“Miss, you need to leave,” the officer said to me. “We have to lock up Mr. Shepard’s apartment.”
I looked up from my defeated spot on the floor, following the lines of his black shoes to his black pants to his badge until I met his neutral gaze and just stared at him or through him or at nothing at all. I wasn’t even sure.
My world focus had tunneled to misery. In the blink of an eye, I felt like my entire life had changed. I’d gone from on top of the world—in a loving and happy relationship with everything to look forward to—to the scary, darkened depths of hell.
And that was just me. Not Scott. No. He was in a worse place than hell. He’d been accused of some of the most horrendous things inside of an article with my fucking name on it, and subsequently, taken into custody for questioning. To an outsider, it looked like I’d accused my boyfriend of charges that spanned the gamut—some of the worst being sexual misconduct and insurance fraud.
What a fucking mess.
Everything had fallen apart, and the cruelest part of all was that I didn’t understand the why or the how. Why would someone do something like this to Scott? And more importantly, who would do something like this?
Whomever it was, I hated them. They’d ruined his career, his fucking life—under the guise of my name—and because of that, they’d ruined us. I’d tried to tell him that I hadn’t written that column, but the uncertainty in his eyes said more than his words could. He was torn, and from the looks of it, he didn’t know what or whom to believe—including me.
Even though it hurt like a motherfucker, I couldn’t blame him. I mean, my name was on that column. I’d told him I was writing a column about him. And the column had even come from my goddamn email! It all looked really fucking bad, and everything pointed directly to me.
It looked like I’d ruined his life, and that I’d done it consciously and without any regard for him or his feelings. Like I’d put my joke of a career as a gossip columnist before him.
Fuck.
A quiet sob wracked my body and when visions of Scott being escorted out by the police filled my head, what should have been fresh tears dripping from my eyes came out as nothing. I’d cried more in the past two hours than I’d probably cried my whole life, and it showed. I’d literally run out of tears.
“Miss?” the officer addressed me again. “Is there anyone you can call to come get you?”
There was probably someone I could call, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to go to bed and make this day disappear.
“Miss?” he urged again, and I shook my head.
“No. There’s no one,” I said and slowly got to my feet. “I’ll be fine. I’m leaving.”
“Are you sure?” he asked and I nodded.
With my head down and my shoulders sagging forward, I walked toward the elevator. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I needed to get the fuck out of Scott’s apartment or else the police were going to end up escorting me out, too.
Plus, I was probably the last person he wanted to see greeting him at the door when he got home.
If he even gets to come back home…
Fuck. What if they kept him in custody? What if he got charged for those false accusations?
Another sob wracked my body, and it took all of my strength to move on to the elevator and hit the button for the lobby. Once the doors shut, I let my head fall back against the wall with a quiet thud and sighed.
I had to focus on something else besides breaking down. Now was not the time to lose myself to my emotions. I owed at least that much to Scott.
As the elevator doors opened, my eyes were assaulted with the flashes of cameras. Outside of the lobby doors of Scott’s apartment stood what felt like a hundred paparazzi snapping pictures and ready to pounce on anyone who left his building.
God, this was bad.
I took a deep breath, and with a hand covering my eyes, I walked outside and faced the media music. Immediately, voices called my name from every direction while the flash and click of cameras filled the air.
“Harlow! It’s Harlow Paige!”
“Harlow, over here!”
“Why did you write the article?”
“Did you fake your relationship with Scott?”
I wanted to engage. I wanted to respond. I wanted to tell every single one of these reporters to fuck off. But I knew enough about the media to understand that, although it was tempting as hell, this was not the time or place to issue a statement unless I wanted my words misconstrued and taken out of context.
The only right way to handle this situation was to keep my mouth shut, my head down, and get the fuck out of there.
But that still didn’t stop them from trying to bait me with questions that would strike a nerve.
“Are the accusations true?”
“Is Dr. Shepard a rapist?”
“Did he ever do anything sexually inappropriate with you?”
“Are you going to testify that he raped you?”
Holy fucking shit. Rape? Was this a goddamn joke?
Bile rose in my stomach, and I did my best to navigate through the mess of photographers and news reporters until I was able to hail a cab and slide inside to the safety of the back seat.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked once I shut the door, and I stared at him in the rearview mirror.
“Just… Just get me the hell out of here, please. Drive around until I can think straight.”
He nodded, and I sagged into the leather seat.
I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I had to come up with some kind of plan. It was times like these that I wished I had friends in high places.
You do…well, sorta… You have an ex in a high place…
Brent.
Fuck, was I really that desperate to go to him for help?
I scrubbed a hand down my face and hated that my gut response was, Yes, I am that desperate, but found myself directing the cabbie toward Brent’s office anyway. “City Hall, please,” I instructed.
“You got it.”
Fucking hell.
Thirty minutes later, I stood outside of Brent’s office, at the reception area, where Pam Lockhead—his assistant and the woman who apparently wouldn’t give me any other reaction but disdain—stared down at me with narrowed eyes.
I’d already had this argument for five minutes with the receptionist herself, but when I wouldn’t give up, she’d made a call to Pam.
