Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

Whatever he has to tell me, I can fix. Just like that article. I have the power to latch whatever has come undone. I have that power.

Me.

And I’ll piece together whoever falls this time. One by one. We’ve all been through this before. We can survive it again and again. I just need to act quickly. Whatever this is, there’s usually no margin for error.

My phone rings incessantly. I set Moffy and Jane in their playpen beside the Queen Anne chair, their tears only partially dried. “Keep playing.” Just keep playing. I try to distract both babies with stuffed animals and multi-colored balls strewn around the circular pen. “I’ll be right back.” I prop the door open between the kitchen and living room with a chair, able to hear them well.

On the final ring, I answer the phone. “Henry,” I greet.

“I called as soon as I could,” he says, no background noise on his end. “You have to believe me. All the news outlets have been really tight-lipped until a minute ago.”

“Can you fax me the article?” Henry can gain access to the tabloid’s server and send me their scheduled draft. He’s only a line producer at GBA News, but he has connections to every tabloid that I need.

“It’s not just an article…”

I wrack my brain for answers, heading down the most logical, sensible paths. “What photo is it?”

I can buy the photograph.

I’ve done it before.

Over a year ago, Henry tipped me about a photographer from Paris Fashion Week. The man had just sold three pictures to a well-known tabloid. They were all of Daisy undressing backstage.

She was completely naked.

I bought them and destroyed them with Rose, almost immediately, and so they’ve never even been muttered anywhere.

“It’s not a photo,” Henry says, having trouble delivering the news.

I stay calm, but I want more facts quickly. “Then what is it?” I ask. “A video, an article, a photograph, a fucking comic strip—tell me.”

“It’s everywhere,” he says vaguely. I grip the edge of the bar counter, wishing he would tell me what the fuck I’m dealing with. “Some of the articles have turned into videos.” His voice lowers. “GBA is headlining the story on their seven o’clock news tonight.”

I check my watch. That’s five hours away, plenty of time. “I’ll call the—”

“It won’t matter.”

“Henry—”

“It’s everywhere,” he emphasizes this point. He still won’t say what it is. “Celebrity Crush is running it in an hour. Other tabloids are talking about releasing it sooner than that. You don’t have time to do anything.”

He’s wrong. “Fax me the story.”

“I can’t. I don’t have time either. GBA is holding a staff meeting in five minutes.”

He won’t say what it is.

If it centered on Lily or Loren, it would’ve been the first thing out of his mouth. Anyone else, he would’ve said the name by now. But if it was me—he’d choke.

So if I listen to the most rational part of my brain, it says that I’m about to be ripped to shreds. “Text me the names of every magazine and news station that plans to run this story.” I hear Frederick in my head, You’re not superhuman, Connor. The world will not change for you.

I bend to the world if it won’t bend for me, and yet, if this is about me, will I finally have to bend until I break?

“I’m texting you right now,” Henry says.

A pit descends further in my stomach. “Tell me, Henry,” I say, “what’s the headline most are running with?” I almost don’t want to hear the truth, not even when I need it most.

After a moment of silence, he utters, “They’re all calling your marriage a sham.”

I rub my lips. “What evidence…”

“They have sources about ex…boyfriends? Yours. Three of them, I’m almost eighty-percent positive. GBA News filmed an interview with one. He’s claiming you two had sex multiple times and that you’re not straight. They’re all saying the same thing—that you married Rose to hide your sexual orientation from the press.”

We have a child.

We have sex tapes.

I repeat these as my defense, my muscles constricting in taut, immovable bands. My knuckles whiten. “I have to call my lawyers. Text me everyone who’s running this,” I remind him before hanging up. I spend the next fifteen minutes talking to three lawyers, spouting facts. Never once wasting time to ingest an unneeded emotion.

I tell them to send out cease and desist letters to every single fucking guy who’s planning to break the non-disclosure agreement. I tell them to threaten lawsuits and fines so steep that it will leave each guy destitute. I tell them to work on filing temporary injunctions, to prevent the news stations and tabloids from running the stories.

“We won’t be granted an injunction in enough time,” my primary lawyer says. “The cease and desists are our best shot. We’ll intimidate them as much as we can and keep you posted. Turn on the news. Don’t take your eyes off it until we tell you it’s handled.”

I have forty-five minutes, maybe less. I rush into the living room and switch on the television to GBA News, muting the station, and I open my laptop to Celebrity Crush. The clack clack of plastic balls, the babies playing, is the only true noise.

Fix this.

Forty-three minutes.

My lawyers will have a better time threatening these guys than me, but while they work on the injunction, I can call the stations and tabloids. I have no idea how this happened. Why some of these guys decided to speak all of a sudden. Who cracked and under what kind of pressure. But the how isn’t important right now.

Concentrating on the how will ruin any chance I have at damage control.

On the couch, I scroll through Henry’s text that consists of twelve names. I call the first one; it’s the second most affluent tabloid, right behind Celebrity Crush. “We’re going to publish it with or without an injunction. Celebrity Crush will beat us to it, and so will multiple primetime news outlets.”

“You’ll be severely fined,” I say sternly, my voice cut and dry, not defensive.

“It’s a price we’re willing to pay. We’ll make it up in subscribers.”

I call the second name.

The third.

The fourth. “It’s going live in thirty minutes.”

The fifth and sixth. The seventh and eighth.

The ninth. “Your deal was to bury the headline about Moffy,” Andrea DelCorte from Celebrity Crush tells me. “You said nothing about protecting yourself, and I can’t strike a deal with you when it’s not an exclusive story. It’s going to break in f

ifteen minutes by us or by someone else.”

You’re not superhuman, Connor. The world will not change for you.

I can’t stop this.

I can’t prevent a barrage of questioning and speculation. I don’t call the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth media outlet. I scramble to make different ones.

I clutch the phone firmly to my ear, but my heart pumps deeper, louder. As soon as the line clicks, I say, “Rose…” I lose my thoughts in her name. My throat sears, and I think—I missed a link somewhere. Was it Theo? Was it Jonathan Hale? Was it Frederick? I fucking block out the how. I have to, but I know the how is stampeding the real pain—the worse thoughts.

The ones that attempt to barrel into me.

Rose will be dragged into this by her ankles, suffocating beneath someone else’s rising tide, and the best I can do is hold her while we go under. I’ve never imagined myself drowning before. Not like this. And I’ve never imagined I’d have these two choices: drown apart or drown together.

Together.

Always.

I would never let Rose suffer through this alone.

“Is Jane okay?” she asks off my silence, concern bleeding into her words. I hear the shuffle of papers. She’s already standing, I’m sure.

“I need you to come home,” I tell her. “Quickly.” Paparazzi will swarm Hale Co., Rose’s boutique, Superheroes & Scones, tracking down everyone close to me.

“What is it?”

“Drive safe,” I say, stoic and resolute. My voice belongs to the man who needs a therapist to tell him how he feels.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She hangs up on me, sensing the severity, even if my voice carries nearly nothing.

I dial the second number.

“Lo,” I say. “I need you to come home.” I need you is a phrase I almost never use with anyone, especially not him. He needs me.

Everyone needs me.

“I have a meeting in ten minutes. Should I cancel or…”

“Can you rework your schedule? This is important.”

He doesn’t ask why. His loyalty stems from a real, honest and genuine friendship, the first one I’ve ever truly had. And I know—without a shadow of a doubt—that my past is about to ruin it.