by Lola Finn
Traci picks up the checklist for the evening shift, and I sigh, grabbing my phone from under the clipboard.
“Phone?” she asks.
I nod, and when I see movement out of the corner of my eye, I look over to the lady from none other than room 407 on her way through the hotel lobby toward the desk.
Before she sees me, I throw Traci under a train and shove my phone in my bag.
“Bye, see you tomorrow.”
I hear the bell just as I cross the lobby and truly hope that, one day, Traci will forgive me.
About halfway down the path to the staff cabins, I hear footsteps behind me and spin around to Luna jogging to catch up with me.
“Hey,” she says, hooking my arm and tugging me with her until she slows down to my speed.
“Ugh. No exercise.” I pull my arm away from her, and she laughs.
“You never answered my text about tonight.”
I squint at her.
“Like an hour ago, I asked if you wanted to come to midnight yoga.”
“Oh, sorry. I lost my phone.”
Now she narrows her eyes back at me. “Nice try. It said you read it.”
“Noooo.” I feel my phone vibrate in my bag and start to reach for it. “I just found it five minutes ago, and I haven’t even—”
I cut off seeing the notification for a text from Briggs. Luna’s eyes glance down at my screen before I can move it, then pop back up to mine, a grin breaking out over her face.
“I knew it,” she says, pointing at my phone. “You’re screwing your boss.”
“Luna…” I start, but she shakes her head to stop me.
“Don’t, Palmer.” She shrugs a little. “We all have our secrets. Although, I’m pretty sure you already know mine.”
“I wanted to tell you,” I say, relieved she finally knows so I have one person I won’t have to hide it from anymore. “But with me being his employee and everything, I didn’t want to chance it getting out and HR getting involved. Not that I think you would ever say anything.”
“No, I get it. Trust me. And now you really don’t want it getting out or everyone’s just going to assume it’s you two in the Exposed post.”
I freeze, dread flooding through me. “Exposed post?”
“Yeah,” she says, shaking her head. “I knew whoever was posting those pictures had balls, but they really proved it today. And now at least you know you’re not the only one breaking that rule.”
She hasn’t even finished her sentence when my phone starts vibrating in my hand, more texts from Briggs. One after another.
And then the dread turns to panic as I read them.
What the fuck, Palmer?
Are you kidding me?
What were you thinking?
“The boss is riding you hard?”
Take it down. NOW.
What?
I never posted the draft I made earlier, and even so…
“Uh…I’ll talk to you later,” I tell Luna, heading across to my cabin while I log into the Exposed account.
But I can’t.
It prompts me to reset my password, so I try again, getting the same message.
The password’s been changed.
My thumb slams the button to reset it, but when I put in the blog’s email address, it says there isn’t an account associated with it.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
I go through the browser and pull up the public view of the account, what everyone else can see right now.
My entire body cools, the knots in my stomach creeping up higher and higher until they tighten in my throat.
And there it is, a picture of me riding Briggs’s cock last night. Neither of our faces are in it, but it’s clear what we’re doing.
And the caption. Oh my God, the caption.
My boss rides me hard. Or is it the other way around?
Chapter Sixteen
Briggs
Palmer doesn’t answer my texts. Any of my texts. And there are a fucking lot of them.
I even consider jogging down the road at one point and through the trees to the staff cabins and showing up at her goddamn door. But given the situation I thought some distance might be the better choice.
When Cole’s jaw first dropped and he shoved his phone at me, showing me the post, I was furious, not sure how Palmer could do something like this. Then I realized there’s no way in hell she would ever post something that could put me in the position to lose my job.
But someone would.
Finally, there’s a knock at my door around midnight. I open the front door to a red-eyed Palmer in her sweats and a big T-shirt. Even crying, she’s fucking gorgeous.
We stare at each other a second before I take a step, and she immediately runs into my arms.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Come here, baby.” I pick her up and carry her into my living room.
When I sit on the couch, I pull her into my lap so she’s sitting astride me. My hands run up her thighs, her phone clutched tightly in her hand.
“They changed the login,” she whispers.
Of course they did.
“I don’t even know what happened.” She blinks up at me, her eyes big and sad. “I left my phone to help a guest, and someone must have swiped it. They must have transferred the pictures and changed the passwords and then put it back.”
I pull her against my chest, resting my chin on top of her head. “We’ll figure it out,” I tell her. “It’s only one picture.”
Right now. And it’s not the first time the thought has entered my mind. Palmer’s either since she said they transferred the pictures.
“I’ve emailed the hosting site,” she says. “I told them it’s been hacked, but it said they usually take twenty-four hours to respond, and by then…”
We both know what she’s saying. And in a few hours, our unspoken concern becomes a reality. The next post has her thigh, my hand on it. Hands on training. Then another with the picture zoomed in tight on my tongue trailing over her skin, nothing identifiable but a little more than the last one. Employee of the summer.
At this rate, it won’t be long before whoever has access to Exposed truly exposes us to everyone at Haven Cove.
