“Tell the sponsors we’re not doing follow-up content. Tell PR there’s no statement. And tell anyone who calls that Fraser Kincaid is not available for comment.”
Dex pocketed his phone. “Man, you’ve got it bad.”
“So what if I do? What’s it to you?”
“Everything. You got it bad enough to walk away from the best numbers we’ve had in two fucking years?”
I thought about Kaya’s words. After half a decade of struggling against prejudice, the town that had finally started to see Rose as something other than Silicon Valley money with red hair.
“It’s not about numbers, Dex. This is her life. Not a storyline. Not a narrative arc for the channel. Her actual life.”
Dex was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded slowly, the way he did when he’d lost an argument he knew was right to lose.
“What’s the plan?”
“I need to talk to her.”
“I doubt she wants to talk to you. That should be pretty clear at this point.”
“The least I can do is try.” I pulled on my jacket. “So I’ll give it a shot and take whatever she throws at me.”
“Literally throws? Because I’ve seen her throw a hay bale, and frankly her arm is?—”
“Dex.”
He held up both hands. “Go talk to her. Let me know if I need to go pack.”
He disappeared down the hall.
Rose deserved to hear it from me. All of it. Just the truth about who I was, why I’d lied, and what I was willing to do to make it right.
Even if she slammed the door.
The walk to Rose’s cabin took three minutes. It felt like thirty.
Her curtains were drawn. No lights. No sound. The kind of quiet that could mean she was sleeping, or could mean she was sitting in the dark sharpening knives.
I climbed the porch steps.
Stood in front of her door.
And knocked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROSE
I didn’t sleep.I wasn’t going to pretend I tried.
Instead, I sat on the floor of my bathroom with my back against the tub and my phone in my hand, watching that video for the thirty-seventh time like some kind of emotional self-harm. The footage was grainy. Shaky. Shot from across the barn like whoever held the camera knew they shouldn’t be holding it.
Three seconds of Graham catching me when I slipped. His hands at my waist. My hands on his shoulders. Our faces close enough that from the angle, it looked like something it wasn’t. Me and Graham hugging.
Except his name wasn’t Graham.
His name was Fraser Kincaid, and millions of people knew him, and I’d told him about my dead parents in a barn while rain hammered the roof, and the whole time he’d been someone else entirely.
I closed the app. My eyes were swollen and my throat ached and the tile was cold under my legs. I should get up. I should go to bed. I should do literally anything other than sit here in the dark,replaying the moment a stranger held me and I’d been stupid enough to feel safe.
