Just then, a text popped up on her phone from Oakley. Short and sweet. One word.
Bye.
It was distracting enough to snap her out of her anger. She blinked hard, once, twice. What? Bye? Bye for what? Was he upset that Raz had broken into her shop? She hadn’t known! This wasn’t her fault. She’d never have let the slimy little bastard into her shop on a good day, much less naked! The finality of the period at the end of the word caught her off guard enough that she stopped watching the video, pulled it down to respond, and typed a quick question mark.
She returned to watching the video, and the more she watched, the more her heart pounded and everything else fell away. Her chair! That was the most insulting part! He’d known that was her chair, and she’d sat on it a hundred times, and now his nuts were all over it and—her fists balled up so tight that her fingers turned white. Gah! She wanted to beat him, or if not beat him, to cuss him out and tell him what an absolutely insufferable, degrading, sexist piece of shit he was.
Red hair appeared in the corner of the screen from someone standing directly beneath the camera. The woman, presumably, that Raz was talking to. Based on his sultry expression and the way he played with himself as he spoke, he was talking dirty to her. A flitter of confusion dashed over her face as she watched. That looked a lot like her. Like, almost remarkably so. Even beyond the color, which was weird enough, the rest of the hair matched. The length was the same, and the curly nature of it, and the haircut was close enough that Poppy’s hair could match on a bad hair day.
The woman stepped forward out of the back room, strutting forward and kissing Raz. If Poppy didn’t know for a damn fact that she’d never, in a hundred billion years, be doing what the woman was doing, she’d swear it was her. Everything, from the hair to the height to the ivory skin that was a near perfect match, looked identical to herself. Maybe it was the relatively bad quality of the camera, but she could have been looking at herself in the mirror.
Things progressed with Raz, and the woman onscreen proceeded to give him a blowjob. The hatred in Poppy’s heart was covered with disgust. It was one thing to watch him sit on her chair naked and want to bash his brains in, but it was another thing entirely to watch him get sucked off. She still wanted to beat him mercilessly, but maybe with her eyes closed. She frantically fast-forwarded through the film, almost all of which was Raz and the woman having sex for another ten or fifteen minutes, enough time that she saw more of Raz than she ever, ever wanted to see. During the whole time, she saw virtually none of the woman aside from her back and the occasional side shot, but holy shit, it was staggering to see. It was almost like watching herself have sex with Raz, a thought that made her want to puke, give herself a lobotomy, or puke and give herself a lobotomy.
Her eyes shot open and her breath froze halfway to her lungs.
Bye.
Uh-oh.
Her heart started pounding again. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t her on that screen because she knew every damn inch of her body and there was enough similarity that it was almost amazing, but if he saw it, his first thought wouldn’t have been Oh, I bet there’s a nearly identical person out there, his thought would have been that that was her, onscreen, doing unspeakable things with the disgusting Raz.
Suddenly, hating Raz was a hell of a lot less important than it had been a second ago. She exited the video and called Oakley. Instantly it went to voicemail, and the pit of worry in her gut transformed into a gurgling volcano of concern. He’d blocked her! That, or his phone was dead, but she knew that he’d blocked her. He’d seen the video, assumed it was her, and blocked her and left her alone! He really thought that she’d be capable, first off, of having sex with Raz, and second, of lying to him and…
Her shoulders stiffened.
She had no way to contact him to explain.
None.
He’d blocked her.
She had no idea where he lived, and even if she did, she couldn’t leave to find him. She didn’t know his address to mail him anything, and she didn’t have anyone’s phone to borrow to call him, and even if she did, if he thought she could do that and had done that, he’d just hang up! The only chance she had to explain, or at least to try to argue that it wasn’t her on the video, was in person, but if he’d blocked her, he wasn’t coming back!
Her breath started to come faster and faster. Forget this? That’s what he’d been saying! He’d thought it was her, and fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck, she had no way to prove it wasn’t! It looked a hell of a lot like her, and if it was close enough that even she was confused, there was no chance he’d believe her again. But he had to believe her! She’d never do that, never even could if she wanted to! She didn’t have it in her to be able to lie like that, and she’d never ever even consider sleeping with Raz, much less at the store, and now she was screwed.
The reality of that crashed down on her, pinning her to the floor and crushing her until it was hard to breathe. He’d abandoned her over a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that was justified but a misunderstanding regardless. He was leaving her to the Immortal Council, and before he’d appeared, the Immortal Council had been ready to string her up and arrest her at the very least for killing Raz, but now that Oakley, the only person who had actually believed she was innocent, was stepping back and taking back his defense of her, she was left to the wolves! Trapped, and without anyone around to prove her innocence, with the damning evidence killing what little hope she had to get out of it, and with the only real chance of getting out of this mess gone, she started to feel herself panic. Faster and faster her breath came until each breath couldn’t come in before the other one left.
He’d left her! She needed him, needed him bad, and they were supposed to be mates! This wasn’t supposed to happen this way! The light had lied, or maybe it had been right and they were supposed to be together and she’d not only blown it, but also her only valid chance of not getting arrested or killed for this too! All she needed was to talk to him, to explain and to hope he could believe her, but how was she supposed to do that?
She frantically typed out a text with quivering fingers, pleading him to call her, explaining that she hadn’t forgotten that because it hadn’t actually been her on the video. She wanted to yell, to scream, to revive Raz just to kill him again. It hadn’t been enough for him to screw her over, get her arrested for his murder when she had absolutely nothing to do with it, and convince everyone that she’d slept with him. He’d dug it deeper, driving a stake and getting a man who was supposed to be her mate to abandon her when she needed him more than ever.
The text went through, but she wouldn’t hear a response. She knew that already. She could text him to her heart’s content. He’d never receive it. He’d blocked her. Gone straight to voicemail, and there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do about it. About any of it. All she could do was sit there in her house and wait for the grim reaper to show up and finish it, to take her away and blame Raz’s death on her in a case where everything pointed to her being guilty.
Bye.
8
Help.
Help. The hardest thing that Poppy ever had to ask for. Anyone who knew her knew that she wasn’t the first one to go out asking for handouts or a favor. She did her business and kept it sealed up, to the point where she didn’t tell her sisters that she was arrested for a murder she didn’t commit. She was notorious for it. Back when she moved around a lot, it was a well-known fact that someone had to reach out and demand that they be allowed to help, because otherwise, she’d be struggling to get all her furniture into a trailer by herself. She’d injure herself before she went out and asked for things.