Let Me Be the One

by Christa Maurice

  “Are they going to WVA?” Brian asked.

  “Who? The Rams? I don’t think West Virginia has a pro football team.”

  “Jason and Cassie.”

  “Probably, he didn’t say. Why?”

  Why? If he’d bothered to pay attention to what Marc was talking about he wouldn’t be in this fix. “I don’t know. I was just thinking I could use a little peace and quiet.”

  “Give him a call and find out. You’re a little distracted today. Coming up on the anniversary of the divorce, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Any excuse in a storm. Brian checked his calendar. It was coming up on the anniversary, but only because it had taken three fucking years to reach a settlement.

  “That sucks. What is this, your second? WVA might be just the thing.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll give Jason a call. Talk to you later.” He disconnected and dialed Jason. “Hey, I hear you heard from Suzi today.” Brian rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

  “Yeah, did you just talk to Marc?”

  “I just got off the phone with him. He said she was at Logan’s.” Now that he’d stepped in this, he might as well stomp around a little.

  “Moving out.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “You know. Fragile. I talked to Logan, too. He’s a changed man.”

  “Yeah.” The last thing Brian wanted to hear about was Logan’s brand spanking new attitude. If Logan had a brain to his name, he’d have figured out how to take care of Suzi a couple of years ago instead of fucking her over every time he thought she had her back turned.

  “I’m serious. He sounded sincere when I talked to him.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it. Anyway, that isn’t what I called to talk to you about. Are you guys going to be in WVA anytime soon?”

  “Maybe in a couple of weeks. Why?”

  “I just thought I could use a little peace and quiet. It’s coming up on my second anniversary.” Brian almost felt like a heel for using that excuse. Almost.

  “Is that why you’ve been such a bastard lately? Sure. Cassie’s parents have the keys. You might have some company in a few weeks.”

  Then they did plan to lure Suzi to WVA. A few days to make his play was all he needed. And if Logan was there, that moron would make it easier for Brian to be Suzi’s knight in shining armor. “That’s okay. It’s a big mountain.”

  Chapter 12

  Three years ago

  Logan parked his car in front of the office. He didn’t like being summoned in like this. It always reminded him of being in trouble in school. The worst thing he’d done in the last twenty-four hours was screw around with Suzi in the back of the limo, and nobody knew about that.

  “Logan.” Elizabeth wore a crisp white blouse and a shell-shocked expression. Were they being sued?

  “What’s up?” He leaned on her desk.

  “You better talk to Jim about it.” She fixed her gaze on the desktop.

  “He in his office?”

  She nodded without meeting his eyes.

  Logan headed to the office, but he could hear the shouting from behind the closed door at the end of the hall. Jim’s big roar. Diana’s high-pitched shriek. Frank’s throaty growl. He knocked, and the yelling stopped.

  Frank jerked open the door, and the fury melted off his face. “Logan. You’re here.”

  “Yeah, because you told me to get my ass down here.” Logan stepped into the office. They were all crowded around Jerry’s big desk, looking guilty as hell.

  “You didn’t bring Suzi, did you?” Frank asked.

  “No. Why? What’s this about?”

  “You better sit down,” Diana said. “Something has come to light. Something potentially embarrassing for you and Suzi.” She turned the monitor on Jerry’s desk so Logan could see it. The three of them arranged themselves to the sides where they couldn’t possibly see the screen.

  “Me and Suzi?” Logan’s gut froze solid. The image on the computer looked way too much like the back of the limo they’d been in last night. He’d done it as a treat for her. Last week, he’d called Elizabeth to arrange it. Ride to the premiere of her friend’s movie in a limo. He’d gotten a couple for her friend and his costars, too. They said it was like a real Hollywood premiere.

