Flawed

  He’s silent for a few more seconds, his eyes searching my face like he’s trying to figure out if I’m kidding. I only wish I was.

  The silence has grown uncomfortable—at least on my part—before he finally asks, “Are you telling me that your father tossed you out of your apartment this morning?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “While the paparazzi were probably swarming around.”

  “No probably about it,” I say with a deliberately careless tilt of my head. “The paps were everywhere.”

  I’d had to do some fancy evasive maneuvers to avoid them—and even then, I didn’t succeed completely. They took a lot of photos of me coming out of the building, some of me ducking into my gym to get away, and though I managed to lose them by getting the management to let me out a side door, the paps were no dummies. A bunch of them were waiting for me at the bottom of Ethan and Chloe’s driveway.

  Considering what I looked like at that point, with my smeared makeup, bleeding foot, and last night’s dress, I can only imagine what tomorrow’s gossip rag headlines are going to read. I figure most are going to go with the whole “Tori Reed gives new meaning to the walk of shame,” but I’m sure there will be a few outliers in the group. A few surprises to make me cringe.

  “He threw you into the middle of a pack of paps without so much as your cellphone or your purse? Without any money?”

  “In his defense, he did give me five minutes to grab what I needed.”

  “As long as what you needed didn’t include your credit cards or anything that might actually be of use to you.”

  “You should probably stop talking now,” I tell him as my stomach starts to churn all over again.

  He lifts a brow. “And why is that exactly?”

  “Because somehow you make an already sucky situation sound a million times worse.”

  “That’s because it’s worse than sucky. What he did to you was unconscionable. Tossing you into a pack of hyenas with no way to protect yourself. What kind of man does something like that?”

  “I had two hundred dollars in cash in my nightstand.”

  He doesn’t look impressed. “But no phone to call a cab. And no shoes to make your two-mile-long walk remotely comfortable.”

  “Again, I had five minutes to grab what I needed. I’m the idiot who forgot her shoes.”

  “And he didn’t think to remedy that fact before he escorted you off the premises.”

  “There you go again, making it sound really bad.” I’m going for flippant, but my voice breaks in the middle.

  “It is really bad, Tori. It’s fucking awful.” For the first time since I got here, he looks at me with sympathy—which totally gets my back up.

  I clear my throat, making sure there will be no more annoying cracks to give me away. “Trust me, Miles. You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I’m doing enough of that all by myself.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for you,” he answers. “I feel pissed off on your behalf. They are two totally different emotions. He had no right to treat you like that.”

  I start to tell him that in my family, my father has whatever rights he wants to take.

  The right to sleep with other women long before he and my mother had their little “arrangement.”

  The right to miss his children’s birthdays and graduations and special achievements whenever a better offer came along.

  The right to ship us off to boarding school when he got tired of having us around—and the right to bring us back, whether we wanted to come or not, whenever he wanted to show the world what a devoted family man he was.

  But telling him all that will only make me sound more pathetic, and that’s the last thing I want. I’m quite comfortable with the healthy animosity that’s grown between Miles and me in the last year. Rocking that boat is pretty much not an option.

  No matter how he looked at me when he saw me earlier.

  The thought of those blue eyes raking over my body, all hot and interested and oh-so-sexy, sets off little flutters deep inside me. Which is so not what I need right now. I’ve got enough problems without adding lusting-after-my-best-friend’s-asshole-brother to the mix. Especially now that I’m going to have to live with him for a while. And especially now that he’s starting to seem like way less of an asshole than I’ve been giving him credit for…

  “Tell me you know I’m right,” Miles continues when the silence between us stretches on too long. “Tell me you know you’re not to blame for any of this. With an example like your father around, no wonder you fell for a total douche like Parsons.”

  “Damn right I’m not to blame for Alexander being the King of Douches. The fact that I ever slept with him—even if it was over two years ago—makes my fucking skin crawl.”

  “That tape was made two years ago?” Miles asks incredulously. “Did you tell your father that?”

  “Of course I did. I also told him that I never gave Alexander permission to tape us having sex. He didn’t care.”

  “Your father is a real son of a bitch, you know that?”

  I wish I could argue with him, but I can’t. Tough love is one thing, but I’m the first one to say my dad went too far today. Especially when he suggested that I should have just slept with Alexander and spared him—and his company—the embarrassment of having a daughter who stars in her own sex tape.

  I don’t tell Miles that part. Partly because it’s the most humiliating part of this whole debacle—the idea that my dad thinks so little of me and my right to choose—and partly because Miles already looks like he’s on the verge of stroking out. I may not have much use for him, but I sure as hell don’t want to be the one responsible for bursting a blood vessel in my bff’s brother’s great big brain.

  In the end I go with glib. It’s easy, and—more important—it’s what I’m good at, hiding the hurt I’ve felt inside for more years than I can count. “Yeah, but think of what a great story I’ll have to tell my therapist. When I can afford a therapist, again, I mean.”

