#Selfie (Hashtag Series Book 4) (29 page)

Maybe the reason I was having so much trouble saying to Ivy what I really wanted to say was because this wasn’t over. Because we still had a lot to work through before we could truly be together.

I was tired of waiting. Wanting. Life was happening now. And I wanted all the time with her I could get.

So all the shit in our way?

I was gonna take it down.

First on my list? Stopping the selfie parade the Buzz

Boss was so fond of posting. Why? Because the best way to deal with a problem with many branches was to go for the root.

If the Boss stopped dragging Ivy through the mud, the students on campus would, too. They’d forget, move on, and she could go outside without threat of ridicule or rape.

But who was the BuzzBoss? No one seemed to know.

It was time to find out.

Ivy

I went to bed in Braeden’s arms.

I woke up alone.

I was beginning to think our relationship—or lack thereof—was a vampire.

It only came out at night.

Braeden

I’ve heard the most dangerous people are those who have nothing to lose.

But where I’m sitting?

The most dangerous person is a man who thought he had nothing and then found everything.

I wouldn’t go back to nothing ever again. I’d protect what was mine until my very last breath.

And Ivy was mine.

Figuring out who the BuzzBoss was should have been harder. But just like a woman, a pissed-off man does better research than the FBI.

Lucky for me, I didn’t need research this time.

The Boss made a mistake. One that many people wouldn’t catch, but this was personal. As I lay there in the dark with Ivy so close against me, I had some time to think. I could see now why no one caught on before. The genius of the Boss was the notifications kept on coming. There was always something to talk about, something new to read.

No one had time to really stop and think about it because they were too busy talking about it.

Shut up and listen.

That’s what I finally did.

My oh my… what I heard.

Once I knew, I couldn’t just lay here. I had to act, to put an end to all this fuckery.

It was explosive, and part of me hoped the hell I was wrong.

I knew I wasn’t.

And honestly, the betrayal would be worse for some others than me. The friendship I thought I knew was gone… All that remained was shock.

The sun was just beginning to rise when I slipped out from under Ivy. I snuck to the communal bathroom down the hall and hoped no one saw. I had to piss like a racehorse and sneaking around with a full bladder wasn’t my idea of a good time.

While I was in there, I noticed how much cleaner girls were than guys.

They always told us, but I never believed it was true. Even now that I knew the truth, I still would never admit it.

Ivy was still sleeping peacefully when I walked back in. I watched her for a while because she was so goddamn beautiful. I wondered what was going to happen when I blew the lid off the truth. I prayed it didn’t ruin what was finally starting to feel real between us.

She was still wearing my shirt, and I wasn’t about to take it off her. My bare-chested trip to the bathroom was one thing, but busting a badie was another thing entirely.

I needed me some cotton.

I spied my old Wolves shirt lying on Rimmel’s bed, where I tossed it last night. I didn’t think I’d wear it again, but unless I planned on strapping on a bra and tank top, I figured this would be my best option.

Besides, she wanted it to smell like me.

Who could blame her? I was like a big piece of man candy.

I made sure my phone was on silent, locked the door from the inside, and crept away.

I decided a little recon—just to be sure I was right—was a must, so once I made my way to where I thought I’d find some damning evidence, I waited around for a bit, trying to concoct a plan.

But I didn’t need one.

A short time later, the suspect left, leaving all their secrets ripe for the picking. I walked down the hall like I belonged here and knocked on the door.

Several minutes later, someone with raging bedhead answered. I turned up my charm and smiled sheepishly. “I was sorta in here last night… right before you got home. I left something here.” I pushed a hand through my hair and tousled it around. Bitches loved messy hair.

The door opened a little wider.

“You mind if I come in and grab it? I’ll be out of that sexy hair of yours in a few.”

I was invited inside.

I shut the door softly behind me and looked at the rumpled bed. “My bad, you were sleeping.”

“I think I’m still drunk.”

“Well, go pass out again. I swear I’ll be quiet when I let myself out.”

“You’re lucky you’re so hot.”

See, before Ivy, I would have taken that as invitation and immediately tried to tap that ass.

But my random ass-tapping days were over. Now I tapped one ass exclusively.

Thank goodness for alcohol, because my accomplice started snoring—and drooling—the second she hit the pillow.

I spied a laptop on a paper-ridden desk and pulled out the chair to have a seat. The damn computer was locked with a password.

I rotated my head as I thought.

On the fourth try I got in.

DRAMA QUEEN.

Go figure.

At first glance, it was just a regular computer with regular files. I had to dig around, but then I hit pay dirt.

Seems the Boss hadn’t signed out of their email account. And computers had this habit of saving passwords.