  “Logan, as part of my job, I search the Internet daily for any mention of your names,” Jim said. He’d put on his cop face, the one used to tell you your wife was hit by a drunk and killed about an hour ago when you thought she was out getting groceries. “I follow up on anything that doesn’t look kosher. This morning I was doing my usual check, and this popped up.” He reached back and tapped the mouse, but also kept his face away from the screen.

  The title card was sub-amateur and read Logan Fitzpatrick and Suzette Miranda Bazian go to Town in a Limo. The title disappeared. He and Suzi climbed in the limo. First, they were kissing. She said something about rewarding him for his good deed. And then she got down on her knees.

  “Turn it off,” Logan said hoarsely. The picture vanished. “This is for sale somewhere?”

  “Yeah.” Jim said. “We’ve already started proceedings against the limo company, and they are very interested in finding out who planted that camera in the ceiling of your car. And the website has already been shut down, but it was one of those pay-to-download sites, so who knows how many of these things got out before I stopped them. We’re trying to get a court order to access all their records, but the courts move a lot slower than the Internet. It’s already available on the piracy sites, too. We’re working on getting it taken down, but the minute we do, another one pops up.”

  Logan put his face in his hands. Suzi was going to die of humiliation. Ten seconds after she found out, she was going to start hating him for putting her in an X-rated video, and she’d have every right to hate him. Two minutes after she found out, she was going to pack her bags and be out the door so fast his head was going to spin. If there wasn’t a way to keep this from her, he’d already lost her. She just didn’t know she was gone.

  “You can’t let Suzi know about this,” he said.

  Frank moved to the front of his desk. “I know this is embarrassing, but you’re going to have to face it head on.”

  “Why?” Logan peered up, pleading with his eyes for Frank to come up with a way to cover up the whole thing so he would never have to tell her they were on video having sex.

  “You can’t hide from this.” Frank patted his shoulder. “It’s going to come out, and I think she’d rather hear it from you.”

  “You’re wrong about that. Can’t you tell her?”

  Frank blanched. “No. I shouldn’t be the one to break the news, but I can talk to her after.”

  “I can talk to her, too,” Jim said. He looked as if he’d rather wrestle a live crocodile than talk to Suzi about the sex tape, but he would do it if he had to. “I can fill her in on all the work we’re doing to get it off the market and the precautions we’re taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “What am I supposed to tell her?” Logan clutched the arms of the chair. All he’d done was have a little fun with his girl in a limo. Millions of high school kids had done the same thing. Why did he have to get clobbered for it?

  “Just tell her the truth.” Diana’s voice had a rasp from screaming.

  Logan pushed himself out of his chair. “Can I take the video?”

  Frank ejected a DVD from the computer and dropped it in a jewel case as if it was radioactive. “I’m sorry about this. I should have seen it coming.”

  “I should have had those cars checked thoroughly.” Jim snarled. “Those cameras are getting smaller and smaller and smarter and smarter. And the two of you are such a good-looking couple. It’s no wonder somebody would want to watch you. I should have thought of it myself.”

  Logan clutched the jewel case in his hand until he heard it crack. If he lost Suzi over this, it was going to become his lif
e purpose to hunt down the people who did this kind of crap and destroy them.

  He swept out to his car, not even noticing Greg and John chatting in the parking lot.

  “Hey, Logan, wait up!” Greg shouted, stopping him at his car door. “What’s up? Why the summons?”

  “Some asshole put a video camera in my car last night.”

  “In your car?” John asked. “At that movie thing?”

  Logan watched as the truth soaked through them. In seconds, they wore matching expressions of horror.

  “So they caught…something,” Greg said.

  “Yes, they caught me and Suzi fucking.” Logan’s face burned, and tears welled in his eyes. When she found out about the damn video, it was all he was going to have left of her. He sniffed, trying to control the sobs that wanted to break out of his chest.

  John drew a deep breath. “Jesus.”

  “So what are they doing?” Greg asked.

