by Leddy Harper
She simply shrugged and turned her cell back around to look at it. “Yeah, but if you look at the individual images, you’ll see there’s a car on the left side of the screen. It’s the same car in both pictures. It proves they were both at that same hotel together.”
Again, she turned the screen around and flipped between the two full-size images. Just as she said, there was a yellow sports car on the left. It was enough to convince me that we’d been caught—no, not we, Michael and Tiffany—but it didn’t seem to faze Adam one bit.
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. It was hard to tell if he was mad, annoyed, or blasé about this whole thing. His expression literally gave nothing away. But then he spoke, and while his voice remained calm, there was an air of warning in the rumbles of his words. “Like I said last time, it doesn’t prove anything. I don’t know you, don’t know nothin’ ’bout you, but after listening to you for the past ten minutes, I wouldn’t put it past you to have forged those pictures. I don’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth.”
Serenity’s eyes cut to the left of me, probably assessing Jeannine and Michael’s stance. After a few moments of tense silence, Jeannine finally spoke up. “They have both denied it, so I don’t know why you keep pushing. What’s in it for you? Why are you so concerned about our lives and marriages? We’re not friends, Serenity. We are on the same show together, but don’t get it twisted…we are not friends.”
That was the last thing I expected to hear come out of Jeannine’s mouth. She always seemed so soft-spoken and easy-going. But this was the tongue lashing of a woman you wouldn’t want to double-cross. She may be sweet and caring, but it was obvious that she didn’t let anyone walk all over her. I had to admit, her backbone was mighty impressive.
“I just thought you’d like to know. It’s women like you who give us a bad rap when it comes to affairs. You always hear us preach that we should have each other’s backs, that we should look out for one another, but every time we inform a fellow woman that her significant other is messing around behind her back, we’re beaten down for it. Either that or they take the fool back, making us wonder why we ever bothered to stick our necks out in the first place.”
“I don’t believe a single word out of your mouth,” Jeannine said calmly, leaning against the table to speak directly to Serenity. “But if I did, don’t you think that’s something you should’ve told me in private? That’s what diminishes everything you just said. If you truly had my back, you would’ve pulled me to the side and told me—without the cameras, without the witnesses. You didn’t do this to have my back. You did this for your own twisted entertainment.”
Adam pushed away from the table and stood. Not bothering to quiet his voice, he held out his hand for me to take and said, “C’mon, Tiff. We’re leaving. I refuse to sit here and listen to any more of this.”
As I slid out of my chair, so did Jeannine, followed by Michael. All four of us glared at Serenity—who remained seated at the table next to her silent date—and headed for the door. On the way, though, Jeannine and I stopped to congratulate and thank Nicole one more time. Then we left, following our “men” outside to our waiting vehicles.
Adam was quiet for a while, staring out of the window and biting his thumbnail. It was a shame I didn’t know more about him to decode what that meant, so I just assumed it was the obvious—anxiety. Honestly, it wasn’t that out of the norm for him to be quiet. It wasn’t like he’d said much on the way to the restaurant, either. But after what’d just happened, I assumed he would’ve had something to say.
Finally, when we were about halfway home, he turned to me and asked, “Is it true?”
I didn’t need to ask him what he meant by that. His onyx eyes were glassy, full of worried emotion, and his normally taut forehead appeared more wrinkled than my laundry after forgetting it in the dryer for days. As much as I wanted to protect him, to deny it and cover for Tiff like I always had, I couldn’t seem to do much of anything other than stare and blink. My mouth opened and closed a few times, yet no words came out.
“She asked me to come here to publicly put an end to that woman’s jealous nonsense. I agreed, because just hearing that someone is saying anything bad about Tiff enrages me. I’d do anything to protect her, to keep her safe. I know not everyone likes her. I get that, and I understand why. Most of the time, their reasons for disliking her are completely valid. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with anyone spreading lies about her.”
