He should’ve thought of how she would feel talking about her stalker before he asked her to tell him.
He was about to say forget about it, when she spoke.
“It’s fine. I can talk about it. I feel kind of bad for him. His mind convinced him of things that weren’t true. He’s getting the help he needs.”
Her compassion wasn’t surprising. He’d seen during the shoot, how considerate she was to everyone who was working around her. Even when the photographer was being overly dramatic and demanding, she’d taken it in her stride, and hadn’t looked annoyed at all.
Again, he was ashamed of himself for making the assumptions he had. Something he hadn’t done in the past, and it was only because he was angry at himself and his injury that he resented being given this job. It really had nothing to do with Indigo herself.
“How did it start?” he asked, pushing aside his thoughts. He would deal with his own self-examination later.
“It started with messages over social media. Nothing too bad initially. Just the usual ones about how he admired me, thought I was beautiful. I get a lot of direct messages. I read some, but I never respond. I saw all of his and didn’t think too much of it. That was my first mistake,” she said self-deprecatingly. “I should’ve paid more attention. Anyway, my lack of response made him mad, and things escalated.”
“In what way?” Logically, he knew stars, influencers, and even authors, got a lot of direct messages, and it would be impossible to keep up with them. Or even respond. To some people, it wouldn’t mean anything to not get a response. But, for others, the lack of acknowledgement was a personal affront, and became something bigger than it needed to be.
“They started to get a little more threatening. But they were never about physically harming me. They’d been more aboutruining my reputation. Telling the whole world how I’d ignored him. He then began to blame Zara, saying she was blocking me from seeing his messages. Saying she was deliberately keeping him and me apart. Zara, didn’t even see the messages.”
“Is that when you got the police involved?”
“No. Zara and I talked and decided that continuing to ignore them would be the best thing to do. She believed his interest would fade if I didn’t engage. Then a parcel was sent to Zara’s office. It contained a large, fake tarantula with a note saying the next one wouldn’t be fake but would be real and venomous, that’s when we contacted them.” She shook her head as if the significance of that delivery finally hit her. “It was a death threat.”
He moved and squatted down in front of her, placing his hands on her knees. “Yeah, Diva, it was.”
She rolled her eyes at the nickname he’d given her. It hadn’t been a conscious thought to call her that, it popped out. There was no maliciousness in him using it, he wanted to make her smile. “Diva, huh?”
He chuckled. “I guess. It slipped off my tongue, sorry.”
“It’s okay, I could tell you weren’t being derogatory when you said it.” She laid one of her hands over his. Heat seared his skin, and he gripped her knee a little tighter.
He should move. Go back to where he’d been sitting, but he couldn’t make his body obey. There was an intrinsic part of him that wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her.
He couldn’t though. As it was, he was crossing a line by touching her the way he was.
Pulling on his training and the ability he’d honed to push all thought and emotion to the very bottom of his belly, he stood and went back to his seat.
“What was the threat Zara got tonight?”
“Can I look at your phone?”
They spoke at the same time. Wilt shook his head. “I’ll tell you, but I want to look at your phone first.”
“Was it that bad?” she asked, as she held it out. He expected her to argue with him. To demand that he tell her what was said before handing her device over. “It’s open to the only platform I use.”
Wilt should’ve known better and stopped making assumptions about her.
“It could’ve been worse,” he murmured, as he scrolled the notifications.
Someone had tagged her in a picture from today, so he clicked on it. There was a flurry of comments, all saying how beautiful she was. Nothing bad or harmful there.
Others were tagging her in a collection of photos from her various ad campaigns. Again, the comments were all complimentary.
“Most of the bad stuff happens in direct messages. If someone says something awful on a post, they get lambasted by my supporters. I don’t ask them to do that. I’m not out to rally the pitchforks if someone says something nasty about my face or features. Or the clothes I’m wearing. And they’re mostly keyboard warriors thinking they know better than everyone.”
Wilt studied her for a moment. Her shoulders sagged, as if she was tired of holding them up all the time. Her hair wasn’t as smooth as it had been at the beginning of the evening, as if she’d been running her fingers through it while he’d been looking at her phone.
He should let her sleep. Tomorrow was going to be an even bigger day as they had to get the shots done and then head back to the mainland to prepare for a trip to the south of Western Australia in a couple of days to take some photos at a vineyard.
But he couldn’t go, not until he’d told her everything. He wouldn’t tell her that when he got back to his bungalow he wasgoing to do a deeper dive into her social media and search the dark web to see if there was any chatter about her.
