Raven answered it with a sinking sense of dread. "Before you say anything—"
"What the hell were you thinking?"
"I wasn't! I was just—"
"You broadcasted your location to half a million people. Yourneighboris all over social media. Do you have any idea how many think pieces are already circulating about 'Raven’s Village Retreat' and 'The Teacher Who Stole a Rockstar's Heart'?"
"That's not…she didn't…we're not—" Raven pressed her palm against her forehead. "Claire, I swear, I had no idea she was even there. The phone was on the mantle. I didn’t think…"
There was a long pause. When Claire spoke again, her voice had shifted from furious to dangerously calm. "You didn't think."
"Clearly not."
"Raven, this is a privacy violation. You recorded someone without their consent. In their pajamas. At gone midnight. Doyou understand how bad this could get if she decides to press charges or go to the press?"
"She's not going to—" Raven stopped. Actually, she had no idea what Annabelle would do. She barely knew the woman. "She wouldn't."
"You don't know that."
"I do know that. She's…" Raven struggled for words. "She's aggressively nice. She'll probably just…"
"Just what? Forgive you? Laugh it off?" Claire's voice was sharp. "Get your head out of your arse, Raven. This woman is a primary school teacher. Her reputation matters. And you just exposed her to hundreds of thousands of strangers while she was standing in your doorway in dinosaur pajamas asking you to be quiet."
The guilt hit like a punch to the stomach.
Raven sat up, running a hand through her hair. "Shit."
"Yes. Shit." Claire exhaled slowly. "You need to apologize. Properly. Not some half-arsed text or DM. Go to her house. Explain what happened. And for God's sake, make sure she knows you've deleted the video."
"I can't delete it. It's already been screen-recorded by about fifty thousand people."
"Then do damage control. Talk to her. Make this right." Claire paused. "And Raven? Stop doing Instagram Lives at midnight. Your impulse control is appalling."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"I'm serious. You're supposed to be lying low, remember? Writing an album? Not becoming a viral meme."
"I remember," Raven said tiredly. "I'll fix it."
"You'd better." Claire hung up.
Raven sat on the edge of the bed, staring at her phone. The comments were still coming in, faster than before. Someone had created a gif of Annabelle's gentle smile. Another person hadmade a compilation of "the top ten most patient people in the world" and put Annabelle at number one.
And underneath it all, a growing thread of comments about how "cute" they were together, how Annabelle was "exactly what Raven needs," how this was the beginning of some great romance novel.
Raven wanted to throw her phone out the window.
Instead, she got dressed.
BY THE TIME she'd rehearsed her apology, made coffee she couldn't drink, and paced the sitting room approximately seventy times, it was half past eight in the morning.
Too early to knock on someone's door. Too late to pretend this wasn't happening.
Raven grabbed her jacket and went next door anyway.
Annabelle's cottage was somehow even more aggressively cheerful in the daylight. There were flowers in the window boxes and a doormat that read Welcome! in swirling script.
Raven knocked.
