She nodded with false sympathy and leaned toward him, her guise of concern still on her face. “I’m sorry to catch you off guard, as I thought you were already aware of it. No one has announced the author of the book yet. Perhaps you know?”
“I don’t,” he heard himself say stiffly, but the words sounded like they came from someone else. His eyes darted to Claire, who was now arguing with one of the producers. When the man shook his head at her, a look of fury crossed her face.
“Could it be someone you know well? A family member?” the reporter pressed.
“I don’t know,” Winter repeated.
“Winter,” the woman said in a gentle, coaxing voice. “Tell me about your mother.”
His mother?
“Are you implying that she wrote this?” he said.
“Absolutely not.” Evelyn lifted her hands in innocence. “But the nature of the book feels like an inside source. Perhaps someone close, familial. I’ve heard you’ve had a rather contentious relationship with your mother. Is that true?”
“I’m not going to answer that,” he said, his voice tight. “And nothing anyone has to say in a book about me will be a surprise to the public.”
But Evelyn’s words had already planted seeds of doubt in his mind.Couldit be his mother? Had some company called her, talked her into doing it? Had she neglected to tell him? Shehaddone unauthorized magazine interviews that had approached her, had once given away one of his school notebooks for an auction without telling him, the contents of which were then spread everywhere online. The thought was too much to handle, at least in a setting like this, with thousands of eyes fixed on him and the shine of a Hawaiian afternoon suddenly much too warm.
He needed to get off this stage. He needed to escape.
The reporter’s sweet, sympathetic expression soured to a grimace. “You once considered ending your career early in your first year in order to take care of your mother while she suffered a mental health crisis. Isn’t that right?”
At that, Winter snapped. He moved as if through a dream, suddenly rising from his chair and stripping the microphone from his collar, yanking the device’s wire out of his clothes. The clip fell from his side and onto the wooden stage with a hollow clank.
Down in the sand at the side of the stage, Claire nodded at him and made a circular motion with her finger.
Let’s go,she mouthed at him.
The audience stirred, murmuring at the commotion. The reporter’ssmile wavered. She’d pushed him too far, and her demeanor quickly changed again, turning naïve and bewildered. “Mr. Young,” she said, “we are happy to move on to a different topic if that’s more comfortable for you—”
“Sorry.” It took the last of Winter’s media training to utter the simple apology to her. Then he looked straight at the camera and said it again, this time sincerely. “I’m sorry, everyone.” Then he walked off the stage.
The beach around him was a blur. On the sand, fans shrieked and reached for him, eagerly snapping photos as he strolled past, and he managed a smile and a wave for them before he reached Claire. She looped a hand through his arm as bodyguards moved into formation around them, guiding them along the path that led back to the main walkway where his car was waiting. Behind them, the producer tried to call them back to the stage, but Claire just lifted a middle finger over her head without looking back. Already, clusters of onlookers had started to shift toward his car, waves of excited screams accompanying them.
“I’ll take care of it,” Claire whispered as they climbed into the car. “I promise. Don’t waste your time worrying.”
He looked at her. His jaw clenched, his entire body still tingling with anger from Evelyn’s final question. “But is the rumor true?” he asked quietly.
Claire gave him a rare, pitying look. He knew that could only mean one thing.
“We’ll talk about it later. This is an invasion of privacy on a gross scale. We’ll sue everyone for all they’re worth, and we’ll win. Evelyn. The publisher. The author, whoever it is.”
Winter nodded numbly without believing her, felt his heart sink as the car pulled away. So, the book news was true. He hated to admit it, but all he could think about was the only suspect: his mother. And the possibility that she might have, once again, but as always, wounded him deeply. Likely without even realizing it.
Because it didn’t matter that millions of people around the worldknew Winter’s name, that they followed his every move, that they said they loved him. No one did so for free. To everyone, even his own mother, he wasn’t a real person—just a product to be used.
And products were easily discarded.
Getting back to his hotel felt like an eternal voyage. The crowd along the beach had been roused into a frenzy at his sudden departure, fans intermixed with paparazzi all crowding around the car, their questions muffled by the window glass into an incoherent mess. Winter hid behind his shades and gave them all a tense wave as his driver inched and honked his way through the crowd. At last, they reached the barricades lining the road, and the commotion fell away into the rhythmic sound of tires against pavement.
“We’re never returning to that show,” Claire hissed beside him as she typed madly into her phone. “I’m sorry I ever arranged it.”
“It’s Evelyn Dace,” Winter replied tiredly. “Of course we were going to say yes.”
She tensed her jaw, teeth grinding. “Do you know what that producer said to me when I told them to cut the interview?‘Think of all the headlines after this airs.’The audacity. Like we’re the ones who need headlines. And after that mistreatment?” She cut off, her eyes flashing. “I’ll take care of it,” she vowed again.
In spite of everything, Winter couldn’t help smiling a little at her fury. No one did revenge like Claire. “Don’t go after her entire family, now.”
