Mr. Badass ✔

16 He's not that cold

Gemma's POV.

I wake up from a dream, pull off my eye mask, sit up quickly, and grab my phone.

It's only 9:30. p.m.

Panting, I reach out to turn on the nightlight. The warm, dim light suddenly fills the room.

I glance at the little braid on the nightlight, then pick up my phone again and text Luke: "Are you asleep?"

"Just finished dinner," Luke replies.

"Did you eat alone?"

"No. Eight pretty women approached me one by one, and we had drinks together. Satisfied?"

I silently smile, then type, "Okay, when you get back, I'm cutting off your dick, slice by slice, and turning it into sausage pieces."

I toss the phone aside, put my eye mask back on, and try to sleep.

But I can't fall asleep.

I pick up my phone again and type Dmitri's name into the search engine.

The auto-complete suggests "divorce."

I click on it and see a media post with a picture of Dmitri and his ex-wife, photoshopped with a long crack between them.

The woman's name is Sophia, petite with curly chestnut hair. Her background matches Dmitri's.

She once came to the University of California to find me.

I was in a café at the time, and she appeared suddenly.

She pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down.

I thought she was just looking for a seat and smiled politely.

Then she pulled out a stack of documents from her Hermès bag and tossed them on the table. "Gemma Dawson, Californian, 21 years old. That's you, right?"

I picked up the documents. They recorded my life in detail, down to how I won first place in a kindergarten swimming competition.

"And you are?"

She crossed one leg over the other, arms folded, "I see you're a top student at UC. Didn't they teach you any decency in college? How dare you go after my husband?"

My breath caught, and my voice stiffened, "Your husband is—"

"Dmitri," she smiled.

She glanced out the window, then looked back at me, her back still against the chair, chin slightly raised in an arrogant pose. "You didn't know he was married?"

"I'm Sophia, Dmitri's wife," she said as she stood up, slowly pouring my coffee over my hair. "Stay away from him from now on. Or you won't even know how you died."

The café was full of students that afternoon.

They curiously picked up their phones to take pictures. Before Sophia even reached the café door, the photos had already made their way to the campus forum.

Later, Dmitri found me.

He apologized, said he didn't know she would cause a scene at the school, and that he had contacted the dean to have all the photos removed from the forum and the internet.

He said my graduation wouldn't be affected.

He also said that if I didn't want to continue studying at UC, he could arrange a transfer for me.

He said a lot, but never, "I'm sorry for lying to you. I'm married. I have a wife."

In my final year at UC, I completed my studies under the judgmental stares of others.