Oh my, BuzzBoss, what full folders you have.

I started with an email near the top of the inbox. It was a letter from the dean, stripping away all access to the school Buzzfeed effective as soon as the school web system rebooted. There was also a threat to find out who this student was and have them expelled.

I had to hand it to the Boss if they were able to keep their identity from the campus staff.

Guess that explained the late-night notification that the Boss was being removed. But they had another system already in place. Seems they knew getting the boot was inevitable because the new account and the new texting system was all set up. It even appeared they were in the process of developing their own app.

I poked around a while longer through the emails of people sending in tips and reports of everything drama on this campus. It was amazing to me how eager people were to rat out one another.

I took pictures of the screens I thought would be good for evidence and then started backing out of a few open tabs. That’s when I saw it.

The folder of pictures. It was labeled
#Selfies
.

I clicked in. There was a ton of photos. Some were stupid and some were pretty damning. This was the kind of shit people got ruined over.

I scrolled all the way to the last row, only stopping once to make sure my drunk friend was indeed passed out. I almost missed it, but the fact it was different than the rest caught my eye. It was a folder simply labeled
Zach
.

What I saw inside made me sick.

Flashbacks from the night I interrupted Ivy’s dream, her calling out, “Don’t touch me!” in her sleep, flooded my mind. Those weren’t manifestations of her subconscious. Those weren’t nightmares just trying to ruin her rest.

It was her mind’s way of working through everything it was trying to protect her from.

There were over ten photos. All of them starred Ivy. She was half naked in a lot of them and passed out in even more. They told a story, if lined up properly. A story that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

It started out with one at a party; it looked like the frat he used to be president of. He was taking a selfie of a group of people behind him. Ivy was in that group. She was laughing at something someone was saying.

Zach was in the corner of the pic, much closer than everyone else, and the empty way his eyes looked was disturbing.

Hell, that wasn’t a #selfie. That pic was a #stalkie.

Then there was another pic, this one also featuring Ivy. Zach wasn’t the one taking this pic, though; he was in it. Much closer to Ivy, watching her like a lion watched prey.

The next pic showed Zach pumping beer into a cup while dangling a white pill over the liquid.

Another pic showed Ivy drinking out of a cup that looked just like the one in the pic before, while Zach stood beside her and smiled.

He was good at looking friendly. He was good at pretending he wasn’t rotten to the core.

The rest of the pics were harder and harder to look at. They all showed Ivy in various forms of unflattering positions. Her eyes were glassy in all of them, almost vacant and unaware.

They moved from her being fully clothed to her being fully naked. In a lot of the naked photos, she appeared to be passed out. And judging from the way he was posing her and beside her, I’d say she was.

I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from yelling. I knew I’d find some dirt on people in the Boss’s archives, but I never thought I’d find proof of assault.

The disbelief, wonder, and confusion in her voice last night when she talked about what she’d done with Zach all made perfect sense.

This wasn’t consensual sex.

Ivy was drugged.

And she was assaulted.

I shoved back in the chair, resting my palms on the desk but bending at the waist. Staring at the floor, I sucked in air. My girl was given the date rape drug. My girl was fucking used by a spineless, sick bastard.

I know I said death was too good for guys like that, but I amend my previous statement. Sometimes death was the only option. Zach needed to die.

He needed to die by my hands.

How was I supposed to tell Ivy what really happened to her? Wouldn’t rape be so much worse to recover from than what she thought was just a bad mistake? Should I tell her or just let her live in peaceful bliss?

This made me sick.

Utterly sick.

I hated men who took advantage of women. Men who thought they had more power than God. Men who had no idea what kind of carnage they left behind and how many pieces they left for their victims to pick up.

Put a lid on it, B
, I told myself. This wasn’t the time or place to lose it over this. There would be time for that later. Right now, I had other shit to deal with.

I sat back in the chair and stared at the images, thankful one of the worst ones wasn’t the one that ended up on the BuzzFeed. But then again, there was always next time.

I wanted to delete the entire folder so badly. I wanted nothing more than to pretend it didn’t exist. But it did and I wasn’t about to delete the proof that could keep Zach locked up forever.

So I emailed the folder to myself.

Then I deleted it. I went through every program on that computer to make sure those photos were really gone.

It took longer than I hoped to be in here, but I wasn’t going to leave it to chance.

Still fuming and slightly nauseous over what my girl had been put through, I decided it was time to end this.

I pulled up the program I’d already found.

I typed out a message and hoped the campus system had yet to update.

I hit send.

The notification went through.

I wondered how long I would have to wait for the explosion.