I just nodded and bit my tongue, choosing to let him get whatever this was off his chest without my commentary and opinions regarding my sister.
“But now I’m wondering why she’d get me involved at all. I truly didn’t think it was true, because let’s be real, why would she ask me to come here if what that chick was saying was real? It didn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe it’s not true…” I was torn between doing the right thing and not wanting to hurt him. He honestly did seem to be a great guy, and while I, now more than ever, didn’t think she deserved him, I also didn’t think that he deserved that kind of heartache. “You said yourself that those photos could’ve been doctored.”
“I only said that so she didn’t have the satisfaction of knowing that it got to me.” Adam pinched the bridge of his nose, as if fighting off a migraine. “His excuse about Tiff’s car being at his house…I don’t buy that, either.”
“Why not?” I thought it’d been a pretty good explanation.
“You know your sister. She has to have the best of the best, and she has to be the first and only one to have it. She made me exchange her engagement ring because it was too similar to someone else’s, but rather than just swap it out for another one similar in price, she demanded a more expensive one. That way, her ring cost more than any of her friends’.”
I rolled my eyes so hard they felt sore afterward.
“So, do you really think she’d be okay with anyone else driving the same car as her around town? It doesn’t matter if she knows the person or not. If she caught wind that anyone else within a hundred miles owned a Bugatti Chiron, she would’ve sold it.” He took a deep breath and dropped his head back against the leather headrest. “Not to mention, there’s not another one in the same color as hers in the entire world. It was a custom paint job.”
“If you knew she was telling the truth to begin with, why did you keep denying it?”
“Probably due to the same reason as your friend.”
I was confused for a moment, then I asked, “Jeannine? What makes you think she believed her, too?”
“We made eye contact right before she got up from the table. I’m not a mind reader, so I can’t be positive, but there was just something in her eyes that I could relate to. Then there’s the fact that she didn’t take her husband’s hand when we walked out. I’d bet that she believes him about as much as I believe your sister.” Just then, he leaned forward and touched the driver’s shoulder, gaining his attention. “Excuse me, sir, but would you mind pulling over and letting me out?”
“What? No. You can’t do that,” I protested.
But he calmly looked at me and smiled. “It’s okay, Tasha. I need a breather before getting back to the house. I know enough people in this town that I’ll be all right. I promise.”
I didn’t want to let him out of the car; he was too broken to be wandering around by himself. Granted, it was in the middle of the day, and it wasn’t like we were in a bad part of town. We were actually only about fifteen minutes away from the house, so if he really wanted to, he could’ve walked home. It wasn’t like Adam was a stranger to a bit of exercise.
I knew I should’ve called Ty to inform him of what had just happened, but I didn’t have it in me at the moment to deal with him. Somehow, I’d be the one hearing the lecture, and I was sick and tired of taking the brunt of Tiffany’s actions. She cheated. I didn’t. So even though telling Ty was the right thing to do, I decided to hold off. Instead, I called Jacoby.
/> As the phone rang in my ear, I contemplated how quickly things had changed. When I needed advice or a pick-me-up, I used to always call on Dave. But now, I seemed to rely on Jacoby a lot more. On one hand, that made me sad for Dave, but on the other, it filled me with contentment. I’d had a running joke with Dave, that if I ever found a man that I could rely on as much as my best friend, then I needed to hold onto him, because he would be “the one.” For the longest time, I didn’t think I’d ever find such a person.
But then Jacoby had dropped into my life when I’d least expected it.
One second, I was lost in blissful thoughts of Jacoby while the phone rang, and the next, my chest became tight, my ribcage threatening to crush my heart. Jessa answered his phone, which I didn’t think much of until she told me why—Jacoby was in the hospital. He’d injured himself while working in the yard.
