“Okay. Okay. Listen. Look at me. Take a breath.” I followed Kate’s instructions. “We’ll go down there together, okay?” Kate put her hands on my face until I calmed down enough to focus on her.
“Yeah. Okay.” I sniffed.
“We’re coming too. I don’t even know what’s going on with shooting anyway, we were supposed to wrap yesterday,” Emma said.
Harrison shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He kept flicking worried looks at me.
“Look, Harrison, I’m not mad at you. This isn’t your fault. I just fucking knew. Nothing in this industry is real. It all gets tainted,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.
Harrison chewed his lip and nodded but still looked morose. I’d have to deal with him later, I couldn’t worry about everything right now.
Kate stopped me again and put her hand on my chest. Only a little bit ago, those hands were providing me pleasure like I had never imagined, and now we were dealing with this.
“This is why I kept myself from you. This part of the world is toxic and ugly and you’re too good for it,” I said.
“If it’s part of your life, I can handle it.” I let out a breath at her words. She couldn’t. She didn’t understand. Everything I had been holding on to slipped out of my fingers. I was so scared. So worried I’d lose her now. I wanted to numb the whirling thoughts. Wanted to make my brain not jump to worse-case scenarios.
“I’m okay,” Kate said. I frowned at her. “If you’re worried about me, don’t. Honestly. I don’t care what the internet says. It’s not real.” She gestured to all around us. “All this, it’s not real. You told me that, right? None of that stuff matters. But this?” She looped her fingers through mine. She watched me closely. “Right?”
“Of course it is. That’s all that matters.”
And I would do anything to protect it.
* * *
“Charles, this is an overreaction.”Sally crossed her arms. “It’s just gossip. Like we said before, it was all bound to come to the surface. You keep secrets, the press will sniff them out.”
I ground my jaw. “They didn’t have to sniff them out. It was handed to them on a bloody silver platter.”
“I think he’s just upset because of where these pictures came from,” Kate hedged.
We were back in Sally’s makeshift office. Emma and Harrison had been asked to wait outside when I stormed the metaphorical castle to speak to Sally. There was a security guard right outside the door, which only supported my theory that she was behind all this. Otherwise, why had she anticipated my reaction?
“I can ask around,” Sally said with a shrug. Like it wouldn’t matter anyway. Because it didn’t matter. The damage was done.
“I can’t believe this, Sally.” I shot out of the chair and paced. Kate sat quietly, watching me with worry. “I didn’t want to do this bloody special. Then you roped me and Kate into that utter bollocks with the game show and now this? What’s your plan?”
Sally let out a long-suffering sigh. “Again, you’re overreacting.”
“Telling someone they’re overreacting to a situation, doesn’t bloody calm them down like you seem to think,” I snapped.
She straightened, face hardening. “Nothing has happened that we weren’t fully anticipating. Frankly, the buzz is fantastic. The internet thinks it’s an epic love story.”
“Oh yeah? How about the article that accused Kate of stealing me from Emma and that’s why Emma was crying outside the club? Or the one that said Kate is sleeping with me just to get people to read her writing.”
Kate winced beside me.
Sally rolled her eyes again. “There are always going to be bottom-dwelling ‘reporters.’” She put air quotes around the last word. “They don’t matter. What matters is the hive mind of the internet, and they’re buzzing over you two. They love you! They think it’s incredibly sweet.”
“It’s not their bloody—”
“Charlie,” Kate snapped. She was standing at my side. “I don’t care what they say about me. Are you hearing me when I say that? I’m okay.”
I relaxed some as her words sank in, but she didn’t understand. This was a ploy or something. I couldn’t figure out the angle yet.
Sally gestured to Kate as though to prove her point. “If you could calm down, you could see that this is actually a great thing for your career. What’s left of it,” Sally added unnecessarily.
“I’m aware of my celebrity status, Sally. Thank you.” I glared at her.
