Call me NOW.
You’re screwed.
My thumb found a link in my agent’s message before my brain could read it. The video loaded, the volume down, captions scuddling across the bottom.
BREAKING: Manager of chart-topping band under investigation for fraud, embezzlement; HMRC and police execute warrants; assets frozen; sources say millions missing; artists blindsided. Developing story.
The thumbnail was Glen’s face. The man I’d put between me and good sense for over a decade. Walking fast under a gray sky, coat too thin for winter. Behind him, someone held a box of folders. A hand reached into the frame with a mic and his eyes flashed something mean and small.
My skin went cold and hot at the same time.
“Don’t,” Skye said beside me, and I realized that I didn’t know what to do.
It was the first time in a really long time that I didn’t know my way forward.
Panic tightened my throat. Anger burned my core.
“I need to—”What?I didn’t know what came after need.
She set her cocoa down carefully.
“Look at me,” she said.
I looked.
“You didn’t do this,” she said, her voice direct. “Youdidn’t. You were stupid, and loyal, and terrified to admit you’d hitched yourself to someone who would throw you to the wolves. But you didn’t do this.”
“I signed the papers,” I said. “I played by his rules.”
“You trusted the wrong person,” she said. “That’s not a crime. It’s a bruise.”
“I’m going to be dragged into it.”
“Aye, you will.”
“It’ll crawl over everything. Over you. I’m doing this to you. Again.”
That might have been the worst thing of it all. Once more, Skye would get her name dragged into the spotlight because of me.Why had I come here, bringing this to her doorstep? What had I been thinking?
“So we deal.” Skye looked up at me, a determined glint in her eyes. “Gran always told me to just crack on with things when life got tough. And I’ll take her advice here. With you. There’s not a thing to be done about the fact that you’re here, now, and scandal is breaking over your head. So we deal with it.”
“How?” I sounded more childish than I wanted to admit, but not for the first time, I was staring at the consequences of my fame.
“New house rules,” she said immediately. “Curtains down. You don’t open the front door. You don’t answer numbers you don’t know. You don’t go anywhere alone. If the paps come here, we call Esther and the Book Bitches, and they’ll do that thing where they become a wall made of ridiculous Christmas jumpers and moral outrage.”
“I don’t want to put you in it. Or any of them in it.” Though the Book Bitches were terrifying, they didn’t know what the paparazzi could be like.
“You don’t get to decide whether I’m in it,” she said, and my breath caught.There was my girl. My wildfire. “You brought the storm, but I own a roof. That’s how this works.”
I laughed, surprised, but beyond grateful. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Correct,” she said, because even Skye could be merciful in odd ways. “But you have me for the moment.”
My heart shifted in my chest. Hearing those words … “you have me” made my entire body heat with longing.
My phone buzzed again.
“Drink your hot chocolate,” she said. “Then go upstairs and pack a bag in case we need to move you to the flat above the pub for a day or two. It has good locks. I’ll text Harper just in case. Esther will put the pensioners on the lookout. We’ll draw the curtains here and you’ll wear your hat pulled low.”
