There was very little I wouldn’t be up for when it came to Jessy.
Warm tingles were travelling up my spine as I pulled my duvet down and propped myself up in bed. It was one thing to completely worship a woman I was swiftly falling in love with, but it was quite something else to fall asleep with her in my arms. The intimacy had been beyond anything I had ever known, or could have ever expected. Sex, yes, but closeness. Vulnerability. That was something else.
It was hard to believe she’d managed to slip out without waking me.
This was … this was so much more than I had expected. More than I had hoped for when I first admitted I was tired of pretending. Certainly more than I’d ever known before – I mean, Celine?
It had been nothing like this. Nothing like Jessy. This was so much better.
My phone lit up.
One unread message from Derek PR
I tried to think quickly whether Jessy and I had done anything last night that would have landed us in trouble – with Derek that was – and came up empty.
I opened the message, confident its contents wouldn’t be berating, for once.
Derek
What the hell is Jessy doing?
I blinked. What?
I read the message again, but there didn’t seem to be any obvious answer to Derek’s weird, cryptic message.
Jessy? What had she done? Nothing that I hadn’t done, but Derek didn’t seem to be mad at me.
He wouldn’t be up this early, he never was, but I tapped out a quick message that he’d see when he finally woke up.
Patrick
What are you talking about?
I locked my phone and allowed it to drop on to my bed.
Jessy. What could she possibly have done to stir Derek’s anger? Maybe there had been some faux pas I’d missed. Maybe she hadn’t smiled at the right person, or had smiled at the wrong one. I hadn’t seen her make any particular mistakes last night – probably because I was too busy ogling her the whole time.
Jessy was the sort of woman a guy could spend his whole life searching for, hoping for, but never actually meet. She wasn’t interested in what I could give her or what my fame could afford her, she was only interested in me, in –
My phone flashed with a new message. I picked it back up from where I’d dropped it.
Derek? This early?
When I opened our chat, there was no actual message from him, just a link. A link to one of the gossip sites he had made us promise never to visit. Apparently, there were all sorts of articles about These Exiles, citing sources that were less than reputable, and it was better we never let that sort of thing get in our heads.
Weird. What had he seen that was worth breaking his own ban?
I tapped on the link and, while waiting for the page to load, I wondered if I had any actual food in the flat – I couldn’t remember the last time I had done a food shop. Before I could make any breakfast plans, the page finished loading –
And my stomach dropped.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to be wanting any breakfast.
The article was an exposé, with a headline that made me nauseous.
GIRLFRIEND OF THESE EXILES LEAD SINGER CAUGHT CHEATING
I stared, hardly able to take in the words.
