Page 6 of The B Side

She kept walking.

“Darcy!” The photographer who’d cut her off moved alongside her, kicking up the agitation already boiling through her.

She walked faster, but he matched her pace, even as the others fell back several feet. Small blessings, she supposed.

“Just one comment, then, give me one comment.” God, she hated the sound of smarmy paparazzi men begging for more attention. “What do you have to say in response to the fact that you’re a predatory adulteress?”

Darcy stopped so abruptly that he nearly walked into her.

“What?”

The photographer lowered his camera just enough for her to see his grin that she’d finally responded to him.

“Oh, people are talking.” He raised the camera again. “Wasn’t she with Robbie when this started? And that’s why you hid it? You came along, a lesbian from the sticks, started worming your way in, working together…”

Something hot crawled up Darcy’s neck. Something ugly and sickening curled low in her stomach, burning up the back of her throat.

“Back. Off,” she gritted out.

He, unsurprisingly, didn’t. “Come on, Darcy. You’re a public figure.”

“That doesn’t mean you can–”

“Predatory Lesbian Corrupts Country’s Sweetheart – the headline writes itself, really. She brings her lover’s career down just as swiftly as her own ended.”

The words landed harder than the cameras.

Darcy set her jaw, doing her best to ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Even though it went against everything inside of her. Every piece of her that had always had to fight her own battles, and there had always been battles to be fought. From the bullies and mean girls in school, to the drunk, handsy men in the bar.

“That's what they’re calling you online,” the man said, continuing to keep pace with her. “Is it the truth?”

“No,” she bit back, regretting it instantly. She bit her inner cheek so hard, it hurt.

He stepped closer.

Close enough that Darcy could smell coffee on his breath. Coffee that he’d obviously been given the time and grace to drink this morning, unlike her. Something about that smarted even harder inside of her.

He was close enough that his camera was almost literally touching her face.

“Then tell us what happened, then,” he pushed. “Tell us what kind of person you really are. Tell us the full story, the timeline. Tell us your side. If you want your version of events out there, you’ll have to give it to me.”

His phrasing rankled, hitting against that part inside of her from her past at the bar. Like she owed him – like she owed anyone, any man – anything.

“Get away from me,” she growled out, especially when she realized he was so close now that he had her essentially boxed in against the six-foot-tall privacy fence at her back.

It pinged at a place she hadn’t felt ringing in a very long time. The last time had been Bill Hooke the year before they’d released their album, when he’d cornered her, closing her in. Making her feel claustrophobic and unnerved. Telling her what she owed him in order to progress. In order to make her life better, easier.

Her heart pounded harder, the fear licking coldly through her, before it shifted into something else. Something darker, edgier. Something in her that had long decided she wouldn’t let herself be intimidated in situations like this, and that she would instead fight back.

The photographer raised his camera again, so fucking close to her.

“Come on, Darcy, give me–” When he moved to aim the camera, he miscalculated, and it hit her cheek, and – and that was it.

“I’m not giving you anything,” she shot back, dropping the coffees she’d been clutching in her hands. “And I told you to get the fuck away from me.”

As if on autopilot, channeling the life she’d led before all of this – before paparazzi stalking her on the streets of the Hollywood Hills – she shoved him. The contact on her palms was solid and made her feel good, just for a few seconds. Because he wasn’t here, cornering her in, anymore.

She hadn’t pushed him hard enough to knock him down, mostly because she hadn’t hooked her foot behind his ankle when she’d done it. In Darcy’s opinion, she’d done him a fucking favor.