BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (53 page)

The moment I woke up, I could feel that something was wrong. I reached out and felt the long-cold depression of mattress Devon had gone to bed in. When had he gotten up? Why hadn’t I felt it? Where had he gone?

I slit my eyes open and realized I didn’t know where I was. It was a few more long moments of confusion that everything came rushing back — the movie, my evacuation to Dallas, Devon showing up in my room. Everything had been okay again when we’d fallen asleep last night. Why was I filled with dread this morning?

I inhaled and stretched as I sat up, intent on shaking this funk off of myself. Devon loved me, and I loved him. In the end, that was the most important thing. Everything else was superfluous. I’d learn to deal with the paparazzi and all the invasions of privacy. And if I really put my mind to it, maybe I could be open about the movie. It was important to him. I understood that. And if it was important to him, I would need to support him in it.

I scooted myself around in the bed, expecting a note or a text message on my phone as to Devon’s whereabouts. All I could really think about was taking a long, hot shower to try and pull myself together.

What I didn’t expect to see was Devon seated on the other bed, his face in his hands.

I gasped. “What are you doing? You scared me.”

“You lied to me,” he said, his voice flat, not bothering to raise his face from his hands.

“What?” I racked my brain trying to figure out what he was talking about. “I don’t understand, Devon.”

“You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me this entire time.”

My blood roared in my ears, and I was afraid of something I didn’t fully grasp.

“You’re going to have to let me know what’s going on so I can try to get this figured out for you,” I said, my voice shaking. How had the sublime comfort I’d felt last night transform so swiftly into this panicked horror?

He grabbed for his phone blindly, facedown on the bed beside him, unlocked it, and handed it to me wordlessly. I didn’t even have any guesses as to what it was that had made Devon react like this. There wasn’t an assumption in my mind until I saw it.

And then it all made sense.

It was a photo — not “a” photo, “the” photo. The one that had started everything between Devon and me. The one I’d snapped of him in his hotel room in Dallas to get him to back away from me. The one in which he looked like a monster, awful and drunk and angry.

The one I’d deleted.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, confused and sickened.

“You tell me.” His voice was emotionless, but I knew just how upset he was. He’d begged me to delete that photo. It was what made him figure out where I lived after the encounter. It was how he’d met Nana, how he’d gotten to know her and like her well enough to buy her a Blu-Ray player and invite the both of us to Hawaii. He’d begged me to delete that photo because it showed him at one of his lowest moments.

“I deleted this photo, Devon,” I said. “You saw me delete it. I did it right in front of you.” It was true. Nana had made me go walk the man to his car that first night he’d shown up at her house, and I’d done it right then and there. I wasn’t the kind of person who was intent on ruining other people’s lives, and that included not selling crappy photos no matter how high the bidding got.

It was an awful photo. I’d used the flash on purpose to blind Devon after he’d come on to me. He’d been drunk, miserable after his breakup with Trina Henry, holed up in that hotel room, and not the person he usually was. I’d been starstruck by him, blinded by his charm, unaware of just what he was looking to lose himself in until I was inside of his room, alone with him, rebuffing his advances.

He’d been ugly, as ugly as the photo was, vodka and piles of clothes in the background, along with the pizza I’d delivered to him. He was scowling and recoiling at the same time, giving him a weird double chin and an awful expression on his face.

It was a photo neither of us had been eager to see published.

“I saw you delete it,” he said. “But how is it everywhere now?”

I handed the phone back to him, or tried to. He didn’t take it. He didn’t even look at me.

“Devon, I have no idea how this happened,” I said. “I deleted the photo. You witnessed it. I deleted it from my phone. I didn’t send it to anyone else. There weren’t any other copies. That was the only one.”

“You deleted a photo,” he said. “But you obviously didn’t delete everything.”

I had no idea how to convince him that I was innocent of what he was accusing me of. All I knew was my truth — that I didn’t do it. Even as angry as I was at Devon at the time I took that photo and immediately afterward, when he was busily trying to ingratiate himself with me, I would never do that to him — or to anyone. It was cruel, and I wasn’t cruel.

“I didn’t do this,” I said finally. “I deleted the photo, and I never spoke to anyone about it. Nana was the only other person who ever saw it.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Devon said, pushing himself up off the bed, pulling his clothes on despondently as if even that was too much effort in his moment of despair. “The fact remains, June, that the photo is everywhere.”

I couldn’t argue that fact with him. The photo was out. But I wasn’t the one who was responsible for it.

“It’s not my fault,” I said. “I have no idea why this is happening. Where are you going?”

He slipped on his sneakers and looked at me for the first time. “I’m going home,” he said. “I can’t be here right now.”

How could things be so upside down? We’d only just reconciled over the whole mess about his movie about Nana. Why couldn’t everyone give us a break?

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, hating myself as I did so. I didn’t have anywhere to go. He had to know that.

“You’re already in Dallas,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “You're the one who came here in the first place. You had a plan. Why don’t you stick to that?” He turned his back to me and began shuffling toward the door.

“Devon.” He stopped. “I did not do this to you.”

“Look where you’re staying, June,” he said, not bothering to turn around. “You’re in the hotel where it happened. What, did you feel guilty about it? Or do you just want more publicity?”

“This looks bad,” I said. “I know it does. I don’t know why I decided to stay here. I was upset when I left your house. You know that. But you have to believe me. I would never do something like this to you. I wouldn’t do it to my worst enemy.”

“Am I your enemy?” He looked at me. “Is that it? Did you only entertain the idea of being with me so you could break my heart and tear it out of my chest and stomp on it?”

“What?” It sounded like the plot of some crazy soap opera. “Who would have the time and energy for that?”

