I didn’t do it.

I never betrayed my friend.

Of course, that’s what I’m supposed to say. Expected to say. For the last six months, it feels like all I’ve said. When you’re Jane Borokov, persona non grata, shamed by the media for your role in aiding and abetting three rapists who kidnapped and tortured Senator Harwell Bosworth’s daughter, every word you utter in public is repeated.

Ad nauseum.

Just because the press repeats what you say, though, doesn’t mean anyone believes you.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Santa Barbara, hiding out on the patio. I have a new haircut and color, a frame of layers around my face that glitters in the sunlight. Highlights and lowlights for a redhead make me look older than I am. Long gone is my long hair. I had to shed it, along with my dignity, six months ago.

Along with everything I knew about my life.

If you didn’t know any details about me and you observed me right here, right now, you’d see a twenty-three-year-old woman sipping from a small white coffee mug, sitting at a black wrought iron table in an uncomfortable metal chair, watching the surf come in. You’d see a woman in a billowing white shirt over a long jersey maxidress with diagonal stripes, red and white and blue, the colors of the flag.

The colors of true patriots. Of people who defend our government from all enemies, foreign–and domestic.

You’d see she was wearing silver sandals on her feet and big silver hoops in her pierced ears. She’d sip slowly, gazing at the horizon, and you’d think she was the picture of California cool, relaxed and casual, waiting for the next good thing in life to roll on in.

You would be wrong.

You would also miss the guy sitting two tables over, wearing chinos that hug his body just right, a casual, long-sleeved grey lycra half-zip shirt over a tight white t-shirt. The cloth that covers his muscular, athletic body is just loose enough to hide his weapon, and his dark brown hair is longer than most guys like him would wear it.

He’s tan, with an almost too upright posture, the kind that screams Mormon missionary or former military. At a glance, he has a slight sunburn on his cheeks, just the tops, like he was playing at the beach yesterday and got a little too much sun.

He looks like an ambitious go-getter, one of the tens of thousands of guys who live on the Coasts, starting companies, managing other people’s money, working at corporations in LA and San Diego.

But that hair. It doesn’t fit the image.

It’s just long enough around the ears to hide his earpiece.

You might think he’s on Bluetooth, taking a conference call. Maybe you’d assume he’s working for a start-up in Silicon Valley, multitasking while drinking a Red Bull or a trendy Bulletproof coffee.

You would be wrong again.

Appearances are deceiving.

So are people.

My phone buzzes, vibrating in my pocket. I never turn the ringer on now. Never. Anything that draws attention to me has been weeded out of my life. My wardrobe is carefully selected to blend in. Even my coffee order–a small latte–doesn’t have any of the extras I used to ask for.

Before.

Back then.

Life is about blending in now, an impossible task for someone who has more notoriety than Monica Lewinsky. Shame is a booming industry, one with capital and debt, profit and loss sheets, one that trades in the hard currency of humiliation and intrigue. My ringing phone would be a constant reminder of my ongoing debasement, so I turn it off. Pretend there is no sound.

Pretend in order to function, because if I let myself receive a notification every time someone mentioned me, I’d be buried in cacophony, shattered by so much noise I would dissipate, particles of Jane Borokov in the air everyone breathes, and we can’t have that.

If I did that, I wouldn’t exist, and right now my best defense is just existing.

I’m innocent.

No one believes me.

And as time passes, I see that what people actually believe doesn’t matter.

It’s what you can manipulate them into feeling that counts. Media reports about my so-called heinous actions last year are all about stoking the furious fire of public anger. Get them outraged. Get them frothing. Pitchforks and torches are so twentieth century.

Now you tar and feather people with a Share button and a Like. It’s so easy. Read the words, feel something, then tap. Click.

Move on to the next scandal.

It’s all part of your life, right?

Until you are the shame sacrifice of the day. Week. Month.

Year.

We’re trained to seek high rewards, but the internet lets us do it with low effort. Got to get that dopamine fix somewhere, right?

“Jane.”

I start, spilling a bit of the crema from my latte on my hand. The perfect heart at the center of the foamy milk on the surface of my coffee turns into a mangled, jagged mess.

“Jesus! You scared me.” I keep my voice to a low hiss, mortified by all of the layers this interruption is breaching. I refuse to look at him, because if I look at Silas Gentian, my newly assigned bodyguard and babysitter, I’ll see disgust.

And while I’ve gotten used to it from everyone else, I still can’t stomach seeing it reflected back at me from him.

“Sorry.” He’s clearly not. “We need to go.” His eyes dart left and right, evaluative as he scans the patio.

“You can’t tell me what to do. My schedule. My life. My choice.” Being blunt isn’t in my nature. But nothing about my life is natural anymore, so while it’s changed, so have I.

Blunt it is.

“We need to go now.”

“No.”

