His shoulders rise and fall on a heavy breath. “Great. Good. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll be at the gallery most of the day. Call me if you need me for anything.”
“I’ll be fine. Good luck.” I give him a quick kiss. “I love you.”
He smiles, and for a second, all the worry etched on his face disappears. “Love you too.” With that, he walks out of the kitchen.
Later that morning, I’m going over color samples for Tao and Virginia’s decorations when the apartment phone rings. It’s Samuel informing me that Claudia is wanting to visit. I tell him to send her up. While I wait, I tidy up the table and place everything into neat piles. After a few minutes, there is a knock at the door.
When I let her in, I immediately know by her expression she has bad news. My shoulders sag. Every time I see her there seems to be more drama. What’s going on now?
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Claudia sets her purse on the coffee table and rubs her fingertips along her eyebrows. “It’s going to be bad.”
Chilly prickles pinch my spine. “What is?”
She takes a deep breath. “Maybe you should sit down for this.”
My insides turn to ice. Suddenly I want to cover my ears and not listen to what she has to say. “I’ll stand.” My legs are too frozen to move.
“I have a friend at Express Media, and sometimes, over drinks he leaks stories about what’s going to hit the press. Last night we were out, and after he had one too many cosmopolitans, he told me photos of…of…”
“Of what?” I encourage when she doesn’t continue.
She gnaws at her bottom lip. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”
My hands ball into fists by my side. “Spit it out.”
“He told me photos of you are going to be published.”
“What do you mean? What photos? I haven’t been in public in days or had any interaction with Darren. What photos could the media possibly have taken?”
“They didn’t take them. Someone else did.”
I scratch my fingers through my hair. “Claudia, you’re not making any sense. What photos?”
She clears her throat. “The ones in the forest. Express Media has them.”
For a moment, I’m confused, then it hits me. The breath gets knocked from my lungs. “Mynakedphotos in the forest?” Of course those photos; they’re the only ones I’ve taken.
Claudia nods, her eyes shimmering with tears.
Now my legs no longer feel like they can hold me up and I sink onto the nearest chair.
“I know how this is going to make you feel. Especially after what happened to you senior year. It’s going to dredge up old, painful memories.” Claudia doesn’t need to point that out. It already has.
I drop my face in the palms of my hands. This can’t be happening. How am I going to live through the humiliation again? This time on a larger scale.
I mentally shake away the initial paralyzing fear and try to think clearly. “This isn’t possible. Lucas said he deleted the photos. It must be a mistake. Could they somehow be the photos from high school?”
Claudia sits next to me. “He described a forest. The rain. No mention of a beach. They are the photos Lucas took of you.”
My head snaps up. “When will they be live?”
“In the morning.”
“Can we stop them before they’re published?”
“I’ve been on the phone all morning with our lawyer. There’s nothing she can do.”
