I woke to the sound of my phone receiving an incoming text. It took me a minute to comprehend where I was, and that I’d fallen asleep after my bath. Yawning, I untangled the towel from my head. My hair was dry and crusty from not being brushed after my bath. I’d have to wet it down again if I wanted it to be the least bit manageable. Filing that thought away for later, I stretched and blinked several times when I realized it was morning.
My phone dinged again—another text—and then it dinged again. And then it rang. As odd as that was, I ignored it. I was still too groggy, and it was probably just Brian wanting to whine at me for not calling him last night. He could wait long enough for me to brush my teeth. Or maybe he could wait another half an hour…
I rolled over and snuggled under the covers, but that only lasted about two minutes before Juliette barged into my room. “Ella! Get up! You have to see this!”
“Go away,” I groaned. “I’m sleeping.”
“No, seriously.”
She grabbed my laptop and climbed onto my bed. I yawned again as she booted the thing up. “What is it?”
“Don’t you check your phone?”
“Not this early in the morning. Brian can wait until I’m out of bed.”
“You might want to call him back.”
What the heck was so urgent? I grabbed my phone while Juliette pulled up the Internet on my laptop.
My texts were from Vivian and Rob. Both seemed urgent and told me to check out this website called Get Real Hollywood right now. There were multiple exclamation points used. Even Rob’s text used one, so I knew something big had happened.
As I rubbed the sleep out of my face and slowly sat up—I was beyond stiff after having rested on my sore muscles—Juliette shrieked. “No way! No freaking way!”
“What is it?” I asked.
She was too focused on the laptop to explain, but I could tell her shock was not from any kind of good news. She looked a scary combination of horrified and pissed.
I moved my legs over the side of the bed with a groan. Daniel was going to kill me in my next PT session for overworking my body so much. Probably right after he told me it was good for me and recommended I do it more often.
My phone started to ring, but I ignored it. Whoever was calling was only going to tell me to look at the website Juliette was gawking at. “What’s going on?”
“That sneaky rotten bastard!”
“Juliette!” I snapped. It was the only way to break her concentration.
Juliette’s face was stark white except for the angry red splotches on her cheeks and the back of her neck. When she met my confused and curious gaze, her eyes misted over. “Ella, I’m so sorry.”
She moved my laptop onto my lap. I looked at the screen in front of me, but it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. “Hey, that’s me. Is that lunch at the restaurant yesterday? What…? Where…? How…?”
“Erik,” Juliette whispered. “He’s some big-time celebrity gossiper.”
“What do you mean?”
She clicked out of the video and went back to the home page for Get Real Hollywood. It was a celebrity news website. Erik’s picture was in the upper left corner with a short bio. The lead story was front and center, and huge: Cinder’s Ella Gets Real About Her Physical Relationship with Brian and Her Own Insecurities. The video of me at the lunch table in the mall yesterday was right beneath it.
“We were totally duped,” Juliette said. “He must have known who you were from the start. That’s probably why he stuck up for you. He’d probably been following us for a while, looking for some kind of opportunity to talk to us. We fell right into his trap.”
I wasn’t ready to believe this yet—still in the denial stage of my shock. “How was he recording this?”
Juliette shrugged, staring once again at the video playing on the laptop. “I don’t know. He must have had some kind of hidden camera on him.”
“Is there audio?”
Juliette’s grimace answered the question for her. She clicked on the video, and my voice rang out loud and clear. “…whenever I ask him to give me a hint, he says he doesn’t need a gift. He just sings me that stupid song: ‘All I Want for Christmas is You.’”
My stomach rolled. Bile clawed up my throat, and I had to swallow it back down as I realized exactly what Erik had captured on video and posted for the entire world to see. “How much did he get?” My question came out shaky.
Juliette scrolled forward through the video and swallowed. “It looks like the whole conversation at lunch…and everything in the lingerie store.”
I cringed. “Everything?”
Juliette nodded.
