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And my world shattered.

The floor beneath my feet turned to quicksand.

I was freefalling.

My gaze panned back up, and our eyes locked.

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

Because hidden behind the photo of Tara and Reed…was the photograph of me.

Naked. Cheeks flushed.

Tangled in his bed sheets.

In her father’s bed.

“I…” Nothing felt real. I was in a time warp, trapped in a moment where everything stood still yet raced past me at the speed of light. “That was just…”

Tara glanced back down at the photograph, her eyes as wide as saucers. A gasp fell out. A croak. A horrible sound I’d never forget, like everything had just unblurred, and the picture in her shaking hand had come into full focus.

The truth held physical form and was devastatingly undeniable: her father was having a sexual relationship with her best friend.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed out, shellshocked, dumfounded, horrified. “You…you’re sleeping with him?”

My stomach curdled.

Nausea spewed bile against the back of my throat.

Weak, pathetic words squeaked past my lips. “It’s…it’s not like that.” My skin sweated, my hands shook. I swung my head back and forth as if to dislodge the photograph from her mind. I tried to reach for it, to snatch it away, but she wrenched her arm back. Tears blanketed my vision. “Tara…”

“This…this is you.” She jabbed the image through the air like a gavel against a sound block. “This is you. In my dad’s bed.”

“Tara,” I cried, choking on her name. “It’s not what you think, it’s not, I…” Sucking in a sharp breath, I voiced my confession: “I love him.”

Her eyes flared twice their size. “You what?”

She needed to know this was real. This wasn’t a fling or a charade.

This was love.

Nodding through my heartbreak, I swiped at my cheeks. “I do. I love him.”

“No…” She gawked at me, her gaze flitting across my face, assessing my truth bomb, wading through the cataclysmic aftermath, and processing it all with buckshot in her skin.

I stepped toward her.

She moved away.

My hand extended, a plea for pardon, as I silently begged her to see this for what it was.

But she kept inching away, plodding backward.

And with a sharp sob, Tara tossed the picture frame to the nightstand and raced past me, out of the bedroom, still clutching the photograph of me.

She darted from the apartment.

I stood like a statue in the center of the room, unable to accept what had just happened. I glanced at the discarded frame that was still filled with the original picture. Innocence veiling a deadly secret. I shouldn’t have given him that photo of me, shouldn’t have been so stupid to think that concrete evidence of our sins wouldn’t be uncovered.