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Hell, I don't even have it on my own phone.
“I don't know what to tell you, Leigh. He's the one who took the picture. It's on his phone.”
“No,” she whispers, but her denial lacks conviction. “No, it's not possible. There's gotta be more to it. He fucking loves you, Thea. He wouldn't do this, I'm telling you.”
The first tear falls at her words.
I don't even feel it coming. It just rolls down my cheek without caution, followed by another, then another, until I'm crying a rainstorm.
God, I'm such a fool.
“It can't be anyone else, Leigh,” I sob.
“But why? Why would he do this?”
“I don't know,” I sob, head falling into my palm. I tear at my hair as I think, pulling at the strands until small clumps of crimson come away in my hand. “Must have been the money.”
She snorts, but there's nothing amused about the sound. It's dark, a little sinister, but mostly broken-hearted. She's almost as gutted about this as I am. “He wouldn't.”
“He said he was hard up for cash at the moment.” I sniff, my words barely audible through my crying. “Pictures like that go for a lot of money, Leigh. It'd be tempting to anyone if they were offered the right price.”
“I don't believe that for one second.” She's angry, pacing back and forth across her hardwood floors, going by the sound of her footsteps over the line. “I really don't, Thea. I can't offer you another explanation for this and I know that this looks really fucking damning for Cole right now, but I just can't imagine a scenario where he'd actually do this to you. There's more to the story. I know it.”
But I don't believe her.
What is it they say? The proof is in the pudding?
The pudding is currently spilled all over the internet at the hands of the only man I've ever trusted.
Numbness filters into my bloodstream like an anesthetic to the pain, shutting down my emotions and locking it away. I've never known anything but betrayal from the men in my life, but I never thought I'd know it from Cole.
But that's on me, I suppose.
I should know better by now than to trust someone so implicitly that I allow them to photograph me in a moment of such vulnerability and intimacy.
The phone falls away from my ear and drops onto the bed. I'm supposed to be checking out of the room in an hour before I'm due on a flight back to Oklahoma in three.
It's only after I've packed, cleaned up the vomit on the floor and gotten myself semi-ready for my flight that I finally find the courage to look through the extensive number of articles that have been published about me in the past twelve hours.
The headlines go on and on and on. And with every new article I read, what I can't stop looking at is the photo itself.
With my head tipped back to rest on the edge of the bathtub, parted lips and half-moon eyes, it's a black-and-white study of self-stimulation. Though nothing is shown explicitly, my nakedness and ministrations hidden by the water, it's glaringly obvious what my fingers are doing beneath the ripples.
That said, the photo isn't pornographic—not in my opinion, at least. It's erotic, sure, but in a secretive and intimate way rather than being overtly sexual. Perhaps I'm looking at it through a biased lens because I know that it was taken in a moment of connection, of emotion, oftrust,and I might even have found it beautiful under different circumstances. I might have even treasured it. Because it's a reminder of a moment I shared with the man who I thought loved me.
But I guess he didn't.
To him, I was just a meal ticket.
So, as objectively bewitching as the photo is, all I feel when I look at it is nausea and regret. The twisting in my stomach persists the whole way to the airport, so much so that I'm barely aware of anything happening around me.
The clicking and flashing of cameras doesn't register, neither do the yells of the paparazzi as I drag my suitcase over to the departures desk. The world is hazy, a blur of crawling shadows and dark thoughts.
In my hand, I hold a one-way ticket back to Tupelo, but I hesitate as I slide it across the check-in desk.
“Ma'am?” The desk clerk frowns up at me in confusion when my fingers refuse to release the ticket.
“Sorry,” I whisper, but still my fingers stay locked where they are. “Sorry, um, can I just have a second?”
