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How it had happened was moot. The fact was it had happened and Iris felt like she’d been stripped naked and flayed alive before a jeering, unsympathetic crowd. Especially since Trystan’s outraged fans had started the teamtrystan hashtag, demanding that Iris be canceled, while labeling her everything from a money-hungry slut, to an obsessive psychopathic stalker, who many believed posed an actual physical threat toward Trystan. It was around then that the death threats had begun too.
Iris felt increasingly isolated from her family, from the few people she’d considered her friends. Her flatmates had been curious and supportive at first but after those first snippets of the journal had been leaked, they’d begun to avoid her. As if they were afraid that the public ridicule was somehow contagious.
The requests—then near demands—for interviews were becoming overwhelming, with some of the more notorious gossip rags offering obscene amounts of money for her “side” of the story. She was pretty certain her steadfast refusal to engage with any of them was one of the reasons the gutter press had turned hostile so quickly. Why she was now being vilified, mocked, and straight-up lied about. She didn’t have the energy or the desire—quite frankly—to fight some of the libelous things being printed about her. And she felt like she was free-falling into a dark abyss, no bottom in sight.
All she had right now to keep her sane was her work. And her writing. The writing gave her an escape from her intolerable reality.
She sighed and tucked her phone under her desk chair’s cushion. Even though the device was on silent, the screen lit up with every new notification. It was distracting and, worse, she would often see the opening lines of whatever horrible message had been sent to her, which—when they came continuously—could send her into a terrible funk.
She was between editing jobs right now. A few of her clients had jumped on the #cancelirishughes bandwagon and dropped her like a hot potato, but her more long-term regulars had stuck with her. It did mean she had less work to focus on and she was concerned she would start feeling the financial pinch soon. In all likelihood, she’d have to move back in with her parents at some point until the world forgot about her, but for now she was only just managing to keep her head above water.
She opened up her manuscript, and reread the last chapter. This was the one thing that brought her any joy at the moment. She loved how the story and characters were developing. Her pregnant werewolf detective would be going into labor soon. And Iris had submerged herself in a happy little research bubble, reading anything she could find on lycanthropy, with materials ranging from serious psychological tomes, to myths and folklore, as well as sexy, fun paranormal romances.
She was watching a fascinating documentary about European lycanthropic mythology when a quiet knock sounded on her bedroom door. She paused and tilted her head, wondering if she’d imagined the sound.
When the timid knock came again, she swiveled her chair to face the door.
“Come in.”
“Hey, Iris” her flatmate Hilary said quietly. “We need to talk.”
Hilary and their other flatmate, Nora, stood framed in Iris’s bedroom doorway, and Iris froze at the sight of them. The women wore matching expressions of apology and both looked supremely uncomfortable. Iris immediately knew what they wanted to discuss with her.
She fought to keep the wobble out of her voice, but couldn’t quite hold back the hot press of tears welling up in her eyes as she asked, “When do you want me out?”
“You have to, Trystan. Seriously, the studio is threatening us with breach of contract if you don’t do at least one more interview.” Bianca, Trystan’s PR guru, glared at him over the rims of her cat’s-eye glasses. It was her signature I mean business, Mister! glower. A look she’d used more on Trystan these past two weeks than she’d done in the entirety of their decade-long business relationship. “Quinn, talk some sense into him. He’s being unreasonable.”
Quinny slanted Trystan a helpless look. He was usually a hardass when it came to shit like this, but he was still treading on eggshells around Trystan after everything that had happened with?—
His brain skittered away from her name. He tried not to consciously form that name in his mind, on his lips, but he couldn’t fucking escape it in his dreams. And that made uninterrupted sleep an impossibility.
“After the shit Holmes pulled at the last one, I’m not inclined to do another fucking interview, Bee,” Trystan told the woman, hoping his tone brooked no argument.
Bee could be stubborn about these things but who could blame her? That was what he paid her for after all. He chugged down his protein shake in one go and slammed the shaker on the marble countertop when he was done. He swiped his forearm across his upper lip afterward—he hated the vile stuff—but after eating pretty much whatever the fuck he wanted over the past few months, and not maintaining his strict workout schedule, he needed to get back into shape.
Bee and Quinny had ambushed him first thing this morning. It wasn’t even five-thirty yet, for Christ’s sake. They’d made sure to show up before Trystan’s morning workout.
“What about a compromise?” Quinny offered, stepping forward with his palms up in surrender. He looked incongruous in Trystan’s kitchen, wearing a three-piece navy-blue pin-striped suit, while Trystan himself only wore gray sweatpants and a navy-blue tank top.
Bee—a petite sixty-something-year-old flower child—was dressed in her usual bohemian flighty style, wearing a flowy caftan-esque chiffon thing. Her hair was up in a messy chignon, bottle-blonde wisps trailing down around her face. Her make-up was caked on as always, with clumpy mascara—that was already smearing despite the early hour—and bright red lipstick, which had left a stain on her incisors. She folded her arms across her chest, and the many bracelets and beads she wore on her wrists, clacked together at the movement.
“What kind of compromise?” she asked, squinting at Quinny suspiciously. Her glasses would be a lot more effective if she actually looked through them, instead of over them, every once in a while.
“Why not let Trystan choose the journalist, the venue, and the medium?”
“Trystan would choose a high school blogger just to fuck with me,” Bee protested, and Trystan grinned wickedly.
“Brilliant idea, Bee! This is why I pay you the big bucks, baby.”
“Shut up, you massive man child,” she said, reluctant affection nipping at the edges of her words.
Trystan braced his palms on the countertop and stared unseeingly down at the grayish-green veins in the white marble between his hands.
“I don’t mind Quinny’s idea. Let me think about it, okay?”
“I’ll need an answer by tonight, Trystan,” Bee implored.
“Yeah, okay,” he said with a careless shrug, not really interested, but knowing he’d pick someone just to get her and Quinny off his back. Better to just get this shit over and done with. He lifted his gaze to Chance, who stood quietly in the furthest corner of the kitchen. He nodded at the man, “You ready?”