  “Frank is suing the limo company, and they already shut down the Internet site. Jim said he was getting a court order so they could run down all the people who bought—” Logan sobbed. “Who bought the download.” Filthy strangers sitting in front of their computers watching his darling Suzi like she was any cheap slut working a sex show for them.

  John put his arm around Logan’s shoulders. “So it got stopped fast. You just did that last night. How many people could have gotten it?”

  “It’s being pirated.” Logan buried his face against John’s shoulder. Sobs shook him. He had to go home to her. Tell her. Show her the DVD. Then watch her walk out. And for the rest of his life, guys were going to be winking and nodding because they’d seen the nice piece of ass he’d once had. How far did the tape go? Did it show them cuddling on the seat? Him helping her get dressed again?

  “Suzi will know this isn’t your fault,” Greg said. “It’s not like you set up a camera in your bedroom and taped her every time or something.” He patted Logan’s shoulder.

  “Yeah man, she’ll understand,” John said.

  Wiping his eyes, Logan pulled himself away from John. He had to get it together. If she saw him like this, she was going to lose any respect she had for him. He sagged against the car door. By sunset, she was going to be at least a state away. Back to college to find herself a nice quiet professor. She could be anybody’s baby now that she wasn’t going to be his anymore. More sobs crowded his throat.

  Logan stood. “I have to go tell her.” He rubbed his face, trying to clean away the tear tracks. “I’ll talk to you guys later.”

  Logan climbed into his car and pulled out. In the rearview mirror, he saw them lingering beside his now empty parking place as Toby drove in. Above them, the curtain in Frank’s office twitched. They were his buddies, and soon they were going to be all he had again.

  Following the familiar route home, he wished he had some reason to stop and put off the inevitable, but all the lights turned green as he approached. He was at his own driveway all too soon.

  He walked in through the kitchen door. She wasn’t in her second favorite haunt, the kitchen. Part of him was relieved she wouldn’t have access to knives when he told her. He’d prefer she kill him before she left, but he didn’t want her to spend the rest of her life in jail. Not in the living room either, but as he tried to summon the courage to peek into her office, she walked down the stairs.

  “I thought I heard you come in.” She smiled. Her hair was dripping down her back from the shower she must have just stepped from. She’d pulled on one of his concert T-shirts, but he could see by the way it molded to her body that she hadn’t bothered to put on anything else.

  “What’s the matter?” Her warm smile melted as he stood like a stone, unable to open his mouth. “Logan?” Panic suffused the word. She reached for him, but he stepped back. “What is it?”

  “Something…h-happened.”

  “What? What is it? Logan, tell me what happened.” Her voice rose shrill with fear.

  * * * *

  “Movie time!” Ty popped the DVD into the player the hotel had loaned them and threw himself on the bed beside Brian, kicking Bear in the process.

  “Hey, watch it,” Bear shouted.

  “You’re the one laying on my bed.” Ty juggled remotes, trying to find the one that operated the DVD player.

  “I can’t believe we have an evening off, and the best we can come up with is a movie,” Marc muttered. “What happened to the girls? The parties? The debauchery?”

  “We all got married and turned boring.” Rudy leaned the chair back and propped his feet on the desk. “Start the fucking movie, Tyler.”

  “Wait a minute. I can’t figure out which remote is which.” He pointed one and pressed a button.

  “You should have turned everything on from the TV like I told you to.” Rudy picked his teeth with the hotel comment card.

  “Yeah Ty, you should do everything the road manager tells you to do,” Jason said.

  “Wait, go back.” Brian sat up. He hadn’t seen what he thought he’d just seen. He couldn’t have seen what he thought he’d just seen.

  “What?” Ty hit another button and screen read operation not permitted.

  Brian snatched the remote out of his hand and shut off the DVD player. Regular TV came back on to the entertainment news program that had flashed across the television before.

  “Can’t say I’m shocked,” the blond coiffed anchor said. “But it is a serious invasion of privacy.”

