Lana

Two weeks later, as I reached the sliding doors after baggage claim at LAX, I paused and pulled out my sunglasses, bracing myself for the glare of the LA sun. Hopefully Matt would be waiting for me in the car.

The photographs of us together at dinner had been published online and in the tabloids. There’d been a mixture of coverage, but no one had identified me. It hadn’t been half as bad as I thought it would be.

I picked up my weekend bag and continued to the exit.

As the sliding doors parted, I scanned the waiting faces, looking for Matt’s driver.

“Lana Kelly,” someone shouted and I snapped my head around expecting David, although it wasn’t like him to shout.

I was met with a bright flash and I froze. What was going on? The voice got nearer. “Lana, is it true you starred in a porno?”

My heart began to thunder. Someone was accusing me of being a porn star? I couldn’t tell whether it was a professional photographer or some random member of the public.

A flash of light burst in front of me again and I tried to remember what Sinclair had said—keep walking, hold a semi smile on my face. But I didn’t feel like smiling. I wanted to know what was going on and I didn’t know where I should be going. I turned right out of instinct and tried to keep moving forward.

Where was David?

I wanted to get out of this place. My hands were sweating and my head was spinning. Was this what I had to put up with? Accusations of being a porn star?

“Did you break up Audrey and Matt?” It was the same voice as before but in front of me now. It must be a photog, surely a member of the public wouldn’t just accost me like this. My gaze hit the floor but I kept on walking.

Although Sinclair had warned me that paparazzi would try to provoke a reaction, I just wasn’t prepared for this ambush. Luckily I had my sunglasses on, or he would have seen the shock all over my face.

I had to get out of there. I couldn’t go back inside—security wouldn’t let me.

Before I could form a plan, someone was at my side, taking my arm. “Miss Kelly, this way.”

David. Thank God.

He grabbed my case with his free hand and we picked up the pace.

“You look like you’ve put on some weight since that naked picture was taken,” the stranger in front of us said.

As soon as he’d said naked picture, I knew exactly what he meant. Someone must have seen the photo Bobby had taken with me.

My knees weakened and if David hadn’t been by my side, I was sure I would have collapsed. Tears began to sting my eyes and panic rose in my throat.

How had he gotten hold of that photograph? It was five years ago, and even Bobby hadn’t been so cruel as to put it on social media.

David led me out to the waiting car. I fumbled with the door handle, desperate to get into the car, praying Matt would be there to put his arms around me.

David opened the back door and I scrambled inside only to find myself alone. I locked the doors and slid away from the windows. At least I’d escaped the photographer, but where was Matt?

I took out my phone and began to dial just as David got into his seat.

“You okay, Miss Kelly?” he asked.

I tried to smile and nod but I just wanted to talk to Matt. I called, but it went straight to voicemail. I pulled the screen from my ear to check if I had service. Four bars. I dialed again. Voicemail.

“David, do you know where Matt is?”

“At home, I believe.”

I wanted to ask him why the hell he hadn’t picked me up. Had he known the photographer would be lying in wait at the airport? I tried his number for a third time. Voicemail again.

I changed tactics and Googled myself.

I swiped down through the headlines.

Was Matt Cheating on Audrey?

Matt Easton’s New Girlfriend’s Porno Past!

Matt Easton’s Naked Love!

My stomach churned. I clicked on the first porn-related headline. As the page loaded, the familiar photograph of me, lying on the bed, facing my then boyfriend, came into view.

I couldn’t breathe.

My worst nightmare had become reality. The media had gotten a hold of the picture Bobby had littered around campus. Except now my humiliation wasn’t confined to a few thousand college students and teachers. This had spread across the internet. Anytime someone searched for Matt Easton, this would come up.

And where was Matt? I needed him by my side. I slumped back in my seat and stared at my phone, willing him to call. The screen remained blank and my palm hot and sweaty.

The ride to Matt’s seemed to be over in just a couple of minutes and, as the wooden gates opened, I craned my neck, hoping to see him in the driveway, waiting for me. But he wasn’t there. Was he even home?

I climbed out of the car and loitered as David took my bag from the trunk. I followed him as he unlocked the door to the house and placed my bag inside.

“Thanks so much, David.” I smiled, trying to pretend that Matt not being here to greet me was normal. Where was he? Was it possible that he hadn’t seen my picture on the internet?

David shut the door behind him and voices drifted in from the patio. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been here before, but I still felt a little uncomfortable as I made my way through the living area and out onto the patio where Sinclair and Matt were seated around a large wooden table. Matt snapped his head around as the door clunked behind me.

“Lana!” Instead of the broad grin that normally lit up his face when he saw me, he drew his eyes together. I realized he knew. I’d been able to hold off the tears until then but realizing he’d known made it more real somehow. He strode toward me, leaving Sinclair at the table.

