Carry Your Heart by Audrey Bell

Author:Audrey Bell [Bell, Audrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Audrey Bell Books
Published: 2013-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

I’m lying in bed with Hunter, lazy and boneless and happy, when my phone rings. Lottie.

I ignore it.

It rings again. Lottie once more. “Hey?” I say. “Everything okay?”

“Um, yeah, I mean,” she pauses. “I tried to come to your room.”

I don’t say anything for a moment. “Okay?”

“You weren’t there.”

“That’s right. I’m not there.”

“Are you with him?”

I nod. “Um, yeah. Yeah, I am.”

I can hear her hesitation across the line.

“I can talk though,” I say getting out of bed.

“Well, it’s, just—look, I think Laurel’s behind it, but there are some nasty posts on a few skiing blogs,” she pauses. “About you and Hunter. I just—I don’t know. I thought I should let you go.”

“Wait what?”

“I-I think Laurel. I think she’s jealous? I just. I thought you should know. I didn’t want you to…”

“Send them to me,” I say. “What do they say?”

“They’re not—you don’t want to read them.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to not want to read them after this, Lo.”

“I don’t…”

“Send them,” I repeat. I pull on a sweatshirt of Hunter’s, sort of surprised by how boldly I grab his clothing. I hang up after she promises to email me.

“Can I borrow your laptop?”

Hunter yawns. “Fuck, don’t look at my internet history.”

“I won’t.”

I pick it up and curl up at the desk in the corner, banging the enter key to get it to load. I log into my Gmail and click on the first of two links.

And start to read.

The words blur before my eyes—I struggle to put them together, since there’s so much bitter anger here. So many accusations.

Whore.

Her boyfriend hasn’t even been dead a year.

Using him for his money.

Thinks Doug Cannon’s son can help her win races…

My fingers curl, watching Hunter resting in bed, totally oblivious to the fact that I’m seething, not sure whether I’m furious or humiliated. How dare Laurel use Danny like this? She wasn’t ever even nice to him. He fucking hated her as much as I do.

Someone has uploaded the pictures from the benefit—the same ones that Lottie saw at Jackson. Me in a red dress and Hunter in a tuxedo. We look like we’re in love. I shudder at the captions.

slut….

Danny deserves better…I always thought he was too good for her.

I swallow the vitriol. I shouldn’t read every comment but I do. And Hunter, and the way he makes me feel, disappears to this tiny white pinprick against a sea of black hatred.

I know Laurel has to be behind this—at least partly. But, I don’t know why Lottie would have shown it to me. I probably would never have found it on my own.

I close the laptop screen after I’ve read every word. It’s like it’s not happening to me, because I’m alone in my room and its just text on my page, but there’s a coil in the pit of my stomach and it just seems to be growing tighter.

And there’s a roar in my ears, slut, slut, slut, slut—like some anonymous chorus chanting to me.

I open my phone, to Lottie’s original text message.

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