I fell back against the bed, so shocked that I didn’t even notice the physical pain the movement caused. That conversation at lunch had started with Ana telling me I should give Brian my virginity for Christmas and only got more personal from there. I felt ill. The room started to spin, and my eyes began to sting. “Jules…” My voice started to shake.
“I know,” she whispered, equally distressed. “And all of us only made it worse. Ella…”
My phone rang again, and when I saw Brian’s name on the caller ID, tears pooled in my eyes. Unable to answer the phone, I threw it across the room and slapped my hands over my face. The phone went to voice mail and immediately started ringing again. Juliette retrieved it and held it out to me. “Talk to him, Ella.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. If he’s calling me, he’s already seen this. He heard that whole conversation at lunch about him being a grown-up and me being his silly little prude of a girlfriend. He saw me refuse to buy sexy underwear and confess that I wasn’t ready to sleep with him because I’m insecure about my body. He heard that. The whole world is currently hearing it.”
Juliette wiped a tear from her cheek. “Ella, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Still, I feel—” She cut herself off when the phone started ringing a third time. “You need to talk to him.”
“I can’t. Not yet. I need a minute to freak out.”
Across the house, there was an earth-shattering shriek, and then seconds later my bedroom door burst open. “Did you see it?” Ana cried.
One look at me answered her question. She began pacing. “That asshole! I’m going to kill him!” She glared at me. “Did you know who he was? Did you let me make a complete ass of myself on purpose, knowing he was filming all that?”
Was she kidding?
“Shut up, Ana,” Juliette snapped. “Not everything is about you.”
My tears vanished, and, for once, I probably managed a scarier glare than her. “Oh no, this is totally about you, Ana,” I argued, taking the easy target to vent some of my anger. “I totally called Erik up and invited him to come secretly film us making fools of ourselves at the mall. And I totally confessed to him that I’m not ready to sleep with Brian because he’s perfect and my body is a horrific mess because I wanted the whole world to know that. And I totally asked you to bring up my sex life and drag me into a lingerie store. You got me. That was all my big, evil plan to make you feel stupid.”
Ana glared again, but she wasn’t pissed off at me. Her angry look turned to one of frustration as she plopped down into my desk chair with an angry huff. “This is a nightmare.”
“On the bright side,” Juliette said, glaring at the laptop so severely I feared for its safety, “Dad is going to destroy him in court. That jerk messed with the wrong family.”
“NO!” Ana and I shouted together.
Juliette flinched, startled to be so heartily opposed.
“Dad will kill me if he sees that video,” Ana said.
Yeah, I might have looked stupid and insecure, but Ana came across as pretty skanky. She’d never be allowed to date again if Dad saw this video. “And he’ll want to have some kind of awkward father-daughter talk with me,” I added. “If he doesn’t just launch into another lecture about his disapproval of me dating Brian.”
Juliette scoffed. “I hate to break it to you both, but Dad is going to see this anyway. It’s going to be everywhere. If he jumps on it now, maybe he can get a cease and desist order before it makes it into Kenneth Long’s monologue.”
A loud knock made me groan again just as Dad’s nervous voice rang out. “Girls? Are you all decent? I found the website on Ana’s computer. Can I come in…?”
Juliette frowned at Ana. “You woke the whole house screaming and then left your laptop open when you came running down here? Good job. Way to keep Dad from finding out about it.”
“Girls?”
“Go away, Dad!” Juliette yelled.
Apparently go away means come on in in Dad speak, because he opened the door and poked his head in. When he saw that we were all at least covered, he stepped fully in the room. “Dad, please,” I begged. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
Whatever expression I wore on my face was enough to make my dad pause. His face fell, and he sighed. “Sweetheart, you’ve chosen to date a celebrity. As long as you’re seeing Brian Oliver, things like this are going to happen.”
I didn’t want to fight, but the man knew exactly how to push my buttons. “This wasn’t Brian’s fault.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll beg to differ on that, but it’s a moot point. What I’m saying is, you can’t let these things control your life. It’s already happened. There’s no use hiding from it.”