  “It is, and I think they are going to have a very hard time snuffing this one out.” Her male counterpart turned to the camera. “In other news…”

  Brian bolted out of the room and down the hall to his own. Behind him, he heard the other guys trying to figure out what was going on as they stampeded after him. Her website wouldn’t say anything yet, but Savitar’s might. Or the entertainment program’s. He searched Logan, Suzette, and sex.

  “What is the crisis?” Rudy demanded.

  His search pulled up fifteen pages of links. Clicking on the first one opened a page with a screen cap of Suzi straddling Logan in the back of a limo. Brian was paralyzed between wanting to slam the laptop closed and wanting to scroll through more pictures.

  “Holy shit,” Jason whispered. “Well, it can’t be them. It’s got to be fake.” He clicked through.

  Brian closed his eyes. He pushed away from the desk. That bitch on TV said she wasn’t surprised. Boy, was she going to be surprised when she got slapped with a lawsuit for that stupid remark. The image of Suzi and Logan imprinted itself on the backs of his eyelids.

  “Jesus, would you look at the number of downloads,” Ty said.

  A phone started to ring. Marc answered, so Brian assumed it was his.

  “We just heard,” Marc said. “It looks like somebody filmed them having sex in the back of a limo, but it could be fake. Oh.”

  Marc’s “oh” lingered in the air. Ty kept running his fingers through his hair as if the motion would help order his thoughts. Brian tried to cope with the fact that, even with his eyes closed, he could see that picture. He also remembered Suzi the last time he saw her. She’d been at one of Sandy’s backyard parties. Smiling and laughing. The joy in her eyes like bottled sunshine.

  “I don’t believe it,” Bear snarled. Brian focused on his friend. Bear’s face was dark red and a vein throbbed at his temple. “It’s fake.”

  Brian slouched against the window frame, mind blank. There was nothing to think. Nothing to cover what had happened to the sweet, innocent girl who’d come to dinner the first night with a bottle of wine, wearing a knee-length skirt and a turtleneck. Who had gone barefoot most of the time Savitar was in West Virginia. Suzi didn’t want to be the center of attention. She preferred to sit at home and write her stories.

  “Candy says it was them. They were at a movie thing for one of her friends last night, and they were wearing the same clothes as in the video.” Marc shook his head.

  “How co
uld they fucking let this happen?” Bear paced across the room. “Didn’t anyone check out the limo company? You don’t think Logan did it on purpose, do you? You can’t see him as well as you can see her. Naw, he wouldn’t do that.” Bear started chewing his fingernails. “Do you suppose someone at their office was in on it?”

  “Why would they do that?” Ty asked.

  “To break them up. What better way? She’ll be so upset she won’t ever want to see him again. Sons of bitches.” Bear stalked into the hall, ranting.

  “You don’t think Logan did it, do you?” Jason’s face was white and rigid. “He’s terrified of losing her. She won’t want to be without his protection and his lawyers now.”

  “Unless she left him already,” Ty said.

  “I gotta call her.” Brian snatched his phone off the dresser and found her number.

  “Good idea. We need to talk to them.”

  Them, yes, talk to them. Both of them. It rang and rang until it went to voicemail. He shook his head as he redialed. Jason stomped out of the room. Ty, Rudy, and Marc leaned over the computer. Brian caught snatches of their conversation through the ringing, but none of it made sense. Bear stomped up and down the hall cursing.

  Jason walked back into the room with his cell to his ear. “Logan? It’s Jason. We just heard.” Jason stopped as if he didn’t know what to say beyond that.

  Brian tossed his phone back on the dresser. Ty danced around Jason as if he wanted to climb through the phone.

  “What’s your plan?” Jason asked.

  Brian folded his arms. Logan was a guy. He was probably thrilled the world got to see him boning his hot girlfriend. Who cared what his fucking plan was?

  “And Suzi…? No, I don’t need to… Here, she can talk to Ty.” Jason thrust the phone into Ty’s hands like a hot potato.