“Can I help you?”
“I would like to see the mayor.”
She scoffed. “The mayor is a busy man. You have to actually schedule a meeting with him in advance.”
Apparently, her assignment was to handle me.
“Pam, right?” I asked, and she nodded.
“I used to be a good friend of his, and I just need to speak with him briefly. It’s a bit of an emergency.”
With her face pinched together like she’d eaten a lemon and her shoulders stiff and rigid, the woman all but bristled in irritation at my words. “Oh, I know you used to be friends, Harlow,” she retorted. “More than friends, actually.”
I furrowed my brow at her words. I honestly had no idea why that was even relevant to the situation. “All right, well…” I started and tried to find a new game plan that didn’t require access through this awful woman. “Could you at least let him know that I’m here and I would like to speak with him?”
“I could, but I’m not.”
“Uh…”
“Have a nice day,” she said and gestured for me to leave through the reception area exit doors, but I shook my head. I hadn’t come this far, given in so easily to this impulse, to give up now.
“Yeah. No. This isn’t going to work,” I denied, and she rolled her eyes.
“I think it’s time for you to leave. Or, if you’d like, I can have security escort you out.”
Jesus. This fucking woman. She was a witch, who I was pretty sure had breast implants, but that was neither here nor there. I didn’t have time to waste arguing with her. I needed to find a way into Brent’s office, and I needed to do it now.
Would it be considered assault if I tackled her to the ground before running inside of Brent’s office?
Did it really matter at this point?
I mean, my boyfriend had basically been accused of rape in a column that had my name on it. What else did I have to lose?
Nothing.
I stared at her and she stared back at me, and just before I started to rush toward her, Brent’s voice was behind me. “Harlow?”
Thank fucking God.
I honestly never thought I’d be happy for his presence, but I’d also never thought someone would write a fake, blasphemous, fucking terrible column about my boyfriend under my goddamn name and it would get posted.
I turned around and met his eyes. “I need your help,” I blurted out.
“I was just getting ready to escort Miss Paige out, Mr. Mayor,” Pam chimed in. “I told her that your schedule is too full today for an appointment, but that I would schedule her in for sometime next week.”
God, she was a piece of work. And a fucking liar.
“I need your help now,” I said, and he nodded.
“Okay.” He looked at Pam. “Reschedule my next meeting.”
“But…but…” she stuttered over her words.
“Clear it, Pam,” he demanded. Her face paled, but with no other choice, she nodded her acceptance and walked toward her desk.
He gestured me toward his office and shut the door behind us. “Take a seat,” he directed, shrugging out of his suit jacket before sitting down in the big leather chair behind his mahogany monstrosity of a desk.
“What can I help you with, LoLo?”
I fought the urge to cringe and focused on the task at hand. “It’s Dr. Shepard,” I started. “Someone wrote a column under my name, and it was posted this morning. Everything in it is false.”
Brent stared back at me without anything but neutral, curious eyes. “If you didn’t write it, how’d it get posted under your name?”
“I don’t have proof yet,” I answered honestly. “But I know someone hacked my email and sent the fake column to my editor.”
He quirked one perfectly shaped—and I strongly suspect, waxed—brow. “How bad is it?”
“You haven’t read it yet?”
He shook his head.
“It’s bad,” I said through the growing thickness in my throat. Jesus, just thinking about what that goddamn column had done made me feel like sobbing and vomiting simultaneously. “Career-ending kind of bad,” I added, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hide the desperation in my voice.
Because, fuck. I was desperate. I felt completely helpless, and the most important person in my life had been destroyed by terrible words that were presented as mine.
“That doesn’t sound good.” He steepled his hands together on his desk. “Is there an IT team investigating it?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, it sounds like you’re on the right track then,” he responded and stroked his jaw with two perfectly manicured fingers. “I’m not sure what else I can do to help you right now, though. I mean, situations like these need to be investigated, and evidence needs to back up the contrary before any major strides can be achieved. You know how it is, Harlow.”
“You’re the fucking mayor, Brent,” I retorted. “I do know how it is, and I know that you can pull some strings to get this process streamlined and made high priority.”
“I don’t think that’s going to change anything related to Scott, though,” he responded in a clear yet infuriatingly calm tone. “But I doubt the police will be able to keep him in custody right now without the right evidence to back up the accusations. They’ll just interrogate him for a bit and then release him.”
Wait…what? I didn’t tell him Scott is with the police…
My brow furrowed on its own accord. “How did you know that he was already in custody?”
“I’m the mayor, LoLo.” He chuckled, but there was something off about it and had the hairs on the back of my neck rising. “I know these kinds of things, especially when important members of the community are under investigation.”
“But you just acted like you didn’t know anything about the situation?”
“I said I hadn’t read the article,” he corrected. “But I did know that your boyfriend was in custody. Why do you think I cleared my next meeting? I had an idea of the situation. I knew it was urgent. I just wish there was more I could do to help you and Scott. You know that once the police start their investigation, my hands are tied.”
I stared at him for a long moment, taking in the relaxed posture of his shoulders, the neutral yet friendly expression etched on his face, and my gut instinct told me that there was more to this story than what he was letting on.
