Incentive (Infidelity Universe)

My pulse hammers in my ears as I fight to keep my agitation in check. I suspect her publicist is calling about Laynee’s trip to L.A. tomorrow. The trip I’m going on whether they like it or not.

“I haven’t been ignoring you. No, that’s—” She sighs into the phone. “Fine. I’m listening.” She casts me a glare and marches out of the kitchen.

Fuck this. I’ve been nice. I’ve been patient. I’ve followed her exhausting rules and given her miles of time and space. It’s not working.

I turn toward Reese, who’s watching me with a guarded expression.

“Tell me that’s not a knife wound on her back.” I point at the doorway she disappeared through.

“You’ve only been here a month, man.” He sits back and crosses his arms. “You need to be patient.”

Not answering my question is an answer in itself.

“She doesn’t respond to patience.” I charge toward him, bracing a hand on the back of his chair and the other on the table in front of him. “Who hurt her?”

His lips press into a line, and he averts his gaze.

If Laynee Somerset was attacked or hospitalized, it would’ve been in the news. When I arrived in Savannah, I spent the first couple days scouring the Internet and acquainting myself with everything the media says about her. I learned that her ex, Blake Harridan, allegedly cheated on her, but she refuses to confirm the speculation publicly—or privately with me. She’s the most clammed up person I’ve ever met, and it’s driving me to madness.

How does a superstar, one who’s photographed as much as Laynee, hide a suspicious scar from the press? I have a thousand other questions, but I’m starting with that one.

Stepping away from Reese, I snatch his laptop off the table and carry it to the island. When I glance down at the screen, my ass clenches.

“Chics with dicks?” I stare with dumb shock at the website of leather-clad women with huge plastic cocks.

“That’s not…” His chair screeches on the wood floor behind me. “It’s a harness with—”

“I don’t care.” I open a new tab in the browser and search on images of Laynee.

“What are you doing?” His footsteps approach.

“Looking for answers.”

“You won’t find them on-line.”

He stands behind me and shoulder-surfs while I flip through hundreds of red-carpet photos taken of her over the past twenty years. Almost every gown she wore in her twenties was open-back. I zoom in on the images and find unmarred skin instead of a scar. One in particular, snapped at the Oscars six years ago, shows the full-length of her spine, damn near exposing her ass crack. Increasing the magnification, I study the high-resolution image. No scar.

“You need to stop this,” Reese says behind me.

“If you’re not going to be helpful, go the fuck away.” I point at the doorway without removing my eyes from the screen.

Something happened to her in the last six years. Narrowing my search, I look through galleries of photos taken during that time frame. Every image confirms that six years ago she stopped wearing backless gowns or any kind of revealing clothing. There are no bikini-on-the-beach pictures, nothing that exposes any part of her back. And she already admitted she uses body doubles to do the nude scenes in her movies.

Dread curls in my stomach.

“What happened six years ago?” I turn toward Reese and give him the full brunt of my glare.

He drags a hand down his face and spins toward the sound of heels clicking through the doorway.

Laynee steps into the kitchen, clutching the phone to her abdomen, gaze locked on the laptop. “What are you looking at?”

“How were you injured six years ago?” My voice is abrasive, but it can’t be helped. I’ve reached my limit.

She moves to the sink and fills a glass with water, draining half of it in one gulp.

I shake with the urge to bend her over my knee and spank her until she screams her secrets. But her stiff-as-a-board posture tells me that would be a terrible mistake.

“Talk to me, Laynee.” I close the laptop and shove it aside. “I’m assuming the worst here.”

She grips the edge of the counter and stares blankly out the window over the sink. The empty silence continues long enough to confirm she’s not going to answer.

“I’m just gonna…” Reese inches toward the doorway. “I’ll go get you some more holes for your jeans.”

I glance down at the ripped-up denim on my legs. I came to Savannah with the threads on my back and a change of clothes in my bag. Now I have a wardrobe worth more than my annual income from Infidelity, thanks to Reese’s enthusiasm in shopping on Laynee’s dime. I wear the shit he hangs in my closet. He has excellent taste, though I’ll never admit that to him. But sometimes I put on my old jeans, like today, just to annoy him.