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Daphne had pulled her luggage from the adjoining door to give Chris privacy. Bad timing on the call, but she’d forced herself to say those final words—“Then we’ll talk”—so she couldn’t squirm out of the conversation they needed to have.
She glanced toward the adjoining door. On the other side, she could hear Chris talking to his sister. She didn’t know the details, only that Gemma was going through a shitty divorce from a shitty husband, and Chris had grumbled that getting her to admit how shitty it made her feel was an exercise in frustration. Gemma wanted to pretend she was fine, that she didn’t need help much less pity. Daphne got that. She really got that. So if Gemma was opening up, then she’d get all the sibling time she needed.
Daphne sat on the end of the bed to check phone messages. She’d been doing that routinely all day. With Nia, Gemma, and Sakura all scouring the web for trouble, she couldn’t afford to ignore messages.
There was nothing new. Nia had found some online threads earlier where people were trying to track down “Zane,” but while it was intrusive and crept into stalker territory, it hadn’t crossed that border.
Hey, let’s see if we can find out who this guy really is. For shits and giggles and possibly offers of marriage.
Nia said they had time. Things weren’t escalating. The grizzly video had, as Daphne said, gone only mildly viral, and that fire was already reduced to smoldering embers.
Daphne’s next step would be calling Lawrence to tell him the truth and ask him to conference with her, Nia, and Chris to discuss a full reveal plan. Well, if Lawrence didn’t dump her on the spot. Which he might, but they were prepared for that. If he did, the next call would go to her editor, Alicia, with the same conference-call request.
They had plans and backup plans and contingency plans, and if the end result was that the publisher canceled her book and the reading public told her to go screw herself, then that was their choice. Daphne hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She was voluntarily stepping from the shadows, telling her story and apologizing sincerely. That must count for something.
Daphne was about to set her phone aside when she remembered it’d been a while since she checked her spam folder. She wouldn’t want to miss a message from Nia or Sakura because a word triggered a spam false-positive.
At a glance she saw nothing. Just the usual garbage. Oh, and a few messages from Robbie. Great.
She’d ask Chris for advice on dealing with Robbie. Maybe he could help…
Wait, he had helped. She’d forgotten their make-out session had ultimately been a ploy to make Robbie leave her alone. But what if he didn’t take the hint? What if he got competitive? Worse, what if he felt like she’d led him on, and he retaliated?
She looked down at her spam folder, with its three messages from Robbie, and her shoulders slumped.
She opened the first, sent yesterday.
Call me. Now.
It was a true mystery of the universe how guys like Robbie got laid. He certainly did. According to the neighborhood chatter, there was a regular stream of female visitors at his rented place, and they weren’t there to walk his dog.
She opened the next one.
I know you’re very busy with Chad, and I hate to interrupt your Chad-screw-fest, but this is important. Call me. NOW.
There was a brief second where she worried that there could be an actual issue. Her house caught on fire. Tika had run away from the neighbor. One problem with being a writer was she could see all the possibilities, most of them dire. But after rereading, no, he just sounded pissed off.
Pissed off enough to storm into the sunset, never to be heard from again? One could only hope.
Email three.
Fine. You don’t want to call. Let’s do it your way.
She kept reading, and as she did, her stomach clenched. It kept clenching until—
Her heart stopped. Everything stopped.
Oh no.
Please, please, please, no.
She read the email again and there was no doubt what Robbie was saying. No doubt at all.
CHRIS
Chris wasn’t going to hurry his sister off the phone after she’d finally broken down and admitted how bad things were and how “not okay” she was. Her ex was a leech who’d sucked Gemma emotionally dry, and he wasn’t done yet.
Chris was fuming by the time they got off the phone. He rubbed his hands over his face. He needed to set his anger aside. Gemma could handle it, and all she needed was support, which he’d given. She was going out with their parents tonight, and she’d be fine and didn’t need him seething on her behalf.
