Chapter 47 Nationwide heartbreaker
Goddamn tabloid journo’s.
“You know how they like to make things up, honey.”
“What else does it say?” I ask, cringing on the question. “Do they know Natte and I grew up together?”
“Hmm…” I can just imagine her eyes scanning the text in that way she does. And then I’m suddenly hit with stinging tears at the back of my eyes, and I just want to tell her everything. She’s one of my closest friends and right now I really need a friend.
But deep down I know I can’t tell her. I’ve betrayed Pine enough already as it is.
“No,” she concludes. “It just goes on about you being his interviewer… oh and the magazine is mentioned!” she squeals. “Um … well it just says you work here,” she quickly adds, recovering herself. “Okay, there’s the dancing together in the club … that Natte’s eyes were on you all night and no one else according to onlookers…” They were? “That he seemed really into you…” He did? “Showed absolutely no interest in anyone else whatsoever, and that you left the club together and went back to the hotel, and it finishes saying that maybe you’re the one to finally tame Natte.”
The one? They think I’m the one to tame Natte?
Not bloody likely. I don’t think Natte is tameable.
Then his words from last night play in my ears, ‘It’s always been you, Shia. Always.’
“Shia, are you still there?”
“Um … yes, sorry, I’m here.”
“Look this is fine,” Vicky impresses. “No press is bad press, remember, my darling. The media interest in you will quickly die down, and then you can get back to concentrating on the resort. If anything it will be good for the business.”
“What, that people think Natte’s screwing his interviewer?” I come off as short and terse. It’s because I am.
And because it's the truth. Natte has screwed his interviewer. His non-single, in a relationship with Pine, interview.
“I’m just trying to look at the positives here, Shiv.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” I run my hand through my tangled hair. Hair that Natte tangled up. When he was in bed with me.
Inside me.
Shit. I’ve so totally and monumentally fucked everything up.
And even though the shit has totally hit the fan, I still get a shiver at the memory of his hands on me ... of him inside me.
“I’m sorry, it’s just all a lot to take in with a hangover and a few hours’ sleep.” I blow out a breath. “I’m going to have to call Pine aren’t I?”
“He probably won’t have seen the news yet. He’s more likely to read the tabloids than The Sun, right? And it’s not like you’ve done anything wrong, my darling, so don’t let that boy give you a hard time about this.”
I feel sick. I wish I was in the bathroom right now because I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up any minute.
“I won’t,” I say. “And thanks for calling to give me the heads up. You’re too good to me.”
“Of course I’d call. I would always call. I love you, darling girl. You’ll call me later?”
“Of course I will.”
I hang the phone up with Vicky, and stare down at my phone in my trembling hand.
I quickly go online on my phone and straight to Google and search Natte Johnson’s name under recent news.
And there they are, the pictures.
Crap.
They do not look good at all. They look incriminating.
Which they are, were … kind of.
Fuck.
With shaky fingers, I close the internet down, and speed dial Pine’s number. He doesn't pick up I call Terry.
“Hey, beautiful,” she squalls down the phone. “I was just thinking about you.”
At the sound of her lovely voice, I almost break down.
And by her tone, I’m guessing she has already seen the news; I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
I swallow, my throat dry. “You’ve seen it.”
“Seen it? Babe, I’ve memorised it,” Terry says. “Front page online, people are already left in the middle of a spreading speculation, and three separate think pieces about whether you’re the mysterious woman who’s finally ‘changed’ Natte Johnson.”
“Oh God,” I groan, pressing my forehead into my palm. “Please tell me they at least used a flattering picture of me.”
I hear a brief pause from Terry. “Define flattering.”
I wince. “That bad?”
“Well,” she hedges delicately, which means yes, absolutely yes, “you look… intense.”
“I look guilty,” I mutter.
Another pause, this one softer. “Are you?”
“I don’t know what I am,” I whisper. “Stupid? Reckless? Self-sabotaging?”
“Human,” Terry says simply. And she also repeats it more clearly. "You look more human babe."
Her words almost make me cry.
“I’m in so much trouble, Terr,” I admit, my voice wobbling ready to crackdown. “With Pine. With work. With… everything.” I mentioned my night man to her and she was surprised.
“You’re not in trouble,” she insists. “You’re in a scandal. Big difference. Trouble is when you get caught doing something bad. Scandal is when people think you did something bad. And tabloids live off thinking about it.”
I huff out a weak laugh. “Except this time they’re not entirely wrong.”
She goes quiet again. I can practically hear her brain whirring. Terry is an over thinker by nature.
“So,” she says slowly, “hypothetically speaking… if one were to have, I don’t know, a slightly ill-advised encounter with a ridiculously charismatic, emotionally unavailable rock god...”
“childhood friend,” I correct weakly.
“Same energy,” she dismisses. “...that would not automatically make them a terrible person. Just… complicated.”
“Complicated is one word for it,” I mutter. “Catastrophic is another.”
Before she can reply, I hear the door to her room fly open.
“Well, well,” a bitchy voice drawls. “If it isn’t the nation’s newest heartbreaker.” she shouts through the phone and I can tell she's already taken the phone from Terry.
I freeze.
Darla.
Of course it’s Darla.