The thought settles in my gut, thinking about how many people I lose at the end of this. Everyone I’ve considered family for the past decade. Palmer.
Because I can’t imagine both our lives crumbling and her wanting anything to do with me.
The biggest fucking mistake of my life.
Not Palmer—never fucking Palmer. I’ll never regret being with her. But I sure as hell regret taking the damn pictures to prove it.
***
When Palmer appears in my doorway in the morning, her eyes are just as red as they were last night. Even after holding her and calming her down, I didn’t sleep. I left her at the house this morning to go burn off some aggression at the gym.
It didn’t work. I still want to destroy whoever’s fucking with us.
The posts haven’t let up. Apparently, Palmer and I have a little fetish with pictures going on. The last one zoomed in my jaw, my stubble on her skin—inner thigh if I remember correctly. When the boss is hungry…
Palmer closes the door behind her and collapses down in the chair across from my desk, dropping her head into her hands.
“What the hell do we do now?” she asks. “The posts are getting worse.”
I rub my hands over my face, trying not to panic and freak her out even further, but we’re at a point where I have to get ahead of this. I hate feeling like someone else has control over my life. And hers. So, I need to take back control.
“Hey,” I say, and Palmer’s head pops up. “Come here.”
She sighs and walks around the desk to me, the worry and concern etched all over her face. I pull her into my lap, rubbing her back as she snuggles into my chest.
“You trust me?” I ask.
>
She nods. “Of course I do.”
“Then believe me when I say it’s going to be all right.”
I said the same thing at least a dozen times last night, not having a clue how the hell we were going to get back to all right. But now I know what I have to do.
It’s what I should have done all along. Especially after I realized this thing with Palmer wasn’t for the summer.
I just don’t know if this will solve our problems or open us up to a whole bunch of new ones.
Chapter Seventeen
Palmer
Briggs leaves me in his office as he goes to take care of something.
What, I have no clue, but I’m too worked up to try to figure it out at this point. The posts are getting too revealing. The next one will likely show one, or both, of our faces, and if we can’t figure this out before that happens Briggs will lose his job, and I doubt Verse wants an intern who’s been all over the internet, straddling their boss’s cock.
I try to relax in the chair, to find some semblance of calm, but it feels pointless. The blog was just supposed to be something to keep me entertained for the summer. I should have shut it down once everything with Briggs kicked on, and we wouldn’t even be in this mess.
Although, something tells me Briggs and I would have been sending pictures back and forth anyway, so we would be here, but with whoever the fuck is screwing with us using a different method of torture.
Since sitting around is clearly not helping me find my chill, I decide to go do…something. Anything to keep my mind from running in circles.
I’m rounding the corner from the hallway when I almost run straight into someone.
“Oh shit,” she says, jerking back from me.
I jump a little too, and it takes me a second to realize it’s Isabelle since I’ve never heard her be anything but bubbly and fake. She’s not someone I want to see right now, or at any point given the massive crush on Briggs she doesn’t even try to hide. But especially not now.
“Sorry,” I say, but before I can move around her, she tilts her head to the side.
“Something wrong?” she asks, her sugary sweet voice returning.
“No.” I shake my head to back it up because I really just want her to go away.
“Hmmm. You sure? You look a little…down.”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Then I realize the only reason she ever comes behind the reception desk is to see Briggs. “He’s not here.”
“He’s not?” Her voice goes short again, and her face falls, looking visibly put out.
“I’m not sure where he went, but he said he’d be back soon. I can tell him you stopped by.”
She cocks her head the other way this time. “If you’re around that long.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, trust me, sweetie. Brent Cabot will choose Oliver over any ivy here for the summer. You’re expendable. And when everyone finds out about you two, Brent will prove that.”
I stare at her a few seconds, processing all of this.
“You…”
“I…what?” She tilts her head, mocking me. “I found your phone lying around, hacked your stupid blog ,and ruined your secret little fling? Not so secret now, is it? Or it won’t be…shortly.”
My mouth is damn near hanging open as I realize it was Isabelle. It is her. And she’s openly taunting me to my face about it.
“Speechless now? But you’ve had so much to say all summer,” she feigns astonishment and my blood boils.
“Why would you do that?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around this. “Because of your crush on Briggs?”
Her face turns crimson as she sneers at me.
“My crush?” she says, her voice rising. “I’ve been here for years with him, and I will be here long after the trash leaves at the end of summer. He might not see it right now because your tits are distracting him, but Briggs and I are end game. And after I post the picture of you and your boss, it will all be over. You’ll be fired, and I’ll still be here. With. Briggs.”
Her words sting on the way in, but I push it away. She thinks I’m going anywhere? Well, I’m about to prove her so very wrong.
I lunge for her, and she jumps back, holding up her hands in defense, and that’s when I snatch the phone away from her. Her eyes bulge as I take off, running down the hall to Briggs’s office. Isabelle shrieks, barreling after me as I slam the door and lock it.
