The crowd ate it up. Sympathy spread like wildfire, and every ounce of it turned into venom aimed at me.
"She's the other woman and she's making the real girlfriend kneel? The audacity!"
"Someone find out who she is. Shameless homewrecker. Didn't your mother teach you any decency?"
The insults multiplied, voices overlapping, growing louder.
I was the victim. I had always been the victim. And now, in the span of sixty seconds, I had become the villain.
I stared straight at Curtis, waiting for him to say something. To correct this. To tell the truth.
"Willow, stop making a scene. I'll explain everything later."
I hadn't said a single word. Not one. And somehow, in his eyes, I was the one causing trouble.
A bitter laugh escaped me. My hand shot up before I could think.
But Lena moved faster. She stepped right into the path of my palm, and the slap landed squarely across her cheek.
She staggered, the left side of her face already swelling red.
Curtis lunged forward. Without hesitation, without even looking at me, he shoved me to the ground. His eyes were ice.
"You're the bastard child of a homewrecker. What gives you the right to lay a hand on anyone?"
Lena lifted her chin, triumph barely concealed behind her wounded expression.
"Your mother was the other woman. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it? And now here you are, trying to steal my Curtis."
"Oh, wait. I almost forgot." She tilted her head, feigning surprise. "Didn't I hear that you seduced your own stepbrother when you were just a girl? How depraved."
My entire body shook. I turned to Curtis, searching his face for something. Shock. Denial. Anything.
There was nothing.
My mother had been drugged by a factory owner when she was young. That was how she got pregnant with me. She carried the label of homewrecker for years, a lie branded onto her by people who never cared to learn the truth. None of it stopped her from pouring every last drop of herself into loving me.
When money ran out, she remarried so we could survive. She had no way of knowing that her new stepson was a monster wearing a human face. The moment she left the house, he forced himself on me.
I had told Curtis all of this. Every detail. When we first started dating, I laid myself bare because I believed that real love meant no secrets. I told him how much I despised the very concept of being the other woman, and why.