In Too Deep (Winter Games Book 4)

by Dr. Rebecca Sharp

My eyes narrowed on her, unwilling to believe it.

  “I’m sorry, B, but that’s why we’re having this meeting.”

  “I thought this was about the tour?” I handed her back the laptop.

  “It is. It’s about the tour because we’ve noticed substantial changes in ticket sales and the overall tone of publicity for every event since you broke up with Loser Levi. The headlines, his comments, the responses from all your exes… they all add up. I’ve done what I can without slandering each and every one of them for the disgusting shitheads that they are—because we are above that,” she said as though she needed to remind both of us, “but it’s not enough.”

  Not enough? It’s not enough that I give the world my everything and they still want to take more?

  My life was revving at the limit of what I was capable of and still, the press… the media… continued to push with a lead foot on the gas to see just how far and how fast I could go before I crashed and burned.

  “How is it—” I broke off, burying my face in my hands. “I don’t get it, Tay. What am I doing wrong? How does it always seem so right and yet I still end up with a player or a narcissist? Why do they have to love me?”

  “You’re too good, B. Too trusting,” she said with a shrug (like she hadn’t warned me about this before.) “And that has nothing to do with your fame. It’s just you. And it’s easy to take advantage of.”

  Logically, it made sense that they’d want me for what I had. And that was breaking me. Because in a world of fake, at least the relationships I made should have been real.

  Like lighthouses in stormy seas, they should have been a beacon of safety and stability.

  Instead, they were turning out to be mirages in the middle of the desert sand of stardom.

  And my mouth was becoming so dry it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

  “You’re making me sound like a ho.” I rolled my eyes at her, trying to lighten the conversation before I started bawling.

  That cracked a small smile on her face. “Hey,” she put her hands up, “I just said you were easy. That’s all.”

  My offended gasp that bordered on a laugh was interrupted.

  “Ladies!” The door burst open and Bruce strolled inside. A short, balding man wearing a suit that should fit much better for the amount of money that I paid him and glasses that looked too small for his round face, eyed us both quickly before walking behind his desk.

  “Finally.” I heard Taylor grumble underneath her breath.

  Bruce’s narrow eyes darted to her as he paused his paper rifling. “Have you brought Miss Tyler up to speed?”

  After eight years, he still called me Miss Tyler no matter how many times I asked that he please just call me Blake.

  “I was just starting to, Bruce. I showed her a few of the headlines.”

  Starting to? There was more?

  “We have a serious problem, Miss Tyler.” He turned to me with a curt nod to acknowledge his statement.

  I rubbed my palms together before linking my fingers and squeezing them tight to keep them stationary. I hated this feeling—the feeling of being punished for something that I didn’t do. I may have won Entertainer of the Year—two years in a row—but I’d been unofficially the Worst Boyfriend Picker since the beginning of time.

  Yes, I did break up with them. That’s what you do with guys who hurt you. But playing the blame game wasn’t my style. I wasn’t going to turn around and point fingers and shine the spotlight on their lies, their cheating, and their general callousness. It wasn’t who I was.

  I was just a girl trying to find my Prince Charming—while the whole world watched.

  Were they really going to hold that against me?

  “And what’s that?” I asked quietly. “My ex-boyfriends?”

  “Your reputation,” he said tightly, seating himself in his high-back chair with an exaggerated movement. “It’s sinking faster than the Titanic if the Titanic had backed up after the first hit only to run into the iceberg again.”

  Well then.

  “Tell us how you really feel,” I mumbled wryly. Catching his disapproving stare, I bit my tongue and apologized, “I’m sorry. I just can’t believe this. Since when are my relationships the public’s business? Can’t I just make my own mistakes in peace?” I sucked in a huge breath. “Sorry. So, what do we do? How do I fix it? Should I make a statement? I’ve been M.I.A. from social media for a little now; coming back with a sort of explanation could mean something.”

  An explanation that would let me wallow in my self-consciousness in peace.

  “As much as your fans love you, sometimes they are more fascinated by a star that explodes than one that shines.” He paused and adjusted his glasses like it would make the small frames fit better. “The press is on a witch-hunt, Miss Tyler, and we need to put an end to it before the burns to your image get any worse.”

  “Burning witches? Even if I’m not one?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—how serious this was becoming. All over stupid boys.

  He nodded curtly, opening up his laptop on his desk and punching a few keys. “That’s how this world works. They’ll burn anything in the hopes of creating a firework.” He clasped his hands in front of him and, in all our years of working together, I’d never seen him as serious as he was in this moment.

  “I know who you are, Miss Tyler. But the world only knows what they’ve been given. And right now, they’re being told that what you’ve given them is a lie. At this level, it’s no longer about your talent, your fame, or your music. At this level, people feel like they know you from the image that you’ve created. At this level, your reputation is everything.”

  I reached in my bag and pulled out a piece of gum, shoving it in my mouth before I chewed a hole right through my tongue.

  “What do I do?” I whispered. “I… I told Taylor that she’s in charge of making me stay away from any and all boys until the tour is done.”

