What if Flip decides I can’t handle the pressure of being hisgirlfriend and he breaks up with me? How heartbroken will I be then?
An hour into practice, there’s a knock on the studio door. I half expect it to be a reporter, so Arya opens it while I hide in the bathroom.
“You’re safe,” Arya calls out.
I poke my head out.
Arya is holding a box.
“It’s from Flip,” Charles explains. “There’s a card.”
I glance inside the box, which contains lunch from my favorite local bakery, chocolate, and a note:
I don’t regret taking care of you for a second, even if the media wants to twist it into something ugly. I promise I’ll fix this for us.
Xx Phillip
Arya and Charles group hug me.
“At least my dad hasn’t traded him.” Yet.
CHAPTER 46
FLIP
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t trade your ass,” Vander Zee grinds out.
My stomach is a mess, my mouth is dry, and all I want is to get back to Tally to make sure she’s okay, but I’m here, sitting across from her dad, because he’s my boss and I made a huge fucking mistake. “Because it’s not what it looks like.”
He glares at me.
“Do you honestly believe that I would deflower your daughter in the bathroom of a high-end restaurant? And then exit the bathroom with her wearing my shirt and me not wearing a shirt so every single person in the restaurant would know?”
Vander Zee doesn’t need to know what happens behind closed doors with me and his daughter, or in dark corners. My goal was to save her from public humiliation, which backfired spectacularly.
“If that’s not what happened, then what did?” Vander Zee compulsively squeezes a stress ball. His face is worrisomely red. I better not give him a heart attack.
“Tally got her period in the middle of dinner and bled through her dress.”
He blinks a couple of times, like this was the last thing he expected. “And you didn’t think to give her your jacket instead?”
“We tried that. Her dress was blue and my jacket didn’t conceal the spot. She was already embarrassed and uncomfortable. I wasn’t going to make her wear a dress covered in period blood home. So I gave her my shirt because it solved the problem.”
“You have to know how this looks.”
“I do, thanks to the way the media is spinning this.”
“There are pictures of the two of you all over the fucking internet, Madden. They are making my daughter look awful, and they certainly aren’t painting you in a positive light.” The stress ball pops out of his hand and bounces across the floor. “I warned you.”
“Don’t think for a second that you’re more upset about this than I am,” I snap.
“I’m her father.”
“And I’m her boyfriend. It’s my job to take care of her and protect her from shit like this. Now she’s in the middle of this nightmare, all because my love life is clickbait fodder. I’m doing everything I can not to mess this up because of the choices I made before Tally. I am very aware that she isn’t the only person being dragged into this. Hemi and I are working through a strategy.”
Every woman I’ve ever spent the night with who posted a photo is getting new airtime, thanks to this. And worse is how close they’re getting to my relationship with Fiona. If it becomes public knowledge, I’ll have everyone else’s unhelpful perspectives on why that relationship imploded the way it did.
And so will Tally. She’s already stretched to the breaking point and this won’t help. I don’t want Fiona to be the thing that pushes her over the edge.