  He starts to say something else, but his phone buzzes before he can. He holds it out to me without even looking at it.

  Fuck. It’s Chloe. I was hoping to have a little time to figure out what to say to her, but it looks like my time just ran out.

  I take the phone, swipe my thumb across the screen to answer it. Then say, “Hello,” as Miles heads back into the house to give me privacy.

  Fuck. When the hell did he turn out to be such a good guy?

  “Tori! Oh thank God!” My best friend’s voice floods the line. “I’ve been worried sick. Are you okay? Of course you’re not okay. I swear to God, if I could get my hands on that creep, I’d rip his dick off myself. That’s if I could find it, which is doubtful, at least if that video was anything to go by. And can I just ask? What kind of a moron releases a sex tape that not only shows what a small cock he has but also makes him look like a boring, incompetent lover?”

  She sounds so incredulous that I crack up completely, laughing so hard and so long that tears start flowing down my cheeks. I refuse to think about the fact that they’re the first tears I’ve allowed myself since this whole nightmare began. The first I’ve shed in I don’t even know how long. Trust Chloe to make sure that when I finally gave in to them, there would be as much amusement in them as rage and frustration.

  “Trust me, Chlo, he doesn’t just look like a boring, incompetent lover. He is one.”

  “Obviously. Why else would he do something like this? What an idiot.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing for him you don’t need a big brain or a big dick to make it in Hollywood.”

  “Don’t you know, Tori? That’s why all the action heroes carry the big guns. Overcompensation is real.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  She grows serious then, her voice losing its indignation. “How are you doing? Honestly?”

  I start to do glib again, start to tell her that I’m just fine. But this is Chloe and I’ve always been shit at lying to he
r. This time when the tears come, they’re all about rage and fear and a hurt I barely allow myself to feel.

  “I’m just so mad, you know? I’m just so fucking mad!”

  “Damn right you are. He’s a total…” She pauses like she’s searching for an insult bad enough to describe Alexander.

  I sniff a little. “Your brother called him a life-sized dick.”

  “My brother is a smart man. Disgustingly descriptive, mind you, but also very, very smart.”

  This time I laugh through the tears instead of the other way around. And somehow, despite all the shit that has happened today, it really does make things a little better. Or maybe that’s my best friend doing that. My best friend and her brother, if I’m being honest, since Miles—surprisingly—seems to have my back in this situation, too.

  Because I don’t know quite how I feel about that, I concentrate on telling Chloe everything—including my stupid suggestion that Alexander leak a sex tape to raise his profile. In typical Chloe style, she hears me out without interruption. But just because she isn’t saying anything doesn’t mean she isn’t listening. I can all but see her lawyer’s brain working through possible scenarios as I pour everything out.

  Somehow, telling her makes everything better. But it also makes everything worse, because it makes it real in a way that nothing else has.

  Since I got here, I’ve tried not to think about just how awful a predicament I’m in, figuring tomorrow morning is soon enough to deal with this mess. But laying it all out for Chloe like this, waiting as she thinks it all through, makes it hard not to think about what a mess my life currently is.

  It also makes it even harder not to panic.

  I can feel it welling up inside me, can feel the edges of it—hard and scared and uncompromising—brushing against my stomach, my heart, the inside of my skin. I refuse to give in to it, refuse to let it out into the world for anyone else to see, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Doesn’t mean my brain isn’t beating a constant mantra of what am I going to do, what am I going to do inside my skull.

  And still, even as the panic rises, I know that—despite everything—I’m luckier than a lot of people. I might have lost everything this morning, but at least I have a place to stay. And people that care about me. It’s more than a lot of people have, and I need to concentrate on that instead of on the fear that’s dogged me ever since my father hit the PLAY button on his phone this morning.

  It’s not until I’m done, until I’ve spilled out every word of the sordid, awful story, that I realize my knees are practically knocking together. At this point, I’m smart enough to know that there’s no fighting the shakiness, so I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the ground, my knees tucked up to my chest and Miles’s phone pressed to my ear like a lifeline as I wait for Chloe to speak.

  She takes her time, mulling things over like she always does. And when she finally does speak, she asks the one question I’m not prepared to answer.

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t—what do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re in the middle of a perfect storm of absolute fuckery. Between Alexander, your father, and the reporters who scent blood in the water, you’re pretty much screwed.”

  “Wow, I feel so much better now. Thanks.”

  “I’m just telling you how it is.”

  “Believe me, I know exactly how it is. That’s why I’m currently hiding out at your place with your brother. Do you really think I’d stay with Miles if I had any other options?”

  “Miles isn’t so bad, Tor. Do you know that he’s got a bunch of bots crawling the Internet, finding each and every posting of that damn video so he can go in and destroy it?”

  “What?” My heart nearly stops in my chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that he spent hours early this morning setting up a system to take down that video nearly as fast as it went up. He’s even hacked into some of the bigger gossip sites and destroyed their links to it.”