Ha! I’d beg to differ on that.
While we were locked in a stare down, the doorbell rang. I didn’t need three guesses to know who was here. I didn’t even need one. Sure enough, once Jennifer answered the door, Brian’s voice rang out loud and clear and full of concern. “Ella?”
When he appeared at the threshold of my room, I lay back down and pulled my covers over my head. “UGH. Ella’s not here right now. GO AWAY, PLEASE.”
“Ellamara,” Brian cooed. “Relax. It’s going to be okay.”
For once, his voice did nothing to soothe me. “No, it’s NOT!” I was so worked up my voice cracked on the last word. “How could I be so stupid? I said stuff, Brian. We got caught up in our conversation, and I wasn’t thinking. I said some really personal, embarrassing stuff. I’m sure you’ve seen it all. We joked around in a lingerie store. Juliette and Ana bought me Christmas presents when I wouldn’t buy anything for myself. The whole world is going to see that.”
I sucked in a breath as a sob hit me. I swallowed it. I didn’t want to cry. But no matter how hard I tried, I still sniffled. I’d been tricked. I felt violated.
When the weight shifted on my bed, I knew Brian had traded places with my father. He plucked my blankets off my head and gently pulled me into a sitting position. When he wrapped his strong arms around me, I broke. I collapsed against his chest, letting my tears flow. “How could he do that to us?”
Brian squeezed me tighter and quietly said, “May we have a minute alone, please?”
I didn’t look to see if they listened. I knew they would. When Brian used his serious voice like that, he tended to get his way. Oh, I’m sure my father shot him a nasty look, and I didn’t hear the door click shut because he, no doubt, refused to shut it all the way with Brian in the room. But when Brian pulled my face out of his chest and tucked my hair behind my ears, I knew we were alone.
I took one look at his pain-filled eyes and broke down as if I were at a confessional. “I’m so sorry. We had no idea who he was. He—”
He shook his head and spoke over me, unwilling to let me keep apologizing. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault. The guy’s name is Erik Clarke. He’s notorious around town for stunts just like this. He doesn’t get the celebrities as often because we all know to look out for him, but he tracks down the families and friends of the celebrities and gets them talking. He gets all kinds of dirt on people.”
Great. “Some luck. What were the odds I’d end up next to him on the escalator the one time this week I went out in public without you?”
Brian’s face fell, and he shook his head again. “It wasn’t luck. You were spotted at the mall. He knew you were there without me, and that you most likely wouldn’t know who he was. He took advantage of you.”
Brian growled that last little bit and had to stop speaking to take a breath and calm down. I knew the feeling. I was just as pissed. “And I completely fell for it, because I am a stupid, naive little girl who only thinks she can handle adulthood.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t belittle yourself. That was not adulthood. That was fame. Being new to it doesn’t make you stupid.” He huffed in frustration. “I’m sorry, Ella. I was really hoping you’d have time to adjust to everything before something like this happened.”
“How do you live like this? I mean, geez. As if I didn’t feel stupid enough before? Everyone knows about the suicide attempt and the legal custody my dad had. I have a freaking curfew. Which they also put on the front page this week. Now I’m the naive little virgin girl scared to have sex with my boyfriend. The nation thinks I’m a joke. UGHHHH. I am a joke.” I gave my hair a good yank.
“Ella, stop. Look at me.” When I didn’t, he repeated himself, throwing some force into the command. “Look at me.”
I met his gaze.
“Tabloids are always going to twist the facts to create the best headlines. That doesn’t make what they say true. Anyone can be made to look their worst if you can pick and choose only a few key facts from their life. What those people don’t know, but I do, is that you are a strong, smart, kind, and compassionate woman. You are not a joke.” Brian brought his hand to my face and softened his voice. “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Do you understand me? No matter what anyone says or prints, I love you. I will always love you.”
