by Rachel Kane
He hung up on me, and I dropped the phone, breathing heavily.
Oh shit, what did I just do?
11
Cam
“So this is my house, when I’m not tearing it apart in a psychotic fit of rage,” I said, showing Alex in.
He looked pretty shaken, and that worried me. Wasn’t everything going according to plan? Wasn’t he the expert? Things that bothered Alex might devastate someone like me.
“It looks much better without all the papers scattered around,” he said.
I wanted to ask him what was wrong. We were supposed to go over schedules, all the interviews he was setting up. But something was on his mind.
I’d have to let him take his own time. Tonight, I didn’t feel like throwing him off balance. Didn’t feel like wresting control of the conversation. All I wanted was for him to tell me things were okay.
“You have so many books about poisoning,” he said, looking at my research shelves.
“Yeah,” I said, “so you better not get out of line.”
He chuckled softly.
What is bothering you? Why won’t you talk about it?
At one end of the shelf there was a framed picture, and he picked it up.
My heart sank. Please don’t.
He stared down at it. A couple, young and blond and hopeful, holding hands with a young boy.
“Are these your folks?”
“I…no, no. Put that back. It’s stupid.”
He set the picture back on the shelf. “Sorry,” he said. “Did I say something?”
“No, no, it’s absolutely ridiculous, it’s nothing.” Wow, I was really not in the mood to launch into that conversation. Not interested in talking about my past, not one bit. “Those aren’t my folks. It’s just a picture I found at a thrift store. They seemed like nice people. The boy looks a little like me. See? It’s stupid, buying a picture of people you don’t know, because they remind you of…” My voice trailed off.
“Remind you of your own parents?”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know. My parents died. Very early.”
Now he was looking at me, and it was so uncomfortable.
It was one thing to feel vulnerable about my books. The scandal had left me shaken. The last thing I needed—the last thing—was to have to talk about the past.
“I don’t need sympathy,” I said. “It was a long time ago. I shouldn’t even have that stupid picture, it’s pointless, it can only lead to questions. Well-meaning questions, I know, it’s just… I don’t have anything from my real parents. No records, no pictures, nothing. The house burned up.”
That was the point at which people usually stopped asking questions.
People like hearing sad stories, but there’s a limit, and I’d discovered that limit.
The worst part is, it’s not a true story. It’s a lie, and yet I have no trouble telling it, I’ve had so much practice. It shuts the conversation down cold. Nobody asks anything else, ever. It’s the best tool I’ve ever found for escaping from talks about my past.
Just because it wasn’t true, didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to say it.
Because the truth was worse.
So bad that when I’d written it all down, I couldn’t face it, and had to hide it behind layer after layer on my computer.
Yet now I felt like shit, because I’d lied to Alex. The troubled look on his face had only grown deeper.
I hate lying to you, can you see that? I know you’re trying to help me. I know you’re trying to be nice.
There were just things he couldn’t know. Things no one could know.
Having my career ruined was one thing. But there were darker truths about me, and if they ever came out, I would simply pack my bag and leave. Take a new name in some new city.
Some stories are so hard, they can never be told, no matter what the cost.
Before I could figure out how to get our conversation back on track, the pinging from my computer started up again. My phone, too. I’d turned the sound back on, and now it was happily singing, playing the tone that meant people were back online responding to the scandal.
This tension—between the real-life disaster playing out right in front of me, and the ancient disaster I prayed no one would ever find out, and the position it put me in, having to lie to someone who was trying to help me…it was too much.
I found myself shaking, trembling, again on the verge of tears. It was so stupid. I shouldn’t feel like this. I should be able to hold myself together.
I couldn’t.
“It’s okay,” said Alex. He grabbed me. I wasn’t sure what was happening. For one wild moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but no, I’d misread that, he was pulling me close. Protecting me.
It was so unexpected I sank against him. Let myself be held, let myself be absolutely weak and powerless, for just a minute.
He turned me away so I couldn’t see the screen, and with one arm still around me, he reached out and closed my laptop. Then he took my phone and turned it off.
“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’m here. You’re going to be fine.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think anything’s ever going to be fine again. The whole world has turned against me. That sounds so melodramatic, I know, but I feel it, Alex. I feel their hate, burning out of the computer screen.”
“This is my job,” he said. “I promise you, this is what I do best. I can change people’s minds.”
Yes, but you can’t change my mind, because I know things you don’t. I know how horrible I truly am. You don’t realize it yet, but you’re going to, and when you do, do you think you’re going to protect me? No, you’re going to head for the hills. Because I’m so much worse than anyone realizes.
“I don’t think you can fix this,” I said quietly. “No amount of interviews and happy blogs are going to change how much this hurts.”
“I know. I know. But trust me. You’re going to get through this, and time will heal those wounds.”
