so long, couldn' t be the same person writing these things.

Then I saw it. A video file. My blood ran cold. It was a short clip, just thirty seconds long, filmed from a low angle on the nightstand. It was us. It was a moment I thought was shared only between the two of us, a moment of complete vulnerability on my part. And he had recorded it.

He sent it to the group with a single caption.

"Proof. She was all over me."

My breath hitched. A guttural sound, a mix of a gasp and a sob, escaped my throat. The betrayal was a physical thing, a cold, heavy weight settling in my gut. I felt dirty, used, and unbelievably stupid. The tenderness I felt moments ago curdled into a thick, choking disgust.

Ryan shifted in his sleep, mumbling my name. He rolled over, reaching for me, his arm draping across my waist. His touch felt like a brand, searing my skin.

"Chloe," he murmured, his voice still thick with sleep. "You' re cold."

He pulled me closer, his lips pressing against my hair. The same lips that had kissed me with such supposed passion were the tools of a liar. The same hands that had held me were the ones that typed those vile messages and hit 'send' on my deepest humiliation.

I wanted to scream, to claw at him, to rip his arm off me. But I was frozen. The contrast was sickening. His feigned affection, his warm body against my back, while the cold, hard evidence of his treachery glowed on the phone screen in my hand. My mind was a chaotic storm of his words, of the images, of the casual cruelty of it all.

He thought I was an easy mark. A stepping stone. A joke.

My body finally reacted. I flinched away from his touch as if I' d been burned. The movement woke him up more fully.

"Hey, what' s wrong?" he asked, his voice still soft, concerned.

I couldn' t speak. I just shook my head, scrambling out of the bed, clutching the sheet around my trembling body. I felt his eyes on me, confused.

"Chloe? Did I do something?"

His voice was a masterpiece of fake innocence. It made my blood boil. I backed away, my heel catching on the rug. I stumbled, crashing hard against the desk in the corner. Pain shot up my leg, but it was nothing compared to the agony ripping through my chest.

The phone clattered to the floor, the screen still lit up, displaying the chat log for the whole world to see. But he wasn't looking at the phone. He was looking at me, a frown of manufactured worry on his handsome, deceitful face.

I didn' t say a word. I just grabbed my clothes, my hands shaking so badly I could barely pull on my jeans. I had to get out. I had to get away from him, from this room, from the smell of his lies.

I ran. I didn't even put on my shoes. I just ran out of the room, down the empty hotel corridor, the cold tile shocking my bare feet.

I didn' t stop until I burst through the emergency exit and into the cold night air, gulping it down like a drowning woman. The tears I had been holding back finally broke free, hot and furious.

Back in my own dorm room, the one I shared with two other girls who were away for the trip, I stumbled into the bathroom. I turned the shower on, as hot as I could stand it, and scrubbed at my skin until it was raw and red.

I was trying to wash him off me. His touch, his scent, the memory of his body. But it was useless. The filth wasn't on my skin. It was inside me, a deep, indelible stain of shame and betrayal that no amount of soap and water could ever wash away.