Page 46 of While You Were Trending

She has to know.

She has to know that I wouldn’t do it.

“Save it. We’re canceling your documentary, and you can suck grass.”

I jog beside her. “Your mother needed a scapegoat.”

“What the fuck do you know about what my mother needs?”

The shrieks and squawks of the chicken army get softer the deeper we get into the grapevines between the working buildings and the pink Victorian mansion where Ginny lives.

“I haven’t told anyone I’m here. I wouldn’t.”

“Go away.”

“I didn’t want her to ruin your day.”

She stops short, panting.

I stop too.

She plants two hands on my chest and shoves. “Go away.”

I let her push me, backing up four big steps. “Okay. Okay. I’m going. But I swear to you, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”

“I don’t care.”

That slices deeper than I’m willing to admit.

But it’s the shine in her eyes as she glares at me from beneath an oversize red rain jacket that has my gut twisting.

“I’m sorry,” I say, softer.

“Do you haveanyidea what it’s like to have the worst parts of your teenage years broadcast for the world to see, and then to do something so incredibly stupid as an adult that just proved all of the haters right, only to have it come back over and over andoveragain?”

I shake my head.

“Then don’t come at me with your fakeI’m sorriesandI didn’t do its.Idon’t fucking care. I just want to live my life without all ofthis. Okay?”

My heart freezes over and shatters into a million shards of ice.

I’ll fix this.

I’ll protect her.

I’ll solve the problems.

I might not be in the rink, but I’m ready to go full enforcer to shield her from the world.

But she doesn’t want me.

And she shouldn’t.

All she knows of me is that I was a complete dick for all of the years we knew each other.

So I nod. “Sure. Sure. I get it.”

“Don’t placate me.”