“Uh, yes?”
She’s been away from this for too long. She doesn’t know how fast things are going to spread. Was it Brody?I’ll ruin him.
“Where the hell is Janie?” I ask Hunter sharply, stalking over to him. I need my phone. I need to know how they found me so quickly. I need tofix this.
Hunter’s worried expression hardens into something closer to anger. “She’s coming,” he growls. “This isn’t her fau—”
“Let me use your phone.” I hold out my hand. “Please.”
Sighing, he pulls it from his pocket and unlocks it before handing it to me. It’s open toHollywood Hot Scoop’s website, which fills me with a level of frustration I rarely feel.Thisis why he wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings? Because he was reading this garbage?
I don’t care that my name is front and center of the article’s headline. Hunter isn’t my publicist. It’s not his job to care what insecure people are saying about me. He’s supposed to keep themawayfrom me and the people I care about. Not let them walk right up to me and give Donovan every reason to hide again.
Pulling up Hunter’s text thread with Janie and verifying that she really did say she was ten minutes out, I’m about to hit the call button to demand where she is when my eyes catch on the texts they’ve sent back and forth. Some of them were sentyesterday. While we were on the river. As my breath catches in my lungs, I scroll up to see they’ve been sending satellite messages back and forth all week. Snippets of their texts jump out at me as I go, but my tired and frazzled mind can barely comprehend what I’m reading.
…his anxiety is getting worse…
…Derek should go to therapy…
…he’ll have a mental breakdown…
…don’t know how to fix it…
…not going to tell him…
I messed up, Hunt. I did something bad.
“Derek,” Hunter says, his voice full of wariness. He’s clearly not going to pretend he doesn’t know what I’m seeing, and I don’t think he’ll try to excuse it either. He’s smarter than that.
“Derek, what’s wrong?” Donovan asks.
Ignoring her, I struggle to breathe as I keep scrolling. The texts go back way beyond this week, conversation after conversation about how messed up I am and how I need help but am too stubborn to get it. Conversations about how hard it is to work for me. How they wish they could leave but can’t because I’ll fall apart if they do.
With a shaking hand, I scroll back near the bottom of the thread and stare at a text Janie sent Tuesday evening, around the same time I figured out who Donovan was.
Janie:
I messed up, Hunt. I did something bad, and Derek is going to kill me if he finds out.
Hunter:
I know, J.
Janie:
You know?
Hunter:
I’ve known for a while, but don’t worry. I’m not going to tell him.
Janie:
You’re not? It doesn’t matter. I told them about her. This is going to break him, and I don’t know how to fix it. What do I do?
Hunter:
We’ll figure it out.
