Nothing but silence. Weird.

Hearing the soft rumble of her voice through her bedroom door, I tapped lightly and entered. I found her sitting on her bed. Her head was dripping wet and a towel was wrapped around her. Whoever called her had been important enough to pull her out of the shower.

“I need to talk to you,” I said, my voice tight.

She nodded and held her hand up to indicate “just a minute.”

I exhaled heavily.

“Okay,” she said to the person on the line, putting her back to me as she fished around in her dresser for clothes. She stood and slipped on a pair or red lacy underwear and a tank. “Look, I need to go now. Someone’s here.”

A pause. “Yes, it’s him. We’re together.”

I froze. Geoff.

“Thank you …” she said, her voice lower now as she walked out onto her balcony.

“V, get off the phone.” My hands were clenched now, and it wasn’t about the pictures so much as him. I didn’t like how soft her voice was … secretive.

She paused mid-sentence but then kept talking, her finger telling me to wait a minute.

I counted the seconds. Seventy-two. I was livid.

She said goodbye and came back in the room.

“Who was that?” I growled.

“Geoff, and before you go caveman on me, you’re the one I want to be with. Not him. He knows about us.”

Still hurt to hear her say his fucking name.

“I don’t want you talking to him.”

She reared back. “He’s my friend, the only link I have left to my parents.”

“He’s still in love with you,” I retorted.

Her brows came together. “Don’t jump to conclusions just because he called. You can trust me.”

Heat flushed over me. “We’re together, V. I’m not with anyone else. And if I even suspect you still have feelings—”

She stormed out of the room, headed downstairs.

“Wait,” I called, following her. “Don’t walk out on me.”

She didn’t stop, her shoulders stiff when she finally faced me in the den as I walked over to make sure the blinds were closed. I didn’t want any more photos taken of us.

I tried to rein in my anger. I was irrational when it came to her and Geoff, but it wasn’t something I could control easily. “Talk to me about Geoff. Explain.”

“He called to tell me that he’d turned in my application to the Manhattan School of Music.”

My whole damn world came to a standstill.

Of course she wanted to go back to school. She was getting her life together, figuring out what she wanted.

“You’re leaving?” My tone was incredulous.

“What if I did?” she snapped. “Would you really care? What we’re doing is fun, but we don’t have a commitment. You have your life here, and soon you’ll be on the road or going to a movie set.”

I found I needed air. I sucked in a sharp breath and blew it out. That didn’t help, so I sat down. “What matters is he will be near you and I won’t. You have a history with him. Do you think I like imagining you hanging out with him? Rekindling your friendship until it turns into something else? Maybe you get tired of me working on the road, and he’s there, so you find yourself spending more and more time with him? Why can’t you go to school somewhere here in California?”

She groaned. “Why can’t you trust me?”

I jerked up. “I want you here with me. I want you beside me, under me, in my bed, and so far up in my business that I can’t fucking move for bumping into you.” My hands fisted, pushing out my next words. I met her gaze, the old festering wound that was at the center of my heart rising up. “If you go to New York, we’re over.”

Silence.

Fuck! Why had I said that?

“Shit, don’t leave me, V. Not-not when I just found you.”

She shook her head. “What does it matter? You’ll find another girl.”

Her words cut me, and I looked down at the photos. This would ensure she’d leave me.

“We have worse problems, V. Blair’s got photos of us.”

“Then he came along, and like a twisted piece of metal that’s burned beyond recognition, I emerged from the fire. Different. Changed.”

—from the journal of Violet St. Lyons

MY FRAGILE WORLD was collapsing.

I sipped on tequila that he’d poured me and looked down at the pictures again. He’d downed two shots of bourbon already, his hands unsteady.

Pics of me. Of us. Of her.

“These will be in the papers and on every social media site she can get to post them,” he said. “You are all I’m worried about, V.”

I gazed at them, my eyes stopping over one of us on my patio, him on his knees with his mouth between my legs as my body arched in ecstasy. My skin blazed at the memory, echoes of the passion we’d shared—and now everyone in the world would see. The society people in New York. Geoff. My old musician friends. Worst of all, the board of directors for the orphanage.

My stomach dropped when I saw the ones of him and Blair, her lips stuck out in that stupid duck face. Frozen, I stared at it. Unable to focus on anything but his face on a pillow next to hers.

My eyes flashed from one picture to the next, and I bent over to breathe better.

Inhale and exhale. Don’t vomit.

“I know what you’re thinking, but the one of Blair—it happened the night I came over here and Geoff was here. She showed up at my house when I was trashed and got in my bed. She must have thought I’d fuck her if she was there. Nothing happened. I woke up and she was just there. That’s the morning you saw her leaving my house.”