I Was Sold Thrice

After my intimate photos were leaked, my already terrible reputation sank even lower.

The guy sitting behind me gave my chair a hard kick.

“Hey, how much is Chase paying you? Give the boys a ballpark figure so we’ll know what numbers to quote when we throw some business your way.”

Muffled snickers rippled through the room.

I clenched my jaw until it ached.

I kept my head down and stared at my book, but the words swam across the page.

“For crying out loud, why are you acting all innocent? You’re not even particularly hot! I want to see what all the fuss is about. Just looking at pictures is no fun.”

Someone grabbed me by the collar and dragged me to my feet. Dozens of phone cameras pointed at my face, forming a wall with no way through.

“Get away from me! Don’t touch me!”

I desperately curled in on myself, but hands like iron clamps forced my shoulders back.

There was a sharp rasp.

My zipper was yanked open.

Something inside my head snapped.

The guy’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Well, look at that. You’re actually pretty...”

The jeering erupted even louder.

“C-Chase?”

The harsh scrape of desks and chairs suddenly cut through the room.

Chase Ekland kicked the guy to the floor. His expression was dark. His voice was cold enough to freeze the room.

“She may be discarded used goods, but they’re my discarded used goods. None of you gets to touch her.”

He draped a jacket over me and pulled me out of the classroom.

“Do you seriously not know how to fight back?”

I was still too shaken to process what had happened.

I stared at him in confusion.

Chase’s girlfriend, Fiona Kemp, had found the photos of me on his phone.

She refused to believe that he had no feelings for me unless he proved it by releasing every last photo.

So, Chase casually compiled them into a PDF and posted it in dozens of alumni group chats with over a thousand members each.

I could not understand why he was angry.

He was the one who had caused the entire nightmare.

Something occurred to me. I pursed my lips for a moment.

“Are you going to compensate me for this?”

My father had called two days earlier to demand money.

Without it, he would refuse to pay my mother’s hospital bills.

Chase stared at me with wide eyes. After a long silence, he spoke with a sneer.

“So, you’ll let anyone degrade you as long as they pay?”

So, he did know that what he had done to me was degradation.

“Heather, you really are a tra…”

Chase stopped abruptly, but I had heard it.

He was going to call me by my old name. Tramp.

My eyes began to sting. I immediately lowered my head.

Chase was the reason I was called Heather. He had paid my father $5,000 to rescue me from his abuse, then taken me to have my name legally changed.

“Forget it. I’m the pathetic one here.”

As if mocking himself, Chase closed his eyes for a moment. Then, he seized my arm and dragged me toward the curb.

He had noticed the bleach-blond guy by the roadside staring at us for some time.

“Do you like what you see?”

The guy froze with a cigarette between his lips. Then, he looked me up and down.

“Yeah,” he answered honestly.

“Do you want her? She’s yours. As long as you pay, she’ll do anything.”

The blond guy looked at us like we were both insane.

After a long moment, he suddenly grinned. “Sure.”

My hands and feet turned cold.

I had been sold again.

That was the third time.

When I was eighteen, I had scored 1,590 on the SAT and won a fifty-thousand-dollar cash prize in a national academic competition.

My father had counted the money and patted me on the back before introducing me to a man with a limp.

“She’s a brilliant student. Good genes!”

The man had been willing to pay $10,000 to marry me.

He did not care whether my genes were good or not. He only knew that women could give him children.