He gently knocked my forehead. “Don’t ruin a good thing, Jo. If you know, you know. You should tell the boy the words he wants to hear.”
I did know. I was in love with Micah. I’d never known anyone like him. “I want to. And I will. Today.”
And just like that, the fear I’d harbored lifted from my shoulders. My mom’s life wasn’t mine. And besides, when things were good with my dad, she’d been truly happy. For over ten years, she’d been in love with him. She’d never told me she wished she hadn’t ever met him. I wouldn’t project potential future heartache onto today. I had a choice in the matter. I could choose to be happy for now.
* * *
As soon as Zion and I arrived in the office, Andy stuck his head out. “Jo, is that you? Come in here.”
Since he’d sent me such a complimentary text about my work on Friday, I didn’t think he’d yell at me or fire me. I hoped he’d tell me I could go out on the usual rounds.
“Jo, what do you know about Eden’s pregnancy?”
I stopped dead in his doorway. “What?”
“Eden Sinclair? She’s pregnant.”
“I’m sorry? Why do you think that?”
“Derek. He followed her to her gynecologist and saw her buying prenatal vitamins. It’s not rocket science.”
I slowly walked into his office. “What do you intend to do with that information?”
He sneered at me and transformed into the ugliest human being I’d ever seen. “Print it, obviously.”
My mind reeled. If he printed that now, Eden would be taken completely by surprise. And she’d certainly think I had something to do with it. “But you have no hard evidence. She could have bought those vitamins for someone else. Or to fool you. It would be libel. You could get sued.” I was throwing everything I could out there.
“Sued? She’d have to prove that it wasn’t true. And if it’s not true, she’d have to prove that I didn’t believe it was true. And I believe it. I think it’s very, very true.”
“Andy, you can’t print that. I’ll get you a better story.”
He glanced down at his tablet, and I knew he was about to shut me out. “Keep talking.”
I licked my lips, weighing all the options. In my head, I screamed Shit shit shit! I did have a better story, and it briefly crossed my mind to throw Adrianna under the bus. The buzz from that story would steamroll over anything about Eden and would occupy the paper for months. Andy would commemorate me with medals of honor. But I couldn’t do that to her or to Zion. Not because it was his story to break, but because he never would. And it turned out Andy was right. I didn’t have whatever it took to ruin someone’s life for sport. It would be unfair to Adrianna, and I’d never forgive myself for turning her over to the firing squad. When and if she wanted to share her story, that should be her prerogative.
There were two other far less explosive stories in my possession. Praying one or the other might throw him off the scent, I lobbed the weaker of the two. “I found out yesterday that Eden’s set her wedding date.”
Andy didn’t stop scrolling through photos. “When is it?”
My eyes closed in resignation. “I don’t know. Soon.”
“Then that’s not really news, Scout.” He yawned. “Everyone knows they’re getting married. Nobody knows she’s having a baby.”
In desperation, I threw him my last bone. “I know who Micah’s dating.”
His eyes shot up. “Yeah?”
“Would you postpone the story on Eden for another week if I share that information?”
He snorted. “Are you trying to bargain? This is why I pulled you off covering these people. We should be printing both stories.”
“You can print both stories, just not at the same time. One week, Andy. That’s all.”
He tapped his pen, weighing the options. Honestly, I couldn’t believe my ploy was working. Eden’s pregnancy would be a bigger story than Micah’s next girlfriend, especially since it was me. But he finally said, “Fine. If you tell me right now who Micah’s dating, for the record, and if you’ll confirm Eden’s pregnancy, for the record, I’ll push Eden’s story.”
I exhaled, hoping he could be trusted. “Can I get that in writing?”
“Are you shitting me? Jo, you work for me. Remember?”
I wanted to punch him in the face, but I needed the paycheck. And the health insurance.
“Do I have your word at least?” Desperation colored my voice. If I lost Eden’s trust, I’d never get it back.
