She darted her gaze his way. “You’ve been looking?”
“I’ve poked around a bit.”
“What are people saying about Liam? Are his fans still upset with him?”
“Seriously? It’shimyou want to know about?”
Her face heated. She must be a slow learner because she couldn’t seem to help worrying about him. She lifted a shoulder.
“It’s died down a bit on his end from when the story first broke.” Sean glanced away. His lips pressed together.
She knew that expression. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“I do want to know—in a curated, carefully worded kind of way.”
“The censored version?”
“Exactly.” Her poor, shattered heart couldn’t take much more. She waited with her stomach in knots for him to spill it, which he seemed in no hurry to do.
“In the past couple days the focus seems to have switched from Liam to you. It’s like people initially blamed Liam, but now they’re shifting the blame your way.”
Her way? For what reason? “What are they saying? Why are they shifting the blame to me?”
He studied her as if trying to ascertain whether he should tell her.
“Icouldjust get online and see for myself, you know.”
“No, don’t do that. The gist of it is, there are some people who think you took advantage of him instead of the other way around.”
“How?”
“Some people are saying you’re a gold digger or a wannabe or something and others are piling on. The whole thing is stupid. There’s a lot of speculation about what you got out of this deal—everything from a big payout to—well, you can imagine.”
His words punched her in the heart. “Nice.” That’s not at all who she was, and she hated that people were assigning such terriblemotives to her. She made enough money of her own, thank you very much, and she actually hated being in the spotlight.
But at least they were letting Liam off the hook. If they were angry with her, they might forgive Liam and not boycott him and his movies.
“Everyone who knows you knows none of that’s true.”
She gave a mock laugh. “Yeah, it’s just the other three hundred million people I have to worry about.”
“This will pass in due time, you’ll see. Some celebrity will go on a drunken rampage any minute now.”
“No doubt. Yeah, you’re right. I just have to ride it out.”
“I get it though. Can’t be fun having your name dragged through the mud. Ticks me off. I want to call up every tabloid I can find and set the record straight.”
“It would only fan the flame.”
“That’s the only reason I haven’t done it.”
She asked the question she’d been dying to know. “How has Liam been handling all this? Has he addressed the situation publicly? Made a statement or anything?”
“Not that I can tell. Seems like he might be hoping it’ll die down on its own too.”
She nodded. So he was hunkering down and weathering the storm just like her. At one time they would’ve done that together. This wouldn’t be nearly so bad if she wasn’t going through it alone. She rubbed the center of her chest where that stupid ache resided. How long would it take for these feelings to fade? For the hurt to stop?