I didn’t listen to anything after that. Instead, I ordered the driver to take me straight to the hospital. I needed to see him. No longer was I thinking about Serenity or my sister’s affair. Nothing else registered in my mind other than getting to Jacoby. I had no idea what he’d done to himself or even how bad his injury was. I didn’t give Jessa enough time to tell me everything. Then again, I doubt that I would’ve done anything differently, even if she had.
Forgetting that I was supposed to be impersonating a famous person, I hopped out of the car and ran inside. I was so frantic that I could barely focus on the directory along the wall that told me where to go. Not that I knew where to go, because I didn’t even get that from Jessa before I hung up. All I knew was that he was in the hospital. So that’s where I went. Now that I was here, I was lost.
I decided to give up on trying to figure it out and ask for help, so I went to the circular desk in the middle of the lobby. “Hi, I’m looking for a friend. I was told he was injured doing yardwork and is here, but I don’t know where to go.”
“What’s his name?” she asked, putting her fingers on her keyboard, prepared to type.
“Jacoby Abbott.” I even spelled out his last name for her, and then internally panicked that I had spelled it wrong. There was no way she’d give me any information if I couldn’t even spell my friend’s last name correctly.
But then smiled and said, “He’s in the ER. You’ll have to get a sticker to see him, but one of the ladies on that side will give you one. I hope your friend is okay.”
I wasn’t sure if I thanked her, or if I just shouted it over my shoulder as I ran in the direction she pointed when telling me where to go. I don’t think I took a single breath until I walked through the swinging doors that led into the ER waiting room, and it wasn’t until I found Jessa that my heart began to beat again.
She smiled and waved at me from across the room. Meanwhile, I practically tripped over injured people as I ran to her. For some reason, seeing her out here without him made me freak out even more. Somehow, her smile and easy demeanor didn’t register, just the fact that she was out here, and he was back there somewhere. Alone. In my frazzled brain, that meant he was either dead or in surgery.
“Hey, I was just heading out to pull the car around while they’re finishing up. You should go back and see him. That way, you can help him outside so I won’t have to leave my car unattended.” Jessa pulled a red sticker off her shirt and gave it to me. In black marker on the bottom was a number. She pointed to it and said, “That’s what bed he’s in. He’s literally straight back and to the right, just before you get to the nurses’ desk.”
After a quick and desperate hug, I headed back to find Jacoby.
“What are you doing here?” he asked with big eyes and an even bigger smile.
Assessing his body for any visible damage, I slid around the room to stand by his side. His right calf was wrapped in white gauze, but I couldn’t see anything other than that. I wondered if he had any internal damage.
In the calmest voice I could muster, I explained that Jessa had answered his phone and told me what had happened.
Finding something I said funny, he laughed to himself. Then again, it was probably the way I sounded more than what I’d said; I wasn’t very good at hiding my emotions. At least he didn’t make fun of me for it. Instead, he grabbed my hand and pulled it to his lips. “It’s just a scrape.”
“People don’t go to hospitals for scrapes, Jacoby.”
“Yeah, you can blame my sister for bringing me. I didn’t want to come. I would’ve been happy to rub some dirt on it and call it a day.”
The nurse came in as I laughed and shook my head. She handed him a few papers, went through the aftercare directions, and then recited the normal “if it gets worse” speech that all doctors tell you. He was free to go.
Except I had no idea how this worked.
I assumed they’d escort him out in a wheelchair like they did in movies, but they didn’t. In fact, they didn’t even help him out of the room. They gave him some papers and left, leaving him—the patient—to walk himself out. Didn’t they know he was injured?
Then Jacoby stood and limped into the hallway, waiting for me to follow. But I was too shocked to move. This man was literally limping out of the hospital. I was appalled at their lack of bedside manner. “Shouldn’t we get you a wheelchair? Or at the very least, crutches?”
His laughter surrounded me, finally easing the tension that had choked me since Jessa answered his phone. “Like I said, it’s just a scrape. They gave me a few stitches, that’s it. I’ll be back to normal in a day or so.”
