I ignore all of them except Tatum and call her back immediately, tiptoeing out of bed so I don’t wake Declan. My voice is barely a whisper. “What the hell is going on?”
“Go toThe Cinnamon Grove Sun’swebsite. Now.”
“Shit. What is it?”
“See for yourself,” Tatum says.
My pulse thunders as I scramble for my laptop. But of course, because irony is a bitch, my bladder decides now is the perfect time to remind me who’s really in charge. So I end up in the bathroom, laptop balanced on my knees while I sit on the toilet and let go, multitasking like only a woman in crisis can.
Within seconds, the front page fills my screen and I feel like I’ve been punched in the face. Images from our wedding night. Our drunken vows. Video clips of the pop-up visit Chelsea Raymond swore up and down no one would see until next year.
I press play on one of the clips, my hands shaking. Chelsea’s voice comes through, clear and cutting. “So, of course by the time this airs, people will have learned about your marriage, but as of right now, it’s all pretty hush, right? What do you think your teammates will say when they find out?”
And then Declan—my sweet husband—pulls me into a kiss and says into the camera, “Fuck ‘em. I don’t care what anyone has to say or thinks about what we have.”
They cut it there.
The next part—the part where I rush to clarify, where I tell Chelsea we can’t be worried about what people think when we’re still trying to figure out what this all means ourselves—gone. The soundbite leaves us looking careless. Reckless. Like Declan doesn’t give a damn about the Strikers or his teammates, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I try to three-way in Eslin. Straight to voicemail. Over and over.
“Yeah, she wasn’t answering for me either,” Tatum mutters, frazzled.
“Fuck!” My voice cracks. “My father! I have to get to him before he sees this or gets word!”
I hang up with Tatum and call Daddy. No answer.
By then Declan is awake, hair tousled, voice rough with sleep. “Marlow? What is it?”
That’s when it all spills out—the video, the fallout, the timing, mother fucking Shaun Kennedy. My words tumble over each other, frantic, and my hands won’t stop shaking.
“Declan, I know me and my father’s relationship isn’t the best right now,” I choke out, “but he’s my best friend. And he needs to hear this from me. Fromus. Before some reporter shoves a soundbite in his face and twists it into something worse.”
He pulls me into his chest, arms wrapping around me with that unshakable steadiness that always manages to ground me. “We’ll fix it, Americana,” he says with quiet certainty, pressing a kiss to my temple. “We’ll go to him.”
And so we do.
***
Declan convinces me to wait for the sun to rise before ambushing my father, and I suppose he’s right. Storming his penthouse in pajamas wouldn’t exactly be the power move my image needs right now.
But when we finally make it to his building, the doorman greets us with an apologetic smile, letting me know my father left last night and hasn’t come home since. Panic spikes sharp in my chest. Where the hell was he? And why, when everything is blowing up around me, is he nowhere to be found?
The proud daughter in me wants to believe maybe he and Malina Matthews finally hooked up—that my meddling had actually worked for once. But, unfortunately, this isn’t the time to check in on the progress of my match-making endeavors. My life is currently exploding, and all I can do is try to keep the pieces from scattering too far.
By the time we walk back out onto the street, reporters are already gathering, cameras flashing, microphones shoved in my face. I duck my head, tugging Declan with me back into the building. There’s no way we can drive ourselves without the risk of being followed. So, I call my driver to come get us and Declan calls Matteo to grab his car so we can make an escape.
“Let’s head to the back entrance in the parking garage,” I tell Declan.
“Okay, and then what?” He asks. “Where are we going?”
In nothing but the clothes on our backs, I have our driver take us to the lake house at Lake Oconee. No one will ever find us there. And since no one ever comes until Christmas, it feels like the perfect place for Declan and me to hide out while we figure out a plan—how to face the fallout, how to breathe through the mess that just detonated our lives. And maybe for me to tell him about the secret that is growing inside me, literally.
But the second we pull up, I notice it—thin curls of smoke rising from the chimney, blurring into the gray morning sky. My stomach twists tight, unease clawing up my throat.
“Weird,” I mutter, more to myself than to Declan. “I wonder if Will or Xavier is here.”
But when I push open the door, it isn’t Will. It isn’t Xavier.