“Lana, thank God you’re here.” He cupped my face and I sagged against his hard, warm body. “I have some difficult news to share.”

He drew in a deep breath.

“There was a photographer at the airport,” I said. My voice was quiet. Why was Sinclair here? I wanted it to be just Matt and me. I didn’t want my pain to be public.

“Fuck,” Matt replied and pulled me against him. “I didn’t come to pick you up because I thought I might lead them to you. I’m so sorry. What did he say?”

“I saw the stuff on the internet. They have the picture of me.”

He nodded and pulled me closer. “Oh God, Lana. I wanted to be the one to tell you.”

Eventually, his grip on me loosened. “Sinclair’s here to help us deal with this,” he said and took my hand. We headed toward the table.

“It will all blow over in a couple of days.” Sinclair shrugged. “The less attention we give it the better. I keep telling Matt the same thing.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Sinclair,” Matt said, and I squeezed his hand, appreciating the support.

“My advice is still the same as it was two weeks ago. Ignore it,” Sinclair replied.

I looked up at Sinclair. “What do you mean two weeks ago? At Chateau Marmont? Surely this is different? I didn’t expect the press to get hold of these old pictures.”

Sinclair seemed to disregard me and stared at Matt. I glanced across at Matt and he was glaring at Sinclair. There was something they weren’t telling me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to get a lot worse.

Matt pushed his free hand through his hair. “We hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” My heart began to beat against my ribcage. I clearly wasn’t getting the whole story.

“You both need to tell me what’s going on.”

Matt sat back in his chair. “Can I get you a drink?”

I twisted in my seat so I was facing him. “No thank you. I just want to know what you mean by you hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Did you suspect that Bobby would leak the picture?”

Sinclair began to speak. “About two weeks ago, right after you went to Chateau Marmont, Bobby approached me with an offer. Your photograph, in exchange for a lot of money. He threatened to sell it to a tabloid if we didn’t agree.”

I tried to swallow but my throat was too tight. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. More betrayal by Bobby but this time on a far grander scale. How had I not realized he was such a worthless human being?

“Sinclair, why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. I turned to Matt. “Did you know about this?” It would be one thing if Bobby had contacted Sinclair and he’d handled it without saying anything to Matt, but another thing entirely if Matt had known and hadn’t said anything. But surely he wouldn’t do that to me.

He nodded. “Sinclair told me and I asked him to handle it. I’d hoped it would go away and you’d never have to find out about it.”

“You both knew and didn’t warn me?” I twisted my hand out of Matt’s. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How had Matt known about this and kept it from me? We were meant to be a team. I pushed my chair back from the table and put my head in my hands. My life was being managed by two people without me knowing anything about it. And the whole world had seen me naked.

Matt smoothed his hand across my back but I shrugged it off. I didn’t want him touching me. We’d spoken every day. How many times had he called me right after he’d been talking about me with Sinclair?

“Sinclair is really experienced at handling these kind of situations. It’s what I pay him for. It’s just that Bobby got impatient and went with an offer from that internet gossip site. Your ex is a real scumbag, Lana.”

“I know that. But I thought you were different.”

“Hey, I know you’re upset. We’ve been trying to make this situation better.” He tried to pull me onto his lap as he’d done a hundred times but I pushed against him with my fisted hands.

“No,” I snapped and he released me.

“We can handle this,” Matt said, stroking my hair. “Like Sinclair said, this is an old college photo. No one will remember in a week. And this is as bad as it will get. There’s nothing more to find. You’re over the worst of it now.”

“Over the worst of it? You don’t think I’ll live the rest of my life knowing there are stories on the internet calling me a porn star? I didn’t sign up for this shit. There’s no upside for me. You have a career and a bright future. What do I get for having my personal life exposed to the world?”

Bobby’s betrayal paled into insignificance compared to Matt keeping such important things from me. He didn’t understand why I was so upset. At him. “How could you have kept this from me? Why didn’t you tell me this was happening?” I scraped my fingers through my hair and looked at him.

“I wanted to protect you. We thought it would come to nothing. We thought we’d pay Bobby off and that would be the end of it.”

I slumped back in my chair. I’d never have thought Matt would be so secretive.

“Were you ever going to say anything?” This was my life, my reputation, my worst fears coming to life and everyone had known about it and hadn’t warned me. “The photograph was of me.”

“I didn’t want to concern you with it. You were worried enough about going to Chateau Marmont. Then that went so well, even better than I’d hoped. I didn’t want this to trouble you if it turned out to be nothing.” His brow was furrowed as if he was totally confused as to why I might be upset with him.

“So you lied?” I asked.

“I didn’t lie,” he snapped.