“Fine, but I refuse to let you hobble out of this place.” I slid around to his right side and wrapped my arm around his waist. “Lean on me, babe…I’ll be your crutch.”
With a giant grin plastered on his sun-kissed face, he draped his arm over my shoulder and let me lead the way. I wasn’t a short woman, but standing next to Jacoby made me feel small, especially when he laced his fingers with mine and held my hand. I’d always wanted to do that, but I’d never dated anyone tall enough.
The hop in my step, the smile on my face, and the excitement fluttering in my belly all changed the second we walked through the automatic doors. A guy, whom I recognized as a crewmember for the show, stood next to a large, concrete column, a camcorder propped on his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, just stood there and filmed us as we exited the hospital.
Ignoring him, I stared ahead, focusing on Jessa’s car idling along the curb. But one quick glance beyond that made my heart come to a screeching halt. There were several people in the parking lot heading our way. They were walking quickly, all aiming long lenses right at us as they snapped photo after photo.
I must’ve noticed before Jacoby, because it took him a second to mutter, “Oh, shit.”
Jessa, now aware of the paparazzi coming toward us, helped me get her brother in the back of her car. He hissed and gasped a few times, but even if he hadn’t done that, his pain was evident on his face. I couldn’t bear to make things worse for him, so I ran around the car to get in on the other side while Jessa finished getting him in and closing the door. It took several more seconds for her to settle into the driver’s seat and put the car in gear.
They couldn’t have gotten much, but it was enough to make Jacoby shut down.
And there wasn’t anything I could do to fix it.
18
Jacoby
I couldn’t get out of bed, and it had nothing to do with my leg.
My worst fears had come true. My face was plastered on article after article online. Granted, everything that had been written so far was mere speculation, no hard facts or anything personally damaging. But it was only a matter of time before it went beyond that.
“You can’t ignore her forever,” Jessa lectured from my bedroom door.
I wanted to tell her to leave, except I didn’t have the right to kick my sister out of her own pool house. That would only get me kicked out. “Stop making it sound as if I’m acting like a child, pouting in the corner and ignoring the neighbor girl who has a crush on me.
”
“Stop acting like that, and I’ll stop pointing it out.”
There weren’t many times that Jessa made me angry, but this was definitely one of those times. “Maybe if the gossip columns were discussing you, then you might feel a little differently about this. Until then, you don’t get to tell me how to feel.”
She dropped her head back and huffed heavily. “Whatever, Coby…but one day, you’ll wake up and realize that you pushed away someone special for reasons that were out of her control. You’re literally blaming this whole mess on her, as if she’s the one who alerted the press.”
“If you look at it, then you’ll see that it is her fault. She’s the one who came to the hospital, a public place, knowing full well that people would see us. She should’ve known that was going to happen.”
“Tasha was really worried about you,” she admitted somberly. “She went to the hospital because she needed to see for herself that you were all right. And you can’t fault her for that. If anyone understands the importance of seeing someone you care about with your own two eyes to ease your fears, it should be you. Yet here you are, treating someone who genuinely cares about you like she purposely betrayed you.”
Jessa had a way of throwing our past in my face anytime she felt like I needed to be put in my place. But she’d gone too far by referring to the time she had to stay at a children’s psychiatric facility for evaluation. Our lives had just been publicly destroyed for the entire world to see. Not only did we lose both of our parents, but we were forced to stay with our grandparents, whom we’d never met. Jessa was all I had. I was petrified when she was sent away to that clinic, so I’d made my grandmother take me there every single day just so I could see for myself that she was all right.
“Don’t do that, Jess. Don’t you dare compare the two, because they aren’t even close to being the same. You’re my sister, and I was twelve. I was in a strange place all alone, and I was terrified that the only person in the world who could make me feel safe was about to be taken from me, too. It’s apples and oranges.” I had to take a moment to calm down. That had really gotten to me, more than any other time my sister had used our past as a teachable moment.