He sighed. “Never mind. You should read all the stories the gossip sites are coming up with to go with the photo. They’re pretty imaginative.”

“I’m not going to read that trash, and neither should you.” I made a move to approach him, but he held his hands up and I stopped. He didn’t want me anywhere near him, and that hurt me most of all. He didn’t even want me to touch him.

“I have a lot of damage control to go do,” he said. “I don’t … I don’t know what’s going to happen with us, June. I don’t know what to tell you to do.”

I didn’t know what to do, or what else I could say to Devon to make any of this any better. Somehow, that photo was out in public now. I didn’t understand how it had happened, but I wasn’t behind it.

“Devon, I love you,” I tried. “Why would I do this?”

He flinched at the word “love,” and I wondered if it had been the wrong thing to say.

“I need to be somewhere else,” he said. “Somewhere away from you.”

And he left. I was powerless to stop him, rooted in the spot by shock and horror. He couldn’t even stand to stay in the same room as me. I was too sick to even cry, even though my stomach ached like I wanted to. It struck me to move to the window, to see him walk out, and I was just in time to see him charge through the swarm of paparazzi that had doubled in size overnight like a man possessed. He hadn’t bothered with a baseball cap. And he wasn’t bothering with being polite, shouldering past anyone foolhardy enough to stand in his direct path.

He pulled out of the parking lot so aggressively that smoke rose from his tires, twin black streaks on the pavement the only thing left of him as he rounded the corner and drove out of sight.

It was only then that the tears fell — tears of anger and frustration at both myself and Devon, at gossip websites and people who wished us ill, at the idea that the universe would keep shoving obstacles at us to keep us apart. How had this happened? I’d deleted the photo. Why hadn’t Devon believed me? Why had he thought I was behind this terrible thing?

I grabbed my phone and powered it on, scrolling back through the photos. There were selfies of Devon and me, pictures of Hawaii, adorable portraits of Nana, and then nothing out of the ordinary. Photos of cats I stumbled across in my trips across Dallas, photos of weird cars I passed in my deliveries. The photo of Devon in his hotel room wasn’t here. It wasn’t anywhere on my phone.

But then, my heart stopped. There was a folder in my photos that I hadn’t noticed before, testament to an operating system upgrade I’d agreed to install and never investigated.

Recently deleted photos. I swallowed hard and opened it. There was a few blurry photos, a photo of what had to be the inside of my purse, an extreme closeup of my thumb, and, finally, like a wound that refused to heal, the photo of Devon in his hotel room.

How had I not known about this? For once in my life, I wished I paid more attention to my phone. It was just that I never had time — not when Nana was alive, and not when I’d started dating Devon, trying to navigate the potholes of life in the spotlight in the interim. I was failing miserably. I couldn’t even keep track of what my own phone was doing.

I took a screenshot — I at least knew how to do that much — of the offending photo inside the deleted photos folder as proof. The photo was in that folder. I had deleted it — just not completely. Somehow, and this was still the biggest mystery, that photo had found its way to the Internet.

I called Devon, but it went to voicemail. I tried again, wondering if he’d shut his phone off or if he was just ignoring the call every time my number popped up on his display. But after the third time, I gave up and sent a text. At least he wouldn’t be able to ignore that.

“I found the photo on my phone,” I typed. “There was a copy preserved in this folder I didn’t know about for recently deleted photos.” I sent the text. It felt strange to me that the photo had been taken recently enough to make an appearance in that folder, but then again, my relationship with Devon had developed at a break-neck speed. It really hadn’t been that long ago.

I stared at the screen, willing Devon to reply, but he didn’t. There wasn’t even an indication that the text had been delivered. He had to have turned his phone off. I sent the screenshot of the awful picture in the recently deleted photos folder anyway, wanting him to understand that I was trying my best here.

“So I really did delete the photo,” I typed in a new message. “But it wasn’t gone for good. I wanted you to know that.” Sent.

Sent, and I still didn’t know what I was doing, what I was trying to prove. I wanted to show Devon that I wasn’t hiding anything. I’d had no idea about that stupid folder. My own technological ignorance made me cry even harder. I’d deleted the photo, but somehow, it had resurfaced because I wasn’t as thorough as I should’ve been. I hadn’t been the one to release the photo to the world, but I was still partly culpable because I was an idiot.

“I didn’t send it to anyone,” I said. “I hope at this point of the movie you’re making about our life that you include just how stupid I am.”

He could chew on those whenever he chose to turn his phone on again. I was done sending texts out into space.

But without anything to occupy my mind, my misery became unbearable. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t just sit here and wallow. I had to leave. I didn’t know where I’d go, but I had the rental car. Dallas was a big city, and Texas was an even bigger state. I’d figure this out. I’d be okay.

I peeked out the window, fully expecting the crowd of paparazzi to have dispersed after Devon’s stormy departure, but, if possible, there were even more than before. It was as if everyone in Dallas with a camera had gathered outside.

With a gulp, I realized what they were after — me.

They’d seen Devon leave the building, angry at what obviously was my fault — the photo of him in the hotel room when we’d met. Now they were waiting for me. They wouldn’t be looking to get my side of the story. They wouldn’t even be interested in what insights I had about the photo or its release or Devon’s anger.

They just wanted to capture my shame and sadness. And that’s what would happen if I tried to escape the hotel.

I’d have to wait it out. That was the only thing I could do. I’d have to wait it out — they had to leave some time — and distract myself in the meanwhile.

My hands shaking, I fumbled with the remote until I turned the television on and started channel surfing. My finger froze on an entertainment news segment on one of the channels.