Devil's got you beat

“Fine, you win.”

Try as she might, Heather couldn’t think of a single possible way out of their current situation. If they used the recording of Hannah’s confessions she destroyed her family and Zack’s family. If they didn’t, Lisa was punished for a crime she didn’t commit, and her father lost his job. Weighed against each other, it was the lives of two people verses the lives of two families. Maybe she was biased; it was her father who was in the cross hairs. Hannah had made this personal and now all she really wanted to do was sprint across that room and put Hannah’s head clear through the great glass window wall.

They were trapped between difficult choices, with no way out except to make hard decisions. They’d **** Hannah’s hand and she retaliated, to survive, but her actions were still deplorable. Heather felt a surge of hatred towards her. For how she’d framed Lisa, for how she was now blackmailing them for their silence. Maybe it was justice. Heather had been indulging her desires, being consumed by her incestuous feelings, pursing and acting upon them without a care in the world. And here was the retribution. She could continue to indulge and be exposed, or remain hidden and allow Lisa to take the fall.

There was no way Heather could ever sacrifice her own father. Not for anyone. Just as Hannah had acted to protect her family, so now too did Heather act to protect hers.

“You’ll stop now?” Hannah clarified coolly. “You’ll keep quiet?”

“Yes,” Heather replied bluntly, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. She looked to Ashley, who looked as horrified by Heather’s response as the dark-haired cheer captain felt. “Let’s go.”

Hannah didn’t press the issue further. She sipped at her wine and watched as her sister and Heather left, Heather spinning on heel and storming from the room. Ashley galloped to catch up. She waited, still until she heard the door slam shut behind them. Then, she broke down. She collapsed in a crumbled heap on the floor as all the power left her muscles and wept as she held her head in her free hand. Despite her aloof and resolute exterior, Hannah had taken no pleasure in ensuring the girls' cooperation. She knew they hated her, and she hated herself.

In the hallway outside, Heather stomped towards the elevator, Ashley just falling in line as they came upon the doors. Heather jabbed at the call button with a single irritated finger. She took short, sharp breaths and stared straight ahead. Beside her, Ashley fidgeted with her hands, rubbing her fingers together. A million questions raced through her head but not a single one seemed like the right question to ask. In their anger and frustration, time seemed to stretch out but after what seemed like an age, the doors of the elevator opened, and the girls stepped inside.

“Shit!” Heather slammed the side of her fist against the wall of the elevator, the mechanism whirling as it lowered the pair towards the ground floor.

“What’s the plan now?” Ashley asked. Heather had agreed to Hannah’s demands and retreated, but Ashley couldn’t believe that she actually intended to adhere to those rules. It was a strategic withdrawal, Ashley convinced herself. Heather couldn’t be beaten.

“You heard the plan,” Heather growled, reluctantly. “We shut the hell up and pretend this never happened.”

“You…you can’t be serious?” Ashley looked at Heather as if she’d grown a third hand from her neck. “We have to do something. We have the recording. If we go to the police, maybe they can arrest her before she even has a chance to-”

“The moment she sees sirens outside the Palace Hotel, that video gets circulated. My dad's reputation will be ruined. No one will want to do business with a man who got a blowjob from his own daughter. He’ll go to jail, I might even go to jail,” Heather argued, leaning against the side with an outstretched arm. “Who knows if the company will go to Uncle Dan. The Ravers name would be all but ruined.”

“I don’t want to talk about that. I can’t even think about it,” Ashley closed her eyes and turned her face away. “Brandon and Madison, I can understand. They’ve always a weird closeness because they’re twins, but it was your own father. I can’t even comprehend how you can even consider doing that with him.”

“It’s a long story that’s been building for some time, but rather than disgust you with the details, let me put it another way. This will also completely shatter Zack’s family,” Heather said, noting in her mind that Ashley was right. The thought of sex with her own father should repulse her but it didn’t. Her love and admiration for her father had grown, been fed for many years, until she came to see him as everything a man should be, the kind of man she wanted in her life. And as she came to think sexually as she aged, her mind naturally turned to her father’s sex life, a facet of his world he’d never kept hidden from her. Normally a teenage girl might shudder to think of their parent as a sexual being, but Heather, admiring her father so much, instead of rejecting the idea, considered the fact that if her father was everything she wanted in a man in every other part of his life, then maybe he was all she needed sexually too. And being a Ravers, it wasn’t in her nature to settle for second best.

“When it comes out that Monica Bishop had an affair with Robert Ravers and even had his son, it will destroy her marriage to Zack’s dad. It’ll strain Zack’s relationship with his dad, and Robert will likely be in prison, so Zack would lose two fathers at once. He, himself, will be ostracised because of my father’s newly tattered reputation. Monica’s position at the hospital might even be in question, because who’s gonna want to have anything to do with a woman who fucked a man that was involved with his own daughter,” Heather continued, insistent and ****. “It’d be one huge shitshow from start to finish. Gregory embarrassed, Monica shamed, and Zack left to pick up the pieces of the fall out.”

“Isn’t that at least a decision he should be allowed to make for himself?” Ashley countered, trying to find some ground to stand on. She understood what Heather was saying, but she couldn’t accept it. Letting Hannah win meant permitting the things that Hannah had done in Ashley’s name. That, she couldn’t allow. “Zack and Lisa have history. Maybe he even still loves her. How can you be so sure that he’d choose his family over her?”

“Because it’s his family. Lisa can come or go, but his family will always be his family. But honestly, I don’t know,” Heather admitted with a weary shrug. “How can I ask him to make that decision though? It’s a lose-lose scenario for him. I mean, I hate to see Lisa get punished for something I know she didn’t do, but we aren’t that close, so if it’s between my father and her, it’s easy for me to pick my father’s side. Of all of us, Zack is the closest to Lisa, as you said, so whether he picks her or his family, he’s sacrificing something.”

“There has to be something we can do,” Ashley wailed, as the doors opened on to the lobby.

“There is. Again, we shut up and pretend this never happened,” Heather hissed through her teeth as they passed the staff. “This stays between the two of us.”

“You do know that Brandon probably heard everything?” Ashley reminded her. “I doubt he just stopped listening after he got the recording.”

“Fine, whatever, this stays between the three of us,” Heather corrected herself, pushing through the revolving doors into the cool evening air. “This is how this story ends. We tried, and we failed. It’s just something we’re all gonna have to learn to live with. I mean, it’s Lisa’s first offence. She’ll probably end up being sent to rehab and on probation. I feel worse for Carlos, because he’s definitely lost his job. Maybe my dad can get him a job in security at Ravers Enterprises or something.”

“I don’t think you can just deal with the aftermath and think it absolves you of not taking care of the cause. It’s like amputating a leg when you could have stopped it being infected in the first place. There’s something we just haven’t thought of yet,” Ashley insisted, following Heather across the parking lot. “And I say this as Hannah’s sister. I was conflicted about whether we were doing the right thing before we talked to her, but hearing how far she’s willing to go, the lives she’s going to destroy just to protect herself, it only made me more determined to see her face the justice she deserves.”

“Ash, I’m only going to say this once, do not go poking the hornet’s nest,” Heather said, firmed and pointed. “You won’t be the one who gets stung.”

The girls approached Heather’s car. Brandon was standing outside, leaning against the passenger door, still listening to their conversation through the headphones. As he saw them approach, he tugged the buds from his ears and turned to greet the girls, looking from one to the other. They both looked at him expectantly. Ashley had been right, he was listening to the whole conversation, and now they both wanted to know where he stood on the issue. With Heather, and defeat, or with Ashley, and her determination to persevere?