His sigh is impatient. It’s the sound you make when you really can’t stand someone. It’s the sound you make when you’re barely holding it together for the sake of decency. The sound you make when your least favorite roommate is eating crackers on the sofa and you hate them for no reason.

“There’s a credible report that you’ve been targeted by another internet site. Specific plans for physical acts against you discussed in their forums,” he says, the diplomacy jarring. What he really means is that anonymous people on the internet are talking about all the ways to rape and torture me, focusing specifically on actual, actionable plans.

“Another one? Are you kidding me? Of course there is. Have you seen my defunct Twitter account, Silas? I was getting a hundred threats a day. Come on.” My voice has more snap than normal. I do it to hide the shakes.

His revulsion ripples off him like a shockwave. I can’t be around someone who hates me so much. While I’m used to bathing in the scum of internet chatter, it’s different in person.

“This one is specific. They’ve been following you. And it’s not from Twitter.” He says as few words as possible. Silas has been following me for three days, assigned to my security detail. He said more words in those three sentences than in all the time he’s been assigned to me.

All other communication has been printed instructions. That’s how much he can’t stand me. Why did anyone assign him to me, then? Could I at least have a bodyguard who doesn’t view me with disdain? Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so.

I look at his hand, the one resting straight at his side. It’s a strong hand, the nails neatly trimmed, the knuckles thick and callused. Those are hands accustomed to hard work, clean and ready, trained well to manage violence.

And to deliver it right back in order to protect and serve.

Serve. Who exactly does Silas serve? I know who he protects. Me.

Yet in protecting me, he’s protecting others.

Who?

A chill floats across my skin, like the inverse of a ray of sunshine. He’s protecting others. At what point do I become expendable? I know plenty of people want me dead. Trust me. I know it. I’m not being paranoid. They killed my mother, so I’m not just speculating.

What if this is all a trap?

His hand moves, going up to his ear, and as he turns slightly to the right, toward the ocean, I stand. A swift breeze whips my skirt up. I gasp and shove my hands down, fast, like Marilyn Monroe over a street grate. The feeling of my long jersey skirt against my thighs is seductive, arousing and luxurious, like a lover’s touch.

As the salty air licks my face, I expect my hair to wrap around my neck, but it doesn’t. You spend more than a decade with waist-length hair and your body comes to know it, view it as an extension of yourself.

And now it’s gone.

Tears pinprick behind my eyelids at the thought. The shell I’ve built to keep in my pain isn’t easy to crack but for some reason I start to cry, mourning my hair. It was my choice to cut and color it. One of the few choices I’ve had in this crazy mess.

But mine.

I widen my eyes and look straight into the wind, creating an excuse for my tears. Silas will not see me crack, will not watch me weep. I do that alone, where it’s safe, where I can let all the shame drain out of me in sobs and hitches.

Never, ever in public.

Silas is on the phone, watching me, his voice hushed, sky-blue eyes cold and on guard. When they–the mysterious they–appointed him to protect me, I took the assignment at face value. Now I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been a fool.

Scratch that. Not if.

How much of a fool.

I went along with being offered–ordered–to let Silas “protect” me because at this point, most of the fight in me is gone. No longer under official investigation, my case is closed, even if the public humiliation is far from over. Senator Bosworth told me in confidence that letting his team offer me protection would be smart. Too many rogue elements, too much media frenzy.

I’m still the scandal du jour, and if keeping me in the spotlight sells newspapers and gets websites more eyeballs for their ad revenue, then Jane Borokov is going to be hawked until the website clicks die down.

Given that my mother is dead, I don’t exactly have a trusted adult I can turn to. Senator Bosworth is it.

As Silas becomes increasingly cagey, though, I’m rethinking my whole understanding of how this all operates. Maybe I put my confidence in the wrong person. After all, why should the senator be nice to me? In everyone else’s mind, I helped his daughter’s abusers and worst of all, my mother handed his daughter Lindsay off to them like a UPS driver delivering a box of shoes from Zappos.

Cold terror floods my veins. Is that why Silas is being so mean to me?

Because he’s allowed? Did I misjudge the senator?

Have I misjudged everyone?

That’s it. I’m done. I need to get away from all of this and just think.

As I walk toward the small alleyway that leads to the parking lot, Silas grabs my arm, hard. It’s the grasp of a man who views me as an object to be controlled.

I wrench my arm free.

“Don’t go out there. It’s not safe,” he barks.

People start to watch us, whispering in huddles of two and three, all of them the overdone women of our town, the kind my best friend–make that ex-best-friend–Lindsay was supposed to grow up to be.

“You’re making a scene,” I hiss. “I’m trying to blend in and you’re making it impossible.”

“Blend in?” His eyes rake over my body, pausing at the swell of my hips, locking on my lips. “You’re long past that, Jane.” If we were in any other situation, I’d assume his words were a double entendre, that he was admiring my body rather than insulting my pride.

I know better.

“No thanks to you, asshole,” I mutter as I stalk off, Silas on my heels.

