“Tall guy,” Fury cut in. “Scottish. Dark hair.”
My hand tightened on the phone until my knuckles ached.
Graham.
Was Graham just a name he’d made up? A mask he’d worn while walking around my property, eating my food, helping with my horses?
While I told him about my dead parents?
“Rose?” Fury’s voice sharpened. “You still there?”
I couldn’t answer.
The pieces were clicking into place now. Dex, the “creative director” who seemed more like a handler. The way the whole team deferred to Graham while pretending they didn’t. Jamie constantly filming on her phone. Everything suddenly made a lot more sense.
And he’d stood in that barn, dripping wet, watching me fall apart. Listening to me talk about my parents. About the parts of myself I never showed anyone.
He’d let me do that. While hiding behind a fake name.
“Rose.” Fury’s voice was gentler now, which was somehow worse. My brother didn’t do gentle unless things were truly bad. Fury had been the protector since the crash, since he was nine years old screaming for help in a car full of shattered glass while our mother died and our father was already gone. He’d carried that night in his bones the same way I carried it in mine, except where I’d turned inward and built walls, Fury had turned outward. He fought. He fixed. He threw money and muscle at every problem until it broke or he did.
He drove me absolutely insane, and I loved him more than almost anyone on earth.
“I didn’t know,” I heard myself say. “He told me his name was Graham. I didn’t—” My throat closed. “I didn’t know.”
Silence on the other end.
Then Fury said, very quietly, “I’m going to kill him.”
I should have argued. Should have told him it wasn’t that serious, that I was fine, that I could handle it.
But I wasn’t fine.
I’d let someone in. Actually let someone past the walls I’d spent years building.
And the whole time, he’d been someone else entirely.
“How many views?” I asked.
“Rose, don’t?—”
“How many?”
Fury paused. “Last I checked, about two million. But it’s climbing.”
Two million people. Watching me in my barn. In my space.
“The caption says you two were ‘making out,’” Fury added quietly. “That’s not what I saw in the video, but that’s what’s spreading.”
Making out. We hadn’t been making out. He’d caught me when I slipped. Held me for maybe three seconds before I pushed him away.
But someone had written that caption. Someone had taken a moment that meant nothing and turned it into clickbait.
“Who posted it?” I asked.
“Account called @fraserkincaidofficial. Sounds like your friend posted it himself.”
“I have to go,” I said.