  “We don’t have the luxury of that kind of time,” he informed me with the calmness of the weatherman saying there was a thirty-percent chance I’d no longer be famous or America’s favorite by tomorrow morning. “We need to give them something now. We need to give them what they want.”

  “And what’s that?” I asked like I wasn’t afraid to know.

  “You. In a relationship that they can believe in. In love. And on tour.”

  Steve Harvey announcing the wrong Miss Universe had been less shocking than what he’d just said. And so, I waited patiently for the stuttered correction.

  Silence.

  “E-excuse me?” I finally squeaked out when it was clear that I hadn’t misheard him. Reaching for my tea, I gulped down two huge mouthfuls.

  “What Bruce is trying to say,” Taylor inserted, “what he and I have been discussing over the past few days, is that your fans need to see you in a happily-ever-after and they need to see you fall into it now. You have to start this next leg of the tour with a boyfriend, B, and the world needs to see you fall in love with him.”

  “H-how am I supposed to fall in love with someone—even pretend to—that I haven’t met? I-I’m not an actress. Just because I go on stage doesn’t mean that I’m putting on a show. I’m performing, but it’s all me out there—my hopes, my fears, my feelings, and my heart.” My arms flailed in every direction as I spoke, mirroring the frantic nature of my thoughts. “They already think me a heartless liar, why would I become the exact thing they accuse me of?”

  “Because they won’t believe the truth, Blake,” Taylor said, grabbing one of my hands. Her palms were just as sweaty as my own. “More than that, they don’t want the truth. They want a lie that fits their idea of the truth. I know this isn’t how you normally… ever… do things, but sometimes the end has to justify the means.”

  Just because that was a saying didn’t make it true.

  Letting out a nervous laugh, I pulled my hand from hers and ran it through my hair that was quickly becoming dislodged from the elastic that hel
d it together. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  I didn’t know how to be in a real relationship, let alone a fake one.

  “Tay, I’m a worse liar than you and considering the world doesn’t believe me when it comes to my very real ex-boyfriends, I can’t fathom how they would believe a fake relationship with someone that I just met,” I insisted. “Like you might as well just hook me up with Matt-freaking-Bomer—even that would be more believable… and he’s gay!”

  There was no way—no way—that this was a good idea.

  Bruce cleared his throat and I watched his eyes flick to Taylor. I looked back and forth between the two of them, watching the invisible battle wage over who was going to deliver the next blow to me—whatever that was.

  Great. Blake-the-Punching-Bag.

  “What? What is it?” I demanded. “Just tell me.”

  “Miss Tyler,” Bruce began, clearing his throat again even though there was nothing in it to clear. “We aren’t suggesting a relationship with someone that you don’t know. We’re suggesting a relationship with someone that you do and have known for a long time.”

  ‘Clueless’ wasn’t even the right word for me. I looked to Taylor saying. “Who is he talking about?”

  She sighed deeply and, just like the time in ninth grade when she promised me that I was not going to like the ending to A Walk to Remember, I knew I was in trouble.

  “Next week you and I are going home for Christmas. You. America’s Sweetheart. The Southern Belle with a heart the size of Texas.” Dread began to eat its way through my cells like acid as she continued, “We think the world would jump at the chance to see you with someone that you knew before you were famous, someone that you liked before you were a star. They’d want to believe you found love with a childhood sweetheart. That’s the kind of relationship that will have them rooting for you instead of against you.”

  My face burned as I looked at her. We’d known each other for too long for me not to know where this was going—to whom this was going. I felt like my longest and best friend had just stabbed me in the back.

  No, not stabbed.

  She carved a letter into it as though she were the masked legend of Zorro.

  Z. Zach. Zach-asshole-Parker.

  “No, Tay…” I whispered, betrayal dripping from my words.

  She knew what she was asking of me. She knew how I’d loved him and she knew how swiftly and callously he’d broken my heart. She’d slept over my house almost every night after that party, trying to cheer me as I bawled my eyes out. She’d stepped in front of me when Ash flipped out on me that night, forcing him to leave me alone.

  She’d been the first one to listen to every lyric that I’d written about my love and loss—each of which ending up on my debut album, Heart Break.

  I’d loved him for so long that for months, I truly didn’t know how to live without being able to see him or talk to him—even if he’d never felt the same.

  She’d helped me to stay strong when I swore that my guitar knew only how to play sobs instead of songs. And now, she sat there asking me to rip back open the horrible scar down the center of my heart in order to save face and save my dream.

  She rubbed her hands together and stared me down, handing me my heartbreak on a silver platter.

  “You need to be in a relationship with Zach Parker. And you need to convince the world that you’ve fallen in love with him.”

  “Are you joking?” I asked breathlessly, feeling the invisible band around my chest squeezing tighter. I felt like I just got out of convincing myself that I wasn’t in love with him.

  “This is no joke, Miss Tyler,” he said sternly and heat bloomed in my cheeks.

