@whatever1234# Looks like it. She’s doing new content? #goodgirlsgonebad #slutty
@juicylucy hey @americaninparis let’s team up. Check your DM’s
@lifeinblue who is the guy? He’s hot. Not as hot as Rene…but he probably won’t take all her money #sucker #dumbgirlsgetwhattheydeserve
There was a roaring in my ears that had nothing to do with the crowd. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat.
I refreshed the video, two hundred thousand views.
“It’s going viral,” I muttered.
“What?” he tried again to shout over the crowd.
“Viral.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said, his face scrunched up in confusion.
“It means Liam was right. You are fucked.”
22
Nick
Igot her, shaking and white faced, out of that arena. I knew she was panicked and probably thinking of her life when that garbage with Rene blew up. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t Rene. I wasn’t going to hurt her.
Except you already did, asshole. Posting that fucking video.
I wanted to kick my own ass.
“I’m sorry,” I said as we sat in the front seat of my truck staring out at the wall of the parking garage. “I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. She sounded so beaten. The opposite of the girl I’d picked up for the game. The opposite of the girl she’d been the last few weeks. No. This was the girl on the bench eating the chocolate cupcake. Alone and devastated.
“Maybe no one in Calico Cove knows,” I said, hopefully.
“My sister was the one who told me. I guarantee people know.”
She put her head in her hands and I wanted to pull her closer, tell her it didn’t matter, but it so clearly did to her.
“We can come up with an excuse,” I offered. “It was a joke? We were pretending to be other people? You were blasted out of your mind drunk?”
“Those sound as plausible as losing my contact or getting lipstick on your neck in a dancing accident,” she said.
I laughed but she didn’t.
“Nora, if they know, they know,” I said more confidently than I felt, given Roy’s dire warning.
“Yeah, how do you think my Dad is going to react to that video, Nick?”
Not good. I might lose a finger. Maybe a whole hand. I was playing poker with Roy tomorrow, and it occurred to me I should suddenly develop pneumonia, or The Plague.
“Exactly,” she said, reading my expression.
“Maybe this is a good thing. We’ve got nothing to hide. We’re two consenting adults having a relationship.” I said, and she laughed like I’d made a great joke. It didn’t hurt, that laughter, but it didn’t feel great.
“Trust me,” she said. “Nothing about this is good.”
Yeah. That one hurt.