Stepping away from his grasp, I cleared my throat. “Hm. Ahem. Awkward.” I wiped my eyes. “Sorry about that.”
He seemed as embarrassed as I felt, and nodded, backing away. He didn’t say anything; that would’ve made things worse. We were just two Normal Guys who never wanted to show a human emotion again.
It was a strange moment. Not just because of the embarrassment, but because I recognized something in him. How quickly he had come to comfort me, and then how quickly he had shut it down when I pulled away.
Here is a man who is used to hiding things.
Someone like me.
I mean, not really like me, obviously. Guys with histories like mine didn’t become powerful image consultants to the stars. Guys like me are lucky to have the kind of careers where you never really talk to anybody, you just stay in your room all day thinking up different ways of poisoning pastry.
But the look on his face, the pain in his averted eyes, told me he understood on some level what I was going through, and it was all I could do not to ask him about it.
Tell me your secret motivation. Tell me what crime you committed.
It was nice to have something to think about that wasn’t my scandal.
I had instinctively moved toward the kitchen doorway—the furthest place in the room from both him and my computer. “Can I get you something?” I asked, more to buy myself a little time to calm down than from being an actual good host.
Alex shook his head. “Look…I have to tell you something. I may have wrecked one of your shots at an interview. I was talking to Jess at Murder Minute—”
“Oh god,” I said, pretending to knock my head against the wall. “Jess. I wish I’d known you were going to call him. I’m sure he told you about the conference.”
“How you acted at a conference doesn’t matter,” Alex said, which surprised me. “Interviewers know the score. Your PR team sets the terms. Jess didn’t like that.”
The thing is, how I acted di
d matter to me. I’d gone over that conference Q&A with a fine-tooth comb, agonized over it for days afterward. I knew I’d come off as a snobbish little prick. I just never figured out what to do about it.
Kind of the story of my life.
“Jess isn’t wrong, exactly,” I said. “I have this effect on everyone. Do you know how many people in my life have called me cold, aloof, stand-offish? I particularly hate that last one. What does it even mean? Off-ish.”
Whatever guilt Alex was feeling, it didn’t stop him from smiling at that. “You do act a little superior. Ish.”
“You should meet Jake, my friend Eli’s fiance. He nearly decked me one time because I didn’t like his favorite poet. But I couldn’t stop myself! I had to express an opinion, even though I’d just met him and I knew it wasn’t going to turn out well. You may come to realize I’m a little bit of an idiot, socially.”
“Don’t worry about it. That’s my job, making sure you present the best face to the public.”
No, I’m not talking about work right now. Not talking about the scandal. I need you to understand that this defensiveness in me has a reason…but that underneath, I’m good. Really.
It was strange how much I needed that validation. I needed someone to recognize that deep down, I was a good person.
It’s just that the someone I needed to recognize it, was Alex.
Why his opinion suddenly mattered so much, I couldn’t say.
I know it didn’t have anything to do with the way his arms had felt around me. Because that would be silly.
It didn’t have anything to do with his confident attitude, or that sense that just below the surface, he was a man who had dealt with pain in his life.
It certainly didn’t have anything to do with his easy masculinity, the way he was a few inches taller than me, and quite a few inches broader in the shoulder than me, with thick arms and a tapered waist and—
Oh-ho-ho, stop that, I told myself. You’re an emotional wreck right now, that’s the only reason you’re thinking about him like this.
But his arms had felt really, really good around me.
I shook my head and stepped into the kitchen. Ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. You were just in a panic because he’d asked about the fake picture of parents on your shelf. It doesn’t matter how his arms felt, it doesn’t matter how cute he is. What matters is that your entire life is a lie, and nobody is ever going to love you, not the real you.
Alex’s phone rang, and I could hear him answering it, while I pulled one of Jake’s beers from my fridge.
“Yeah? Oh, hey Micah. No, I’m with him. No, we haven’t—I closed down his computer. He needs some time. She what? When? Are you fucking kidding me? Goddamn it. Thanks Micah. No, I’ve got it, don’t worry.”
I didn’t want to leave the kitchen. I didn’t want to walk into my living room and ask what was up.
When I emerged, he had my laptop open again, and was scrolling down past hundreds and hundreds of comments.
Then he stopped. “Shit,” he whispered.
It wasn’t something I could stay hidden from. If nothing else, morbid curiosity drew me over. I set the bottle down and looked at the screen.
There was Secret Reader’s avatar.
And there were her words:
You thought you knew EVERYTHING about Cameron Car-Liar, but you don’t know the HALF of it!!!
My heart sank. I felt like I was going to fall down. Like my legs wouldn’t carry me anymore.
Copying is ONE thing but soon you will know the WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.
Before Alex could say a word, I closed the lid of my laptop, took my beer, and walked to my bedroom. I shut the door and crawled under the covers.
