“Excuse me, are you Rose Gracen? From the Fraser Kincaid thing?”
I kept walking. Faster.
“I just want to say, I think what he did to you was terrible. You deserve so much better?—”
I ducked into the subway entrance and lost her in the crowd. Stood on the platform with my heart hammering and my hands shaking and coffee splashing over the rim of the cup because I couldn’t hold it steady.
The Fraser Kincaid thing.
That’s what I was now. Not a rancher. Not a veterinarian. Not a person. A thing that happened to a famous man. A footnote in someone else’s story.
Fury called that night.
I almost didn’t answer. But Fury’s name on the screen still meant something, and Maggie had been after me for not taking his calls.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” His voice was strange. Not angry, not protective. Testing. Like he was choosing his words. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Liar. But okay.” A pause. “Have you seen Graham’s video?”
My stomach dropped. I’d seen the thumbnail. Seen it trending. Seen his face on the preview image, sitting in what looked like a stone kitchen, and I’d closed the app before I could press play because I knew, Iknew, that hearing his voice would crack something open that I wasn’t ready to crack open.
“No,” I said. “I know it’s out there. I haven’t watched it.”
“It’s called ‘Taking a Break.’ It went up a few days ago. Ten million views already.” Fury was quiet for a beat. “Rose, he went on camera and took the blame. For everything. The viral content, the paparazzi, the media circus. He said he was the match that lit the fire. He said he was the distraction that kept you from seeing the real threat. He told fifty million people that his content cost you your ranch, your horses, your life.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“He didn’t name you. Didn’t give details. But everyone knows who he’s talking about, and the internet is tearing him apart for it. Sponsors pulling out. Subscriber count dropping. Petitions to demonetize the channel. Articles calling him a predator. And he’s just sitting there taking it, Rose. Every hit. He’s not walking it back, not clarifying, not defending himself. He lit the match and he’s standing in the fire.”
I pressed my hand over my mouth. My eyes were burning.
“I didn’t like him at first,” Fury said. “You know that. I thought he was just a famous asshole who’d blow through your life and leave wreckage. But a man who goes on camera and destroys his own career because he thinks he hurt the woman he loves?” He exhaled. “That’s not an asshole, Rose. That’s a man who’s in so deep he can’t see straight.”
“He’s wrong,” I whispered. “He didn’t cause this. He wasn’t?—”
“I know. That’s not why I’m calling.” His voice softened. “I’m calling because you deserve to know what he’s doing. And because somebody needs to tell the truth before he finishes burying himself.”
“Thank you,” I managed.
“Call me if you need anything. I mean it. Anything.”
He hung up. I sat on the bed and stared at the wall and felt the ground tilt under me. Not breaking. Shifting. Like the foundation of how I understood everything had just cracked and resettled at a different angle.
Graham had gone on camera and told millions of people that he’d destroyed my life.
And he was wrong. He was so goddamn wrong it made me want to scream. He wasn’t the match. He wasn’t the fire. Denise was the match. Denise was the gasoline. Denise was the one who’d let the insurance lapse and gutted the accounts and brought Taylor in to take the fall. Graham was the man who’d fixed my fence posts and hauled my hay and looked at me like I was worth something, and now he was sitting in Scotland telling the world he was the reason I’d lost everything.
Because I’d told him he was a distraction. And he’d believed me.
I watchedhis video at midnight.
Alone. In bed. Phone propped against the pillow, the screen bright in the dark room. I pressed play before I could talk myself out of it.
Graham’s face filled the screen. Not Fraser Kincaid. Graham. No fake backdrop, no public personality. Just a man in a stone kitchen who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks.
