Party Girl

Chapter Three

“Just about every female and more than a few males are going to want to be Juliet at this masquerade thing,” Hannah announced, settling into a booth while the lilting strains of East Asian music played quietly in the background. The music matched the décor of silk-paneled screens, tasteful flower arrangements and intricate wood carvings gracing the large dining area. “That’s why I went for that gold sheath dress and matching Venetian mask. I doubt very many people are going to go as the bottle of poison.”

“It definitely wasn’t on my radar.” Smiling at the unusual way her mind worked, Dalton moved in beside her instead of sitting across the table from her. By the way her eyes widened, he knew his move had caught her off-guard. Heh. Good. Since everything she did caught him off-guard, turnabout was fair play. “Scoot over, beautiful. There’s room enough for two.”

“Barely.” The breathlessness in her tone heated his blood, and he caught the brightness in her cheeks as she scooted all the way to the wall. “You’re not exactly tiny.”

“You have no idea. Yet.” Settling in, Dalton took her hand and placed it on top of his, palm to palm, finger on finger, and shook his head at the difference. “Tiny is a word that could be used to describe you, though.”

“Not really. I’m five-six. A perfectly average height.”

“There’s nothing average about you, and when I say tiny, I’m not talking about height, exactly. There’s a delicateness about you, like you’ve got fragile little bird bones. That's one of the first things I noticed about you—how delicate you are.”

“You sure it wasn't the drool you noticed first?” She grimaced as if in pain, also staring down at their hands. “You didn't see the real me that first night, trust me on this.”

“What is the real you?” He paused when the waiter handed them menus and took their drink orders. “I've watched your VODs, but they’re no substitute for getting to know the real Hannah Raven.”

“Look at you, knowing the shorthand for video-on-demand,” she said, and her surprise and delight had him lacing his fingers with hers. Damn, she could turn on the cute like nobody’s business. “Like you said, I enjoy oversharing, so I’m an open book. What do you want to know?”

“Everything. But we can start with how you became an internet sensation. I’ve never known one of those before.”

“Honestly, I’m just lucky that I caught on.” She stared down at their laced hands as if she couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten that way. “I guess I was around sixteen when I started posting videos online—mainly because I like to talk, but I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I mean, I had my grandmother, but she’d made it clear that I was only in her house on sufferance, so my online community became my family.”

Instant dislike bloomed inside him. “Granny sounds like a real winner.”

“She was something else.”

And that something wasn’t good, if the bitter coldness in her sapphire-blue eyes was any indication. “Where were your parents?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Mom was a single parent who wanted to be a country-western singer, so she dumped me on her mother before heading out to chase her dreams. I never saw her again, not even when my grandmother died a week before I turned twenty.” Then she shot him a sideways glance. “Which is all kind of depressing. Maybe we should stick to how I got to be an influencer?”

“I’m cool with that.” For now. “So you started at sixteen, yeah? Seems kind of young.”

“So young I had to forge my grandmother’s permission just so I could post videos onto my channel.” She laughed, and the sound of it flowed over him like a caress. “Luckily nobody looked too deeply into that, and it all became legal by the time I turned eighteen. Right from the beginning, creating content was my escape from the crappy life I was stuck with. When I got to talking about makeup, or hair and skin care, or what I found cute in boys, it was easy to block out that my real family wanted nothing to do with me. Person by person, I was building my online community, and that community became the one place in the world where I finally belonged.”

If he could have reached back through the mists of time to throttle her mother and grandmother, he’d have done it in a heartbeat. “So it wasn’t just ambition that got you to where you are today. It was loneliness.”

That seemed to surprise her. “I don’t think I’ve ever been lonely. Alone, sure, but not lonely.”

“You needed someone to give a damn that you were alive and breathing, that you had ideas and thoughts about the world around you. But you didn’t have anyone like that, so you turned to the internet.” And that thought was just so fucking sad it made him want to punch every person who’d ever let her down. “As a coping mechanism, you really made it work for you. Did Granny ever give you any credit for when you started making it big?”

Again her face scrunched into that grimace of what looked like pain. “I never thought you could make money as a content creator. Like I said, I just did it because I didn’t have anyone else to talk to. But when you post pop-culture content every day, and you start getting good at editing videos—which I did—eventually you build up a following. And the more people who follow you, the more sponsors want to buy slots during your videos, even on your old content. Before I knew it, I needed my grandmother’s help to open up a bank account. She wouldn’t do it. Instead she said her bank account was good enough, so like an idiot I trusted her and signed my first check over to her. I never saw that money again. It was payment, she said, for having to put up with my useless ass when I was the last thing she’d ever wanted to deal with in her golden years. That’s pretty much a direct quote, now that I think about it.”

“That fucking bitch.” He breathed the words out, trying to keep the rage down to a level that wouldn’t freak her the fuck out. But damn, it was hard work. “Tell me you got out of there.”

She nodded. “After she straight-up stole from me, I was done. There was no hope in ever having any kind of family life with that woman, so at seventeen I asked a friend’s mother to help me open a checking account so I could at least find a way to live. Then I got myself a tiny apartment in Bronzeville, kept posting content so that I could put myself through college, and the rest is history. Though I’ll admit, I moved back into my grandmother’s house after she died, just for the pleasure of tearing it apart and making it mine. It was never mine when I lived there before—not my home, not even a place where I was welcome. So I’ve done everything I can think of to make it mine now.” She laughed suddenly. “She’d hate what I’ve done with the place.”

“I like your idea of revenge.” He nodded, struggling to push aside thoughts of vengeance on some dead old lady. If there was such a thing as hell, she was already getting what she deserved. “Very healthy to create your own space rather than do something destructive. The other shit, though...”

“What?” She blinked at him, surprised. “What other shit?”

“Hannah, whether you realize it or not, you’ve trained yourself to overshare in order to survive,” he said, then paused as they gave their orders. “It’s what you’ve always done, so you don’t know how to be any other way.”

“I don’t think I overshare. And ever since I got dosed I’ve been obsessive about my personal security. No one gets too close, and that’s the way I like it.”

That wasn’t exactly what he was talking about, but he’d let it go for now. “I’ve got to admit, you fascinate me.”

Again she seemed surprised, which charmed the hell out of him. “How? I mean... Sorry, I’m not fishing for compliments or anything. I’m just kind of, you know, boring. All I do is work.”

He had a solution for that. “There’s just a lot to you. For instance, you’ve been hustling your ass off from the age of sixteen doing the influencer gig. Then you decided to put yourself through college to get a journalism degree while continuing to build your brand. Question is, why?”

“Why what?”

“Why go to the trouble of getting a degree in journalism and land a day job at Chicago Pulse, when you’ve got a sweet deal going on with your videos? Most people would be happy with the influencer gig and leave it at that.”

“Yeah, well, most people wouldn’t be smart, because nothing lasts forever,” she said with a cynical twist to a mouth that should never know anything but sweetness and joy. “I want security as much as anyone, but the internet is a fickle place. One day you’re hot, the next day you’re not. I don’t know how long my channel’s going to be on top. I figured going to college and getting a real job was the smartest thing I could do, just in case being a content creator suddenly stopped paying the bills.”