My life was truly over.
12
Alex
If the first rule of being the target of a scandal is lie low, then the first rule of being in my job should be don’t get emotionally involved. When you start to take your client’s struggles personally, you lose focus, lose perspective, and start making bad decisions.
Too late.
I pulled up to a battered duplex on the south side of town. Looked down at my phone to make sure the address was right.
The home of Secret Reader.
After Cam had gone to bed, I stood there with my hands balled into fists, staring at the fucking computer. Remembering the way he’d trembled in my arms. I had felt a real fear in him, an exhaustion.
I didn’t care what he’d done. It didn’t matter. Nobody should be made to feel like that. He’d never hurt anyone. I’d defended so many people who, deep down, were truly awful. Most of my clients, once you scratched the glamorous surface, were nothing like their public images. Selfish, petty, no depth of feeling.
Cam was the opposite. On the surface he acted like he was better than anyone else. But underneath was nothing but pain.
Pain recognizes pain.
I was on such dangerous ground. I could still feel the weight of him, as though he were still in my arms, and I knew it was unwise to think about him that way, I knew it was nothing but trouble.
But damn it, I had been alone for a long time now. I couldn’t remember the last time I had touched another human being.
He’s not for you, though. You have to be realistic about that. You’re working together, but that’s the extent of it.
I knew that. I knew there couldn’t be anything between us.
Then again, I knew a lot of things. Things like, don’t go to someone’s house to threaten them so they’ll stop exposing your client.
That’s not how this worked at all. Threats, bribes, the minute you went down that road, things started to fall apart quickly.
Maybe that’s why I hadn’t gotten out of the car yet. Maybe that’s why I was just sitting here, staring at her house.
The woman who lived there was killing my client. And she absolutely had to stop.
Micah didn’t know I was here. He would’ve shut me down immediately.
What the fuck do you think you’re doing, he would ask me. What happened to lying low? What about the charm offensive?
But I was so angry. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Watching Cam shut the bedroom door, watching him close himself off from the world, it hurt so much to see his pain.
I don’t know what I expected Secret Reader to look like, but when she opened the door, she seemed to be the most normal person in the world. Neatly dressed, much younger than I expected, surely not more than 25. Between her hair being swept back into a bun, and her heavy tortoiseshell glasses, she reminded me of a librarian I used to know when I was a little kid.
She smiled at me…but left the chain on the door. “Could I help you?”
“You’re Renee Laud?”
She glanced past me at the car. A flicker of worry in her eyes. I didn’t know whether that was guilt, or just the natural response of having a stranger who knows your name show up at the door.
“That’s me,” she said. “And you are…?”
This is wrong, my conscience said. You need to turn around and go home.
I ignored that voice.
“I work for the law firm of Reynolds, Reynolds and Smith, and I would like to ask you a few questions about Cameron Carlyle.”
She paled. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The hell you haven’t.
“I wonder if I could speak to you a moment,” I said.
“Do you have any ID? How do I know who you are?”
I still had business cards from my former life, and I pulled one out and handed it to her. I also showed her my driver’s license. “Will that do?”
She pocketed the card. “I suppose.”
Her house was…normal. Maybe a bit messy. Books were stacked everywhere. Evidence of dinner was still on the table, with half a glass of white wine. But nothing to suggest the raging craziness that I’d seen online. If I hadn’t seen her face go pale when I mentioned Cam, I might’ve wondered whether I’d found the right hou
se.
But no, this was the place. She stared at me defensively. “Are you here to interrogate me?”
I kept my face open and still. “No. This is a strictly unofficial visit...for now. I’d like to ask you to stop.”
She glanced at her tablet, sitting atop a stack of books, and I realized that’s where she had been writing her comments.
“You’re trying to shut me down,” she said. “You work for a lawyer, I’m sure you’ve heard of the First Amendment.”
I shook my head. “Again, I’m not here in an official capacity. You’ve made your accusations. I’d like you to step away from the conversation now, and not offer anything further.”
“Amazing,” she said. “Simply amazing. I suppose you’ll be offering me money next.”
“No. That’s not part of what I’m asking.”
“No carrot, just the stick, eh? This is how it always works, isn’t it? The powerful, silencing the little guy. They told me this would happen. They said, Cameron Carlyle is part of something big, he’s going to come at you.”
Something big? What the hell was she talking about? I’d seen Cameron’s financial statements. He was doing okay for himself, but was hardly a big name.
“Who are they?” I asked her.
But she shook her head and gave me a knowing look. “We knew you’d ask that, too. I protect my sources.”
“So you’re a journalist. In a way.”
Then she said something that troubled me: “We’re not going to be victimized anymore.”
“By…by Cam?”
“By anyone. We’ve had enough! No one should be taken advantage of like this, treated this way—”
