Page 99 of Crave Me

I lean in, my palm pressing against my desk when I realize that it’s Wren. My Wren. She looks younger, thinner than she is now as she strips down. I click onto the image, certain I’m wrong, assuring myself it can’t be her. But as more images of her scatter across each monitor, I know it’s her face I see.

There is a GIF of her with her legs open, touching herself, the image repeating each time her head lolls back. In the upper corner, I watch her back slide against a wall as a man, who isn’t me, rams his hips and lifts her body.

At the center she’s sprawled naked across the bed, one leg bent, the other straightened, her preferred position when she sleeps. Comments as recent as a week ago are typed below: requests to meet her, remarks that she’s their favorite to jerk off to, and detailed descriptions of what each commenter wants to do to her.

Another GIF flashes to my right. In this one, she’s tugging on her nipples, mouthing, “Touch me, touch me, touch me,” But it’s the video at the center that shatters my world.

This image is more recent, her body more like it is now, thin, with definition to her arms and legs. Her face lights up as she licks her lips and smiles, those few and familiar freckles gathered along her nose and cheek lifting as she opens her mouth and . . .

“Alfred, sleep,” I stammer, barely getting the words out as I straighten.

Nausea and fury roil for dominance in my stomach. The room becomes a vacant hole, devoid of sound and depleted of air. Inside me, a storm born of those vile images of gathers momentum.

“She goes by a different name,” Ashleigh says. “Ivory O’Malley or something like that.”

Ashleigh’s words stab at my brain. Ivory . . . the name her Grandmother O’Malley wanted her to have.

My lungs are pained as I work through what I saw and heard. I want to break free of this mind-numbing fog I’m trapped in, find something to explain her actions away. But instead of finding a moment of clarity, of fucking reason, I remember her admitting how desperate she was for work when she graduated high school and how I wouldn’t believe what she had to do to make money. I stare at the screen protector as it passes along each monitor. It’s the one of me holding the Wren I know in my arms.

I don’t move, I can’t. Rage and humiliation prod me like blazing metal, branding me in agony.

I don’t know how long I stand there before there’s another knock on the door and John steps in. Behind him, the cluster of robotics engineers I am scheduled to meet halt in place, their enthusiasm and conversations dwindling when John blocks their passage.

He stands, frozen by the ire chiseled into my features. His attention hopping to Ashleigh briefly before returning to me. “Evan?” he says.

“Get out,” I respond, my voice unrecognizable.

He backs away. I barely register the sound of the closing door when Ashleigh edges closer. “I’m sorry, Evan,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, that wasn’t my intent.”

I shake my head in disbelief that Wren could ever engage in something like this. But I can’t deny the fact that it’s her.

“I’m sorry,” Ashleigh says again. “I didn’t know—” She clears her throat. “I didn’t know how hard you’d take this.”

“Get out,” I tell her, this time the words carrying all the weight of the devastation I feel.

“I don’t want to leave you like this,” she says.

I can’t imagine what I must look like, my pain as real as the day my father was buried in dirt, and remembering all the lies my mother fed him.

“Get out,” I repeat in that same dull tone.

I can’t look at Ashleigh, the images of Wren blinding me to my surroundings. The way Wren acted in the most recent image wasn’t the woman I recognize and love. Her motions were exaggerated and overtly vulgar, lacking the passion I’ve known so well.

I don’t acknowledge Ashleigh until she reaches the door and calls to me. “Evan?” she says, her voice shaking. “Did I . . .” She releases a breath. “Did I ever have a chance with you?”

I meet her face, thinking back to how easily Wren captivated me with her beauty and ensnared me with her charms, exactly as my mother did to my father to get everything she wanted.

“No,” I confess, despite it all.

She bows her head, carefully slipping through the door. It shuts with a small snap as my heart breaks away in pieces.