“No,” she screeches, banging on the door as I slide down the other side.
She keeps banging, screaming for me to let her in and threatening to call security. While she carries on outside, I type Briggs as the passcode, but then I delete it and enter Oliver.
The phone unlocks first try, and I sag in relief. I find the photos in her regular album—amateur—and delete before checking any apps where she might have backed them up or edited them, furiously deleting anything that looks even slightly related.
I switch everything back to my email, leaving one last issue.
The blogsite.
She doesn’t have the password stored, but the hosting service should get back to me in a few hours, so I just enter random attempts until it locks the account.
For twenty-four hours.
I sigh, taking a few breaths while she pounds away. My mouth turns up, and I close my eyes. No more posts. No one will know it was Briggs and me except the screaming woman in the hallway.
After a few more minutes of her carrying on, I climb to my feet.
“You fucking bitch,” Isabelle shrieks, slapping at the door as I flip the lock.
When I jerk the door open, I have a big-ass smile on my face, and she freezes with her hand mid-air, her face twisted into a scowl.
Like I’m the one who tried to fuck up her life.
“Here you go.” I toss her phone in the air for her to catch. “Next time you want to break up me and Briggs, try harder.”
Only the smile she gives me back brings all the weight into my belly again.
“No need,” she says, turning and walking down the hall. She glances back before she rounds the corner. “Scheduled posts are a wonderful thing. What time is it, two o’clock?”
No, no, no.
I snatch my phone from my back pocket and pull up the blog, searching for a new post.
And there it is, my face and Briggs’s in the same picture. It’s one from the limo, him sucking on my tongue right after we both came, my chest pressed to his.
Even now with all the shit hanging over us, the look in his eyes makes my stomach flip.
The post already has thirty-seven comments, and within a minute, my phone starts buzzing in my back pocket, message after message.
I ignore them all, grabbing my bag and heading back up to the entrance to wait for a cab at the security shack.
The one person who doesn’t text is Briggs. No call or video chat. Nothing.
Probably because I just got him fired.
Chapter Eighteen
Briggs
The last three hours have been the most intense and nerve-racking of my entire life.
But it’s over now. All the shit hit the fan in a ready or not style.
I knew when the post went up without even looking. My phone started going off and didn’t stop until I powered it down. I’m pretty sure most of those messages were from Cole, but I saw at least half a dozen from Isabelle. And one from Millie.
I slam the car door after I crawl out, my veins on fucking fire at the thought of all the douchebags in Haven Cove that have seen Palmer almost naked. The angle didn’t show her tits straight on, but they’ve seen enough to make me want to bury every fucker who looks at her from now on. But the sick bastard part of me breaks through the haze of red I’m seeing long enough for one thought.
At least now they know she’s mine.
I climb the steps still lost in thought, but I’m jerked out of them when I hear a sniffle to my right.
My gaze darts ove
r to the corner of the porch where Palmer’s huddled up into a ball on the porch swing. She lifts her head, her eyes meeting mine, and then she scrambles off the swing and across to me.
“I’m so sorry,” she squeaks out, throwing her arms around me. “I thought I had fixed it. I stole Isabelle’s phone and deleted everything, but she’d already scheduled the post, so it—”
“You stole Isabelle’s phone?” I interrupt her rambling.
She nods, peeking up at me with tears brimming her eyes. “She told me it was her, and I couldn’t think of any other way to stop her.”
“Fuck.” I rub my hand over the back of my head. “Baby…”
“I’m so sorry, Briggs.” Palmer buries her face in my shirt, mumbling more I can’t understand.
“Hey, it’s okay.” I hook my fingers under her chin, bringing her face back up so she looks at me, but Palmer pushes my hand away.
“Nothing about this is okay. We’re going to have to deal with HR, and your job—”
“No, we won’t,” I tell her. Then I add, “Well, you’ll probably have an uncomfortable talk with Millie, but that’s about as far as it will go.”
She frowns, blinking up at me. “But what about the policies HR has about staff members?”
I shrug. “I don’t work at Haven Cove anymore.”
“What?” She shakes her head frantically. “Mr. Cabot fired you? No, that’s not fair. I should quit. Or he can fire me, and you can stay.”
She starts to march toward the steps like she’s going to tell Brent Cabot anything, and I catch her around the waist, pulling her back to my chest.
“I’d really prefer you not quit since you being able to keep your job was part of the deal for me moving to New York this fall.”
Palmer’s wide eyes dart back and forth between mine. “Wait…what?”
I smile at her. “I just accepted the manager position at Brent’s new hotel, which just so happens to open three weeks after classes start at Columbia.”
To say Brent was pissed about Palmer is an understatement. But here’s the thing I keep forgetting—I might consider Brent Cabot like my family, but he treats me as if I one hundred perfect am family. So, after an excruciatingly long glare, he asked if Palmer’s worth it. I didn’t even hesitate. Because she’s worth everything. He didn’t need any more than that.