I prayed Micah would forgive me for what I was fixing to do. He’d always been so open to the media. Of the two of them, Micah would be less bent out of shape from overexposure.
“Sure.” He crossed his arms. “So Eden’s pregnant?”
I nodded. The blood drained from my face. I couldn’t believe I was betraying Eden to keep her story from coming out sooner.
“How long have you known?”
I looked at my feet. “A week.”
“Jesus, Jo. I should fire you.”
My chin jutted out, and I stood a little straighter, daring him to try that. I’d love to write that report up for HR. “Fired for failing to expose secrets shared in confidence.”
Andy ran his tongue across his teeth. “Is she married?”
“That’s not part of the bargain.”
His lips puckered. “Fine. Who’s Micah dating?”
I’d promised him, but that didn’t make it easier to take the plunge—I was wagering a relationship that hadn’t quite gotten airborne, and on top of that, I was about to become the story. But what could I do? Andy left me no choice, so I gritted my teeth and said, “Me.”
His mouth slowly twisted into an approximation of happy. “Wow. I thought it would take more than that to get an admission from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You two have been seen all over Brooklyn. But I couldn’t confirm anything. Not until you just did.”
My mind raced through every gesture, every kiss. “You’ve been following me?”
“I’d hardly need to. From the online traffic alone, we could have run a speculative piece. But this is better.”
I didn’t know how. But whatever worked. In fact, if he was going to run it anyway, I felt like I’d at least used the little influence I had for good. Micah and I hadn’t done anything in public that I wouldn’t want my mom to see in the papers. “Great. So you’ll run that and hold off on Eden, right?”
“Yeah.”
Crisis averted as much as possible, I relaxed. “Thanks, Andy.”
He grinned, and I swore his teeth looked razor sharp. “No problem.”
Chapter 23
The entire staff watched me as I exited Andy’s office. I wanted to call Micah to give him a heads-up, but more urgently, I needed to contact Eden immediately to warn her that Andy knew, but I certainly didn’t want the hungry wolves to overhear my conversation with her, so I jumped in the elevator down to the lobby, searching for her contact info in our email chain.
When I got out to the street, I dialed the number, but as I was about to hit Send, a man approached me. “Jo Wilder?”
I looked up from my phone and squinted at him, trying to place where I knew him from. All at once I recognized him as one of the paparazzi from a competing newspaper, but I couldn’t remember his name. We’d met at some event or another, jockeying for the same photos. “Yes?”
He snapped my picture. “When did you first sleep with Micah Sinclair?”
“What?”
“Are you still sleeping with him? How would you characterize your relationship?”
What had Andy published? I turned away from the reporter and walked down the sidewalk back toward the building. “No comment.”
“What do you know about the other women?”
“Leave me alone.” I tripped over my own shoes, but caught myself. My hands started to shake.
He kept pace with me. “Where is Micah now?” He turned and started walking backward as his
camera clicked in bursts. “Were you working undercover? Did Andy Dickson send you in on assignment? Pretty choice assignment.”
I put my hand up to block the shot, and nearly walked into a woman holding a small boy by the hand. When I stopped to let her by, he asked. “What’s it like working for Andy?”
I turned to face him. “Off the record?”
He dropped his camera to his shoulder. “Yeah. The guy’s a genius.”
“It sucks. It really sucks.”
“Are you thinking of leaving? Could I give you my card in case they need to replace you? I’d be willing to sleep with celebrities to get the story.”
I finally made it to the lobby doors and ditched the pest. I hid in the stairwell and pulled up our website on my phone. Right on the front page, the headline read: “I Slept with Micah Sinclair.”
I’d never said that. I’d never given Andy any details about my relationship with Micah, and my name accompanied a single statement, which I’d also never exactly said: “I’m dating Micah,” says Daily Feed’s own Jo Wilder. At the top of the page an image was slowly loading, knocking that one sentence farther down. The reception was terrible in the stairwell, so I stepped into the lobby.