  “I don’t—I can’t—” I’m overwhelmed, my brain working to process what she’s telling me. Working to process what is the absolute last thing I expected to hear. “How do you know? Did he tell you this?”

  “He didn’t have to. Once we heard about the video, Ethan started to do the same thing. But someone had beat him to it, someone whose manner of coding he recognized right away.”

  “Miles.”

  “Miles,” she agrees. “But just because he’s hugely slowed the spread of the video doesn’t mean the story isn’t still out there. Every major news and gossip site in America and Britain is covering it—as well as a few from a bunch of other countries, too.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel better here, you’re failing spectacularly.”

  “I’m trying to figure out what you want to do about it.”

  “What can I do about it? Like you said, the story’s already out there.”

  “Yes, but right now Alexander and his people are controlling the conversation. You can change that.”

  “Now you sound like your brother.”

  “I think we’ve already discussed the fact that my brother is a brilliant man.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to spin anything. I don’t want to go to war with Alexander. I just want to close my eyes and have all of this disappear.”

  “That’s your fear talking. And your embarrassment.”

  “Well, that’s fair, considering I am afraid. And embarrassed.”

  “But you have no reason to be. Okay, I get the fear. You’ve just had the rug yanked out from under you in every way it can possibly be yanked. But embarrassed? You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about!”

  “There’s a video of a man fucking me making its way around the Internet. I think I’ve got something to be embarrassed about.”

  “First of all, I watched the whole thing and as we already discussed, Alexander has way more to be embarrassed about than you do. You looked beautiful. And second of all, the fact that that video is out there is on him, not you. All you did was trust the guy you were dating not to be an asshole.”

  “Yeah, well, I certainly picked well with him, didn’t I?”

  “Oh absolutely,” she answers, tongue firmly in cheek. “Then again, nearly all of us do at least once, don’t we? Think about it. How many women do you think have dated a guy who hurt them? Who betrayed their trust? Who put intimate pictures or videos of them out there on the Internet just because he could? Or who sent those pictures around to his friends or teammates or frat brothers, just to make himself look cool in their eyes?”

  “A lot,” I admit grudgingly.

  “Hundreds of thousands,” she corrects me. “Maybe even millions. Most of us know someone this has happened to, and even more of us live in fear of something like this happening to us. I’ll admit, like everything about you, your story is more spectacular than most—”

  “You can say that again,” I interrupt with a snort.

  “But that just means you’ve got a bigger audience to talk to. This is a topic that needs a spokeswoman. You can be that woman. You can change the discussion. Hell, you can frame a whole new discussion—”

  “Jesus Christ, Chloe. I’m not the damn Mockingjay. I don’t want to start a revolution. I just want to live my life.”

  “I get that. I do,” she says when I make a disbelieving sound. “But if you just bury your head, if you just go into hiding and let Alexander control the story, then he wins.”

  “News flash, Erin Brockovich. He’s already won.”

  It’s her turn to snort. “Enough with the movie references. I get it.”

  “Do you? Really? Because what you’re suggesting is me taking on the entire good-old-boy establishment.”

  “Damn right I am. Somebody needs to.”

  “But why does that somebody have to be me?” I demand, my voice rising with my frustration. I can’t believe Chloe’s even suggesting this, can’t believe she act
ually thinks I should try to take on not just Alexander and the Hollywood spin machine, but the whole damn court of public opinion as well.

  “It doesn’t have to be you,” she answers. “I just think it should be you.”

  “Why? Because I’ve got the biggest platform for it right now?”

  “I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t partly the reason. Because it is—of course it is. But I also think it should be you because you’re amazing, Tori. You’re vibrant and smart and witty and beautiful and most days you don’t take shit from anybody. Honestly, I can’t think of anyone I would rather see take this on.”

  “I think you have a skewed idea of who I am, best friend of mine.”

  “I don’t think I’m the one with the skewed idea,” she returns. “Look, take some time. Think about it. If you do that and you really decide you don’t want to take Alexander on, we can come up with some other way to handle this.”

  “I already told you, I don’t want to handle it. I just want it to go away with the next news cycle.”

  “It isn’t going to go away if you don’t handle it. It will always be there, waiting for some asshole to bring it up again—at a party or during a job interview or in the press because Alexander decides to do a sexy movie and they think it will get them more play.”

  God. I know Chloe’s right, but hearing her lay it out like that makes me queasy. I can’t believe this. I just cannot fucking believe that this is suddenly my life. And that no matter what I do, it’s going to continue being my life for quite some time.

  I’m going to be everything from a cautionary tale to a punch line on late-night TV and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Nothing but take Chloe’s advice, a little voice whispers inside my head. But I don’t want to take her advice. I don’t want to be a poster child for anything. Yes, I’ve spent the last couple of months working to clean up my act, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for anything like this. Especially not when anyone with an Instagram account can find pictures of me drunk or dancing on the beach in a bikini or…This is a disaster waiting to happen.