“You didn’t tell me the truth, either.” I didn’t understand why he thought that it was okay to keep information about me secret. He was supposed to be the good guy. The guy I could trust.

“This is Sinclair’s job. He’s the best. What good would it do for you to have known? There’s nothing that you could have done.”

“That’s not the point. The fact is it was my picture, my problem. At the very least I could have prepared myself for being accosted at LAX by a paparazzo.”

Matt winced.

“Lana, I promise you, in a week’s time, this will be old news. You don’t need to get yourself so worked up,” Sinclair said. “There are a hundred stories like this every day. No one will remember tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “There’s only one story that involves me. One that my boyfriend and his publicist lied to me about.” I stood and the chair scraped against the stone patio. “And I just don’t understand why. Is it because my thoughts and feelings just don’t matter? Or is it because you’ve been so focused on the fallout for you and your career that I’ve just been abandoned by the roadside like I’m worthless?”

“What?” Matt asked. “That’s not it at all. I’ve been trying to protect you, keep you away from all this Hollywood bullshit. It’s an easy fix as far as my career is concerned.”

“Oh, well I’m glad I’m not too much of a burden.” I laughed bitterly.

As Matt stood, his chair fell backward. “Lana, come on. We were just trying to make this better.”

“But that’s not your job.”

He swiped his hand through his hair. “It’s exactly my job. You said it yourself. That we’re in this together, that you could only do this with me by your side.”

I nodded. “That’s right. By my side, not out in front. Not by filtering what I can see, especially not when it’s about me.”

“It could have been so much worse. This is nothing,” Sinclair said.

“It’s nothing to you, because you’re thinking about Matt’s image. About his career.”

Sinclair shrugged. “That’s what I’m paid to do.”

I turned to Matt. “You might be happy to have other people run your life for you, but that’s not who I am.”

“Hey, people don’t run my life. Sinclair is here to help.”

“They don’t? Then why haven’t you optioned that book you loved so much? Is this your career or Brian’s or Sinclair’s or whoever else is on the payroll, making decisions about your future?”

I turned and headed back into the house. I had no idea where I was going to go. I was locked in some kind of LA prison. Would David still be in the driveway? But I knew I wanted to be away from Matt, from Sinclair, from all the cover-ups and scandal. I wanted to go home.

“Hey,” Matt said, catching up with me and grabbing my arm.

I twisted away from him. “Let me go.” I kept walking across the marble floors toward the front door.

“So, that’s it? You’re just going to leave?”

“What is there to say? You don’t even understand why I’m upset.”

“Of course I do. Having those photos leak is your worst nightmare coming true.”

I paused. A few weeks ago, if anyone had asked me what was the worst thing that could happen to me, Bobby selling my picture to a tabloid would have taken the gold medal. But now that it had happened, I realized there was something far more damaging. “No. Having my boyfriend lie to me, having the person I risked everything for treat me as a problem to solve, rather than his equal, is far worse.”

The echo of Matt swearing was all I heard as I opened the door and strode into the drive. Thankfully, David was still there, washing the car. “Can you take me to LAX?” I asked.

David glanced behind me to where Matt lingered in the doorway. “Sure, Miss Kelly.” He dropped his hose and unlocked the car.

“Don’t go,” Matt shouted as he came up behind me. “Stay. I want to work this out.”

I took a deep breath. But what about what I wanted? For this not to have happened. For us to have dealt with it together. “I want to leave. It’s not always about what you want,” I said, putting my purse on the back seat.

“Don’t run, Lana. We can face this side by side if you just stay. You can’t run away and hide from problems your whole life.”

“I’m not running. I’m going home.”

He sighed behind me. “Are you sure? Are you certain you’ve not just been waiting for an opportunity to leave me? This relationship? Isn’t this just convenient?”

I spun around to see if he was serious. “You think I’d wait until the internet had called me a porn star if I planned to run?” How could he say something like that just to deflect attention from what he’d done? “I’ve faced my worst fears, risked everything for you. And you don’t think enough of me to tell me the truth.”

“I was trying to protect you. And I’m sorry. But don’t leave. Not now.” His hands snaked around my waist. “If you don’t want to be in LA, then I’ll come to Maine.”

Part of me wanted to say yes. I wanted to rewind and relive those moments locked in our Worthington bubble where we were just two people enjoying a thunderstorm.

“Lana, I want to make this better.”

There was no way he could. If only he could have been the man I thought he was, the man I’d agreed to give up my anonymity for. But he’d turned out to be someone entirely different and no one I could trust.

“I need to leave. Don’t come to Maine.” Matt’s presence would bring more attention, not less. And I wanted to disappear.

I wasn’t running. I just wanted to go home.

To wave at Polly Larch as she walked her cat.

To hear the sound of the ocean as I sat on my porch.