Midmorning and midafternoon were the best times to publish a click-bait story. The traffic on the site would hammer our servers. Andy had posted this the minute I’d left his office. He’d only been waiting for me to take the bait.
The image finally finished loading, and I stared at a picture of Micah, asleep, half-naked on his own sofa, draped in a crimson throw. My blood ran cold.
As I waited for the elevator, my phone rang, incoming number unknown. I answered it anyway. “Is this Jo Wilder? Hi, I’m a reporter from the—” I hung up, cursing the vultures. How’d he get my cell phone number?
The minute the elevator doors opened on our floor, I rushed into the newsroom and burst into Andy’s office. “Andy, how did you get that picture? I took that on my personal camera. You have to take it down!”
He smirked. “Oh, did you? Then why’d you upload it to the server here?”
I combed through my memory. Had I used my personal camera? It had been early. I’d been so hungry. I’d reached into my bag and . . . I couldn’t remember. Maybe I’d taken out the wrong camera. And then Zion had uploaded everything. Everything.
I had to sit down. Dizzy. “You can’t publish that, Andy.”
“It was that or we run the story on Eden. You chose that story.”
I balled my hands into trembling fists. “You have to pull it”
He sat down. “No. I don’t.”
He didn’t understand. How could he? I hadn’t explained it right. “Andy, I’m not just sleeping with Micah. I’m not one of those girls. We have something really special, and this is going to ruin everything. He’s going to think—” My hand flew to my mouth as I realized how this story would distort my intentions with Micah all along
Andy closed his eyes and shook his head. When he looked at me again, I thought I saw pity. “Go read the article, Jo. Tell me if you really believe all that when you’re done.”
Zion waited for me outside Andy’s office. “Josie? Are you okay?”
“Zion, what did Andy write?”
He laid a hand on my arm and looked into my eyes. “Remember what Andy does, okay? It might not be so bad.”
I pushed past him to my workstation and powered up my laptop. The story loaded, and I started reading. Under the giant picture I’d taken, the statement I’d allegedly made was followed by: Has Ms. Wilder gone “undercover”? The photo she submitted (above) gives us a fly-on-the-wall view of a morning-after with Micah Sinclair—although as documented below, this is hardly a unique perspective.
Several smaller images scattered down the page. It was a collection of tales. A collection of cautionary tales. Each had a small paragraph to the left or right.
Micah used me for sex when he toured in France. Yeah, the sex was amazing. But he left me behind when the tour ended.
I spent three months with Micah. I thought we were having fun, but one day, he told me to stop calling. He never gave me an explanation.
All of the women were attractive. In a couple, Andy had found pictures of them with Micah. He stood smiling next to every quote. Every damning quote.
At the very bottom, I was horrified to find the picture of Victoria Sedgwick I’d taken a little over a week ago. My name ran sideways along the edge, adding a cruel irony to the entire situation. Victoria’s statement knocked the wind out of me. I thought we had something special. I really thought I loved him. I thought maybe he loved me, too.
I remembered shooting that picture of her. I thought she’d glared at me with envy when she saw Micah with me. What had her expression really meant? Was she nursing a broken heart?
Andy was right to pity me. I was just another one of Micah’s girls. My statement at the top of the article made me seem like a naïve fool—or a calculating snake. And that picture of Micah, draped in his crimson blanket. He looked like a king on his divan, waiting for his harem to come feed him his grapes.
I turned and threw up all over the floor.
Zion closed my laptop and took it out of the dock. He slid it into the computer bag and started gathering my other things.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you home.”
I looked at the mess on the floor. “Oh, God. I have to clean this up.”
“No, you don’t. The custodial staff has been called. Come with me.”
We walked out front, and he hailed a cab. As soon as we got in, he started talking.
“What are you thinking, Jo?” His voice sounded like cotton. Cotton from miles away—from the land of cotton. I started to giggle hysterically.