I had no idea what, but there was something. I mean, he’d acted like he knew nothing about it when I stepped into his office, but once he’d admitted knowing Scott was in custody, he backtracked, and all of sudden, he did know the situation.
The facts weren’t adding up. Nor did the kooky behavior his assistant Pam had shown when I requested to see him. She’d been overzealously defensive, and I hadn’t even told her why I was there.
“What’s going on, Brent?” I questioned.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and the soft and neutral tone of his voice, and far too relaxed language of his body, urged flashbacks of our past and our relationship to fill my mind.
I’d seen this version of him before. To anyone else, he looked calm and composed. But I’d witnessed him look exactly like this when his then best friend and campaign manager had been investigated, and eventually convicted, for money laundering.
The worst part of the story, Brent had been the mastermind of it, and it was all in the name of greed and power. He hadn’t realized I’d overheard his phone conversations when the shit hit the fan, and I’d walked away from our relationship after that with some bullshit excuse of not wanting to be in the public limelight anymore. It had nothing to do with the limelight and everything to do with the fact that I’d realized he was a horrible human being. I got out to save myself.
And even though right now I wanted to say all of the nasty things that rested on the tip of my tongue, I held back. Tempting as it was, I knew taking that route wasn’t in my or, especially, Scott’s best interest. Brent was a man of power, and he had no moral compass to guide his use of that power in the direction of straight and narrow. If I showed any suspicion that I thought he was involved, I honestly had no idea what lengths he would go to to prove the opposite.
“I—I just don’t know how this happened,” I muttered and faked a sad sigh. “I don’t know how this happened, Brent.”
“I wish I could do more, LoLo,” he said, and I knew his words were complete bullshit.
I had no idea why he’d be involved in something like this, something that had to do with Scott, but my gut instinct screamed that he was. Sure, a very long time ago, we’d been a couple, but an overt use of his resources for the sole reason of jealously didn’t add up.
I also knew I needed to get the fuck out of his office.
“Thanks for listening,” I said and stood. “Sorry I screwed up your schedule.”
“Oh, come on, LoLo.” He grinned his blindingly white politician’s smile. “You know you can screw up my schedule anytime. I’ll always make time for you.”
His words might have sounded genuine, but I knew they were covered in slime.
“Thanks again,” I said and headed for the door.
“The offer still stands, you know,” he added before I opened it. “I’d love to get together and catch up.”
I looked over my shoulder and glanced at the powerful man who sat behind his desk. He might’ve painted the perfect persona to the outside world, but I knew this was not the kind of man I wanted to keep anywhere but far, far the fuck away. Not only from me, but from the people I loved the most—especially Scott.
“I’ll keep in touch,” I lied and forced a fake smile to my face and left his office quicker than I’d arrived. Bypassing Pam’s desk and the glare I could feel practically burning a hole through my head, I kept my gaze focused on the hallway and walked quickly to the elevator. I didn’t want to be around these venomous people for a minute longer than I had to.
Plus, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to find a way to clear Scott’s name before he lost everything.
If he hasn’t already lost everything…
My heart stuttered painfully at that thought. Fucking hell. I had to think. I had to figure out a way to handle this before anything else happened. Once I reached the sidewalk outside of City Hall, I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to my dad’s place in hopes that he’d have the wisdom to help me get Scott out of this situation. And since I knew Nicole was most likely there, I hoped she’d know what to do when it came to getting Scott to believe me that I didn’t write that article.
As I stared out the window, mindlessly watching skyscrapers and pedestrians pass by in a blur and worrying a hole in my lip with my teeth, my phone startled me with a text notification. I pulled it out of my purse, and relief bloomed in my stomach once I read the message.
Stella: David has definitive proof that your account was hacked. We’ve pulled the article and posted an apology to the public, and Scott, in its place.
Me: They’ve taken Scott into custody, Stella. You need to get David to head down to the police station now so that he doesn’t get charged with anything.
Stella: He already called. I’m sorry this happened, Harlow.
I was surprised by her candid apology. Stella wasn’t the type of woman to apologize for anything, but it was a relief to see that she had at least an ounce of care inside of her normally dark heart to understand that this situation was not okay. I also hoped like fuck this new information to the police would help Scott immediately.
Me: I feel like we need to do more, Stella. Even though my account was hacked, this situation is Gossip’s fault. Scott deserves more from us than an apology article. His entire life has been turned upside down because of this.
Stella: What else do you have in mind?
Me: A press conference. Every media and news source in New York needs to understand that this article is false and these accusations are not true.
Stella: I’ll get it scheduled for this afternoon.
Me: Really?
Stella: I might be a hard-ass, but I’m not callous, Harlow. Believe me, I’m sympathetic to this situation, especially to both you and Scott. I’ll clear my schedule and get a press conference scheduled for this afternoon.
Me: Thank you.
It might not have been a solution, but it was a start.
Now, I just needed to find a way to get Scott to talk to me, and as I walked up the concrete steps of my dad’s place, I prayed that he and Nicole would help me.