  “No, it’s not. This is my life, my heart, Mr. Pillars. If there is any joke going on here, it’s on me,” I replied harshly.

  Zach Parker had my heart before I knew I’d lost it.

  Before I knew what love was.

  Before my life became not my own and fame rewrote my stars.

  Zach Parker was my Achilles heel.

  “Blake…” Taylor’s hand reached for my shoulder and I didn’t have the strength to push it off. “I know, babe. I know what happened. But it was a decade ago. Do you think… maybe you’ve both moved on since then?”

  One would hope.

  I must have looked like I was waiting for another option—any other option—because she continued, “I tried. I tried to get interviews. I tried to give statements. I even reached out to a few news places, but no one wants to hear it. They don’t want to hear your side when the other side is selling so well. You know me… you know that if I’m suggesting this I’ve thought about every other option to try to reason with them.”

  “Not dating sends the message that they are right and that we are punishing you,” Bruce interjected, reaching up to adjust his glasses again. “Dating makes a statement that you can’t be bullied, but a random person is too risky. Too much like what they’ve already seen.”

  “Zach was all I could think of,” Tay ended, regretfully. I knew that feeling. All too well. “I’m sorry.”

  My head moved back and forth between them like a volley, both bombarding me with reasons why this was the only way.

  I shook my head. “Even if I could…” I trailed off trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “How am I supposed to convince him? When am I supposed to convince him? I never see him. I don’t even know—”

  “He’s going to be home for Christmas, too. I already talked to Ash.” My assertive mess of a friend looked at me calmly and I knew that she had the whole thing figured out already—she always did.

  “You told my brother about this—”

  “No. Of course not.” She slid her laptop back into her bag. “But you’re going to have to; he’s part of the band. Along with your parents. Because they’re going to see and they’re going to need to know that it’s not real.”

  “He won’t go for it,” I resorted to the last and probably most truthful pitfall of their entire plan.

  I’d wanted Zach before. I could pretend something that I’d already felt. Zach, on the other hand, had never wanted me and never would; he’d made that painfully clear. And the last thing I needed was to hear his rejection for a fake relationship when I was still haunted by his rejection for a real one.

  “We’ll make him an offer that he can’t refuse,” she replied simply and stood, reaching down to calmly collect her department-store-sized collection of bags. “We should get going. Better to be early to the airport. We have a busy week ahead.”

  “I trust you’ll let me know what you decide,” Bruce said calmly; if they gave out ranks for emotions, he would have a black belt in impartiality. “But I would be remiss if I didn’t inform you, Miss Tyler, that there is no explanation you can give to make this better. This tour is no longer about you or Lovestruck. This tour is about saving your reputation.”

  I stood, pulling down my oversized sweatshirt over my yoga pants and gave him a quick nod. “Have a good holiday,” I replied, standing abruptly and heading for the door.

  Was it worth it?

  I stood outside in the hallway, waiting for Taylor to catch up.

  Was saving my reputation worth the open and public dissection of my heart?

  One-click the book here!

  To my husband—My home is where your heart is. Thank you for everything that you do for me. Thank you for loving me. And thank you for letting me read Jane Austen out loud to you because you know how much her books mean to me.

  To my family and friends—Thank you for supporting me even when I don’t share too much about this journey with you. I love you.

  To all those who have inspired me with their tales of adoption, your love speaks even louder.

  To Amy & Nadine—Thank you for helping me make this book the best that it could be! Your input was invaluable!

  To Nick—Aren’t you glad you’re my brother? LOL Thanks for all your help! I know you’re so excited to be checking out half-na
ked dudes at work!

  To Ellie—Thanks for all your hard work on my baby. And thanks for loving Starbucks like I do. One day we won’t have to leave the house anymore and it will just come to us… because fairytales do come true.

  To RS—Thanks for being with me through this whole journey and taking such good care of my books!

  To Stacey—I’ve tried to do what you do and it almost ended with my laptop through the window. Conclusion: Your formatting is beautiful magic. Thank you!

  To all the bloggers who work enthusiastically to help me spread the word about each and every one of my stories! Duchess, Caitlin, Ashley, Shelly, Cassie, Elizabeth, Mary, Mackenzie, Cassandra, Patricia, Autumn… There are so many of you that, at the risk of forgetting someone because I haven’t had enough coffee today, I’m going to say that you KNOW who you are and I LOVE you beyond words.

  To my Sharpies—Thank you for being my safe space. Thank you for supporting me and sharing your enthusiasm to read whatever it is I decide to write.

  And, as always, to all my readers. Thank you for loving this series and these characters. Thank you for being on this journey with me. Thank you for enjoying the ride!

  Standalones

  reputation

  Winter Games Series

  Up in the Air

  On the Edge

  Enjoy the Ride

  In Too Deep

  Over the Top

  The Gentlemen’s Guild Series

  The Artist’s Touch

  The Sculptor’s Seduction

  The Painter’s Passion

  The Passion & Perseverance Trilogy (A Pride and Prejudice Retelling)

  First Impressions

  Second Chances

  Third Time is the Charm

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