My stomach turned to ice.
I hit play. The footage was shaky, shot from a distance, through the barn door, probably a phone propped against something or held low. You could see the rain. The horses. Rose losing her footing on the wet straw. Me catching her. The way I’d held on a beat too long, and the way she’d let me, and then the way she’d pulled back and I’d let her go.
Three seconds. Maybe four.
In the comments, it was already a love story. Or a scandal. Or both.
Fraser Kincaid has a girlfriend???
Who is this girl she’s so lucky
They were definitely making out before this clip starts
She’s not even that pretty lol
I closed the app. Opened it again. Stared at the upload timestamp and tried to think through the nausea. Jamie had access to the channel. Jamie had been filming all day. Jamie had been glued to Denise in the lounge last night, the two of them giggling at a phone screen.
But thecaption. Fraser Kincaid’s Mystery Girl. That wasn’t Jamie’s style. Jamie wrote sharp, clever hooks, not tabloid clickbait. This read like someone who understood virality but not the brand. Someone who’d seen an opportunity and grabbed it not thinking about, or caring about, who got hurt.
It didn’t matter who posted it. Not right now. What mattered was that Rose was across the property, asleep or awake, and in a few hours she was going to find out that three million strangers had watched the most private moment of her week and turned it into entertainment.
And she was going to find out who I was.
Not from me. Not the way I’d planned. From the internet. From strangers. From a clickbait caption and a comment section full of people dissecting her life like it belonged to them.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my hands against my face and breathed.
Tell her tomorrow. Before someone else does.
Too fucking late.
Dawn came slow and gray. I showered without feeling the water. Dressed without seeing my clothes. Poured the cold coffee down the sink and made a fresh pot.
By seven, I was pacing my cabin, running through conversations in my head. Explanations, apologies, arguments. None of them felt right. None of them felt like enough.
I was still pacing when the knock came.
Not a polite knock. Not a guest-checking-in knock.
A knock that saidopen this door or I’ll break it down.
I knew who it was before I turned the handle.
At least, I thought I knew.
To my surprise, Kaya stood on my porch in the morning light, arms crossed, her dark eyes sharp and assessing. She was wearing her ranch jacket and a look that said she hadn’t come for small talk.
“Hey, Graham.” She tilted her head slightly. “Or should I say Fraser?”
The floor dropped out from under me.
“Kaya—”
“Can I come in?”
I stepped back. She stepped in, glanced around the cabin like she was cataloging the evidence of a sleepless night. The rumpled bed. The phone facedown on the chair like I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore.
“So,” she said, turning to face me. “Fifty million subscribers.”