“Josie.” Zion turned my face toward his. He seemed so far away. In slow motion. Blurry. Dim. I stared out the window and watched the buildings pass. In the distance, my phone rang. And rang.
When we got home, he led me to the sofa and plumped a pillow behind me. He grabbed my glucose meter and pricked my finger. I watched him, but it was like it was happening to someone else.
“Did you eat any lunch, Jo?”
He found my bag and pulled out a glucose tab. “Take this. Now, Josie.”
I put it in my mouth and swallowed it. He brought me a juice box, and I drank that, too. He could have handed me a plate of chocolate cake and a pint of beer. I would have eaten it all. I didn’t care.
After about fifteen minutes, the world rushed back at me. “Zion?”
He came out of his room. “Oh, thank God. How are you feeling?”
“What am I going to do?”
“Right now, you’re going to rest. And I’m going to make you some lunch. Then we’re going to talk about it.”
I closed my eyes and focused on breathing, in and out. The pain I felt after less than two weeks only proved that there was no amount of happiness that could lessen the blow of losing it all. Was it as recently as that morning I thought I’d be content with being happy for now? How could I be happy for now if it meant one day I’d be living unhappily-ever-after?
Earlier that morning, I was ready to fall into a feeling. Worse, I’d nearly excused my mom’s heartbreak due to her decade of romantic fulfillment. I was furious with myself for betraying her for a fleeting emotion. I strengthened my resolve to fight that feeling. Snack boxes. How’d I allow myself to confuse food with love?
As I calmed enough to drift off for a bit, Zion handed me a plate and sat next to me. “You ready to talk?”
He’d made some kind of burrito. It wasn’t as fancy as pear-ginger buckwheat pancakes, but he hadn’t paid anyone to make it for me. And he didn’t make a big deal out of it. He just did it because he truly loved me.
“Zion. Have I ever told you I love you?”
“Aw. I love you, too. I hate to break it to you, though. You’re not my type.”
I guffawed. “That’s a pity. Life would have been so much easier if I were.”
“Yeah? You want to get with all this?” He struck a ridiculous pose, shoulder dropped, cheeks sucked in, eyes batting in exaggeration.
“Who wouldn’t?”
“True. But I think there’s someone else you like more than me. Or at least you did.”
“Yeah. I did.”
“And now? You’re not going to let that article change your feelings, are you?”
“My feelings?” It came out a sob. “Zion, he was just using me. Didn’t you read the paper? He strings girls along, letting them think he loves them. And then he dumps them. And I’m one of those girls. Lord. I’m so stupid.” Tears welled up in my eyes for the second time that day.
Zion went into the bathroom and brought me a wad of tissue paper. “Did we read the same article?”
I wiped my eyes and sniffed. “Why?”
He resettled himself beside me and squeezed my knee. “Yeah, he’s been with a string of women. You already knew that. And those relationships all ended. You already knew that, too. And those women are now talking about it to the media. All factual.”
Every word he said hurt, but I took a deep breath, interested to hear how he’d spin this nightmare. “Go on.”
“At least two of those girls were groupies. They sort of advertise a no-strings-attached arrangement, you know? You don’t know what Micah may have promised them. Probably nothing. They got exactly what they wanted from him. You notice none of the girls who moved on to a bigger rock star were interviewed? Why not? Why only the couple who are no longer featured in any gossip stories?”
He made a little sense, but I wasn’t convinced. “So what? So they’re bitter. That doesn’t exonerate him at all. How can I know he isn’t going to have his fun with me and then drop me, too? Look at Victoria Sedgwick. She was with one of Adam’s band members last time I checked. And she claims Micah was in love with her. How am I any different?”
“She said she was in love with Micah and that she thought he loved her. Doesn’t mean he did. And come on. Victoria Sedgwick is the biggest hanger-on. You don’t know if she’s even still with that band member. If she is, I wouldn’t doubt she’s trying to work her way up to Adam himself.”
A Crazy Kind of Love Page 23
