Page 210 of Swallow Your Sorries

But there is no more video. Just text.

Well, well, well. Looks like Gant doesn’t give a singular fuck about us? So why should we care about him?

I think I smell a revolution coming on.

Who’s going to head it?

Wait…that’s not right…Where’s the rest of the recording? The part where I ask about Zedd and Hale’s dicks? The part where I get under Gant’s skin? Why had Beaussip cut it? Jumping straight to my moans before the video cuts out.

I didn’t edit it that way. Had Rin? Had she gone behind my back and sent a second email to Beaussip? I’d been constantly monitoring her sent folder, but there was nothing. Of course, she could’ve just deleted the evidence.

I turn to her, but she seems just as confused as I am before she quickly rearranges her features back into her usual resting bitch face. There are a hundred other resting bitch faces surrounding her and glaring back at me too.

No, not back at me. At Gant.

That’s when I get the courage to tilt my head back and stare up at him. He still has a hold on me, on my hair.

Silence, dead silence, permeates the air for what feels like a hundred minutes as we stare unblinking at each other before Gant’s deep voice cracks it.

“You submitted that video to Beaussip, Dove?”

There’s none of his usual fondness in the nickname. It’s icy and frigid and suddenly I’m caught off guard by how much I miss when it was tender.

That little fairytale needed to implode at some point. Better now than later.

“You know how much I like submitting videos,” I say with far more bravado than I feel and note the slight widening of his eyes before they glaze over. I follow the tick in his jaw and the slight movement of his lips as he bites the inside of them before releasing them slowly. “Especially to Beaussip.”

Elle

Gasps.

Curses.

A hundred little light bulbs ignite as more and more people turn on their phone cameras.

“Bold bitch!”

“She’s double dead now.”

“Under whose orders?”

“Fuck Gant.”

But I don’t look to see who’s saying what. I only have eyes for Gant. I won’t flinch. I won’t apologise.

Gant sinks down so that he’s sitting on the tabletop now, his knees caging me in, and his black eyes almost level with mine.

I swallow as he releases the fist he had on my hair, and begins to stroke my scalp instead, causing tingles to run over every inch of my body.

“Did you think that would embarrass me? That it’d turn my minions, so I’d be all alone and you could get even?”

‘Minions?’

‘Who the fuck is he calling a minion?’

“Sheep,” Gant corrects, never breaking eye contact with me.

More hisses.

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