After His Mistress Framed Me, I Disappeared Forever

My phone was buzzing before I opened my eyes.

It rattled against the nightstand like a trapped bee. Once. Twice. Then it didn't stop.

I rolled over and squinted at the screen. Three hundred and twelve notifications. My first thought was Dad. Something had happened to Dad.

I tapped the first one. It was a link to WharTea, the anonymous campus forum everyone at Wharton swore they never read.

The post had no caption. Just an audio file and my name in bold. *Sloane Carpenter.*

I pressed play.

It was my voice. Soft and breathless, from a dark room I knew too well. Then came the words I only ever whispered to Bryce.

"I— I l-l-love y-you."

My stutter. Recorded. Uploaded. Played six thousand times.

I scrolled down. I shouldn't have.

*Took her a full minute to get it out lol.*

*Elliott deserves a medal.*

*She stutters in bed too??*

Someone had turned it into a remix. Someone else had put a loading wheel over my yearbook photo. People used to call my face the prettiest on campus. Now it was a joke with a soundtrack.

I pulled my sweater sleeve down over my right hand. Old habit. The scar under it felt hot, like it remembered the fire.

---

The coffee line went quiet when I joined it.

A girl behind me held up her phone. She didn't even try to hide it.

"What can I get you?" the barista asked.

"C-c-c—" My throat locked. The word sat right there. *Coffee.* Just coffee. "C-c—"

Someone snorted. "Just hit play. It's faster."

I walked away without ordering.

In my ten o'clock seminar, the professor asked me about price elasticity. I knew the answer. I'd known it for two years.

"Th-the el— the e-el—"

Twenty heads turned. His face softened into pity, which was worse than laughing.

"We'll come back to you, Miss Carpenter."

He never did.

I locked myself in a bathroom stall and texted Bryce.

Bryce Elliott. The boy who lived next door to us in Westchester. Our fathers shook hands over our engagement when I was eleven. I fell in love with him at twelve. I never stopped.

*Did you see it*

*Bryce please*

*I don't know who recorded it*

*Can you call me*

Read at 10:14 a.m.

The reply came at 4:47 p.m.

**Lay low for a while. Don't make it worse.**

I typed *Do you still love me?* Then I deleted it. I sent *Can I see you tonight?* instead.

Nothing.

He didn't say he loved me. He never really did, not in words. I told myself he said it in the dark. In other ways.

---

By evening, a cold drizzle had started. It soaked through my coat as I climbed the back stairs of his fraternity house. Bryce always made me use these stairs. *So the guys won't talk,* he said.

On the second landing, his door stood half open. Yellow light spilled across the floor. I heard ice clink in a glass. Then I heard him laugh.

"You're not even a little worried?" another voice asked. Mason, his brother from the house. "That clip is everywhere, man."

"Why would I worry?" Bryce said. "It's not my bed she was in."

My hand froze on the railing.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I've never touched her. Not once." He said it the way he ordered dinner. Bored. "Az handles it. Lights off. He doesn't talk. She thinks it's me."

"Azrael? *Your* Azrael?"

"Who else would I trust with something like that?"

Azrael Stone. His best friend since prep school. The one who always looked through me at parties, like I was furniture.

"Dude." Mason's voice dropped. "Why?"

"Because if I break the engagement, my father kills me. If *she* breaks it, nobody can blame me." The ice clinked again. "She'll feel so dirty she'll walk. Then I'm free for Viviana."

Viviana Crawford. The senior with the perfect hair and the perfect grades. The girl everyone said had pulled a boy out of a burning warehouse once.

I touched my scar through my sleeve.

"That's cold, Bryce."

"It's efficient." A pause. Then the laugh came back, low and ugly. "You know what it's like hearing her try to say my name? Az says she does it in the dark too. *B-B-Bryce.*"

They both laughed.

I remembered an arm around me in the dark. The skin on the inside of the wrist had felt rough, raised, like old ink. Bryce didn't have tattoos.

I had noticed. I just never asked.

---

My back hit the stairwell wall. I slid down it slowly until I was sitting on the wet steps. I pressed my hand over my mouth so hard my teeth hurt.

No sound came out. For once, my voice didn't even try.

I don't remember the walk home. Just streetlights. Rain. My shoes filling with water.

In my dorm room, I didn't turn on the lamp. I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and held my phone in both hands. His last message glowed up at me.

**Lay low for a while.**

I stared at it until the screen dimmed. Then it went black.

I saw my own face in the dark glass. Dry eyes. Still mouth.

I didn't cry.

Ten years. I had loved him for ten years.

And every time I had finally gotten the words out, he had sent someone else to hear them.