My vision dipped, and my stomach went with it. “What?” I whispered, horrified.
That was one of the questions that I’d gone over with English for the gala on Saturday. We figured we might as well admit that I was the girl everyone had already guessed at. She’d thought it would make a good angle for people to be sympathetic to our love story. Or something.
But now that the question was out in the open, being asked by multiple paparazzi with cameras in my face, I went blank. I forgot everything she’d told me. All I could think about was the sad little girl left behind by Campbell. The person I’d shattered into after he set off for LA, like he’d always planned, leaving me alone and pregnant. I’d forgiven him for what he’d done to me. For making me the “I See the Real You” girl after all of that. The constant, ever-present reminder of what I’d lost. But I still had qualms about the world finding out.
It was one thing to be his new flame from home. It was another thing entirely for my entire life to be out there for the world to digest as they saw fit.
And now, I could barely breathe. I had no right answer. No way to get this past my teeth.
This was not our carefully controlled situation. This was chaos incarnate. This was being mobbed again. A group of angry Campbell Soup girls and a flood of paps, trying to get the latest gossip, trying to break me. The small-town girl from the middle of nowhere, Texas, who couldn’t hack it in LA.
No amount of minor celebrity status could have prepared me for this. Not even the mob feeling on the Fourth of July. That had been nothing compared to this.
Everything felt like it was closing in on me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was panicking. All that preparation was out the window with this unexpected setback. My phone was buzzing noisily. I was sure that the news must have broken already. That Campbell or English or Honey or any of my friends were checking in on me. And I was just standing here, paralyzed, as questions were fired at me.
No one was going to help me. No one was going to let me out of this. And it wasn’t like Lubbock, where I knew the city like the back of my hand. I was on Hollywood Boulevard and had no idea how the fuck to get away from here.
My eyes scanned the area directly around us. I was only five feet tall on a good day, and it was hard to see over the crowd of people. One of the Campbell Soup girls grabbed at me again. That was the moment that I’d had enough.
“I said, let me go,” I shrieked at her.
Then, I lowered my shoulder and rammed through the crowd. I needed out, and I needed out any way that I could get out of there. I didn’t have to stay and be polite. If they wanted to paint me as unstable because I didn’t want to be mobbed in public, then I just couldn’t care anymore. I couldn’t care when this was unacceptable. I didn’t deserve this.
We’d had a plan.
A plan.
And it was all falling apart.
My chest hurt, and I managed to hold back my tears by sheer force of will. I was glad that I’d dressed in an athletic kit and tennis shoes because I moved a lot faster than anyone else. I’d always been small and fast. It was to my advantage today.
As soon as I cleared the crowd, which had grown with people stopping to find out what was going on and what celebrity they could see, I took off at a dead sprint. All those hours of soccer practice had sure helped me in this regard. It wasn’t until I found a convenience store and stumbled into the restroom, bolting the lock behind me, that I finally was able to catalog how I felt.
Which was terrible.
My body was trembling. The claustrophobic feeling had ebbed, now replaced with shock. Tears finally cascaded freely down my cheeks. I’d lost my tripod somewhere in the melee. Luckily, I’d held on to my phone, which was still vibrating. But I didn’t answer.
I just sank onto the toilet seat and let tears rack my body. The danger was gone, but the fear and misery remained. I needed a minute before the rest of the world could be let back in. Before I was going to be okay again.
34
Campbell
“Come on. Come on. Come on,” I argued with my phone as I dialed Blaire for what felt like the millionth time.
Still fucking nothing.
I nearly threw it against the wall with irritation.
“Hey, you’ll get ahold of her,” Viv said. “It will be fine.”