“Now who’s the one making a scene?” he says so quietly, but the wind pushes his words to me. He doesn’t try to touch me again, though.

I’ll take my victories where I can get them.

The alleyway is cavelike, with a high arch to the adobe ceiling. It’s cool, a relief from the sun, but I scurry as fast as I can, unnerved by being in such a dark, enclosed space. After spending much of the last six months in small offices and interrogation rooms, my tolerance has been pushed to the limit.

Sunlight floods my face as I emerge, Silas behind me, his pace picking up.

“Jane!” he bellows, voice tinged with a tone that makes me slow–but not halt.

I flip him the bird. He grabs my wrist, suddenly there. How did he move so fast? Hot breath, smelling like coffee and mint, fills the air as he leans in, impossibly big and terrifyingly attractive.

“Don’t run away from me. Ever. That’s not how this works.”

“You’re making it very, very hard for me to be invisible.”

“Invisible? Good luck with that. You lost the right to be invisible the day you betrayed Lindsay. How long ago was it, Jane? Were you part of the entire attack from the very beginning?” None of his words surprise me, even as the verbal knife digs in deep, flaying me to the bone. I’ve been waiting for three days for Silas to finally speak his mind.

Here we go.

“I didn’t do it. I told you.”

“You mean you lied to me. Lied to everyone.”

“Believe what you want to believe.”

“I believe the truth.”

Electricity shoots up my back, the pinpricks of outrage finding their way to the surface of my skin. After months of literally being spat at, having photoshopped pictures of me giving head spread far and wide on the internet, finding dead animals on my front step, and of being refused service, taxis, and apartment rentals because of my face, my name, my notoriety, you would think I’d be immune to what Silas is dishing out.

But it’s Silas. Long gone is the sweet do-gooder who came with Lindsay to meet me for coffee seven months ago. Long gone is the man who blushed when I made a sex joke at a bar.

Back then–before.

“I am telling the truth,” I hiss back.

“Your truth is a lie, then, and you’re too stupid to realize it.”

“No, Silas. It’s the other way around. You’re too blinded by loyalty to Drew to see that you’re all hurting everyone more by believing I’m a monster.”

His hands go up in the air, like a man surrendering. No–like a man so disgusted by an animal in front of him that he’s given up on it, deeming it a hopeless case.

That’s me. Hopeless. Shameless and hopeless. Why fight it? The world assumes they know I’m one way. Maybe I need to give up resisting and just go with it.

“Go, then. I’m done trying to talk sense into you.”

“I already have more than enough common sense, so quit wasting your time.”

“You confuse stubbornness with common sense.”

“And you confuse truth and lies. Leave me alone and stop following me. You make me stand out!” More passersby watch us, eagle-eyed, and paranoia rises in me. I stare back at them hard, moving one step closer to Silas as if this is just a lovers’ spat, nothing to see here, move along folks.

Except he moves away from me, recoiling.

“Leave me alone,” I whisper through tears.

He ignores me, pressing his fingers against his ear, listening, frowning.

I break into a light jog, slowing down as I see it just makes people look at me more. I take a deep breath and pretend to jolt, grabbing my phone out of my purse as if it had vibrated. Joining the masses, I stare at my phone, acting like I’m reading important business on it.

Just blending in.

I look up to see my little silver car, the back rear light cover cracked, the remnants of bumper stickers littering the bumper. I carefully scraped them off right after I was allowed to go home, deeply grateful to my past self for choosing a boring silver car back when I bought my little hybrid. Talk about fitting in here along the California coast. I look like a million other people on the I-5, and that’s a good thing.

Boring is safe.

Blending in means survival.

Something darts from the front of my car. Looks like a bird, but bigger. Weird. As I tilt my head and narrow my eyes to get a better look, two things happen.

One: a boulder made of muscle and pure sizzle collides with me from behind, my name a breathless growl on Silas’s lips as he slams me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me, making me freeze in pain. I can’t breathe, and as I buck underneath his immobile body, all rolling strength and steel-boned flesh, I look up.

Two: a wave of heat sears my face as I look at my car, which is now engulfed in flames that shoot ten feet in the air, like someone poured brandy all over it and set it on fire for entertainment.

Except I’m supposed to be in that car.

All thoughts fade as my vision pinpoints, something hard on Silas’s chest digging into my shoulder blade. I’d scream if I could, but there’s no air. No air at all as I float off, my body spasming and thrashing under him, trying to breathe so the grey crowding my vision will stop.

He rolls to the side, arm and leg over me, muttering into his earpiece, words and numbers in code. A great whoosh of air crushes my diaphragm, making me cough, the fire’s glow growing bigger. Silas’s mouth is against my ear, his breath hotter than any burning car, and he whispers:

“Invisible. Blend in. Right. Doing a great job, Jane.” He huffs. “It’s like you don’t even exist.”