Brian’s declaration, though I’d heard it before, was exactly what I needed in that moment. I couldn’t find words to express the amount of gratitude in my heart, so I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his. The kiss was frenzied. I kissed him as if his lips on mine would make all of my problems disappear.
Brian returned my frantic kiss with calm strength. His gentle touches and the way he held me were confident and loving. They filled me with a sense of security, easing away the torrent of emotion I’d been racked with. After I calmed down, Brian broke the kiss and gave me a soft, teasing smile. “Feel better yet?”
I did. I felt a million times better. Better enough that I could match the playful glint in his eyes and tease him back. “Nope. I don’t think so. I’m going to need a lot more of that before I’m better.”
When I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him again, he laughed but indulged me for a minute longer. Only, now that I wasn’t on the brink of an emotional breakdown, Brian’s response was much more heated. The kiss became less about soothing me and more about his own set of needs and desires. He was the one to break it again, but this time he had to rip himself away and suck in a deep breath. “That’s enough of that,” he said, trying to cool his lust. “At least while your family is out there waiting for us to come out.”
I sighed. Time to get back to reality. “All right. Let’s go get this over with. They’ve all seen that stupid video this morning, so it should be nice and awkward, and my dad, no doubt, has an awesome lecture all thought up.”
I started to move, but Brian stopped me. “Ella…” Wariness crept into his tone and expression. “About what you said in that video…”
And just like that, all of my anxiety was back. “No.” I shook my head frantically. “Don’t. Please.”
“But—”
“Please? I am embarrassed enough right now. I really don’t want to have this conversation.”
He frowned. “We need to have this conversation. Actually, this particular conversation is one you should have had with me in the first place instead of with your girlfriends.”
My face flamed, and I dropped my head, unable to meet his probing gaze. “Girls will always need their girl talk.”
“I know, but I can’t stand the thought of you worrying that I won’t find you attractive. I promise you, that is not the case. Far, far, far from it. And if you’re feeling scared, or confused, or overwhelmed with our relationship, or you don’t know what I’m feeling, the best way to fix that is to talk to me about it.”
Ugh. See? And this was exactly one of those things that set us apart. “Said the mature grown-up man to his clueless baby of a girlfriend,” I grumbled.
“Ella.”
“I know. Sorry. I’m wallowing in self-pity.” He quirked an eyebrow at me, and I caved. “Fine. We can talk about it. But not right now, okay? Just give me some time to get over the shock and stop feeling so stupid.”
Brian raked his eyes over me, trying to figure out if I was serious about being too overwhelmed or simply trying to get out of the conversation. I must have passed his test, because he let out a breath and nodded. “Okay. Not now. But you promise? After you’re feeling better, you’ll talk to me about this? About us?”
I hesitated simply because I felt like being defiant. But I did want to figure things out between us so I could stop feeling so stressed out and so…so…I don’t know…immature, I guess. Talking was inevitable. “I promise.”
“Good.” He pressed a quick kiss to my lips and pulled me back into a hug, seemingly in no real hurry to get up. I happily snuggled against his chest. “Then I just need to say one last thing,” he said. “About everyone’s favorite sound bite…”
My heart missed a beat or two when it dropped into my stomach. I pulled out of his embrace to gape at him in horror. “What sound bite? There’s already a favorite sound bite?”
Brian laughed, a real, gut-bursting laugh, and squeezed me close again. “My girlfriend accused me of being with a billion women. That’s not disappearing from the front pages anytime soon.”
Okay, I was glad he’d pulled me back to his chest, because he couldn’t see the way my face set on fire.
“I’d just like to set the record straight that while I may not know the exact number, I assure you it’s not a billion.”
He was being obnoxious, but his tactic worked, and he successfully cheered me up. “Whatever.” I cracked a smile and let a soft laugh escape. “Fifty…a billion…if you’ve lost count, it’s all the same.”
We laughed together, which felt amazing, but the moment ended quickly. Sighing, I stole one last kiss. “Thank you for coming.”