Newly Exposed (39 page)

“No,” I pushed it toward him. He took a seat at the table and started shoveling the fruit in his mouth. “Babe, slow down on the pancakes, that carb shit goes straight to your hips,” Blaze lectured Nolly.

Insulted for all womankind, I bored my eyes through Blaze’s soul and said, “How dare you say something like that?”

“He’s right,” Nolly said, pushing aside the pancakes. “We were just talking about how I could lose a couple of pounds.”

I stared at Nolly as if she was crazy. There was no weight for that girl to lose.
 

“You have to be kidding me, Nolly, your body is perfect. How can you think that?”

“I need more definition. Blaze is going to help me, right babe?”

He nodded and said, “Yup, we’re going to get this girl lean and fit.”

“She’s already lean and fit,” I argued. “Nolly, you don’t have to lose any weight.”

“Friends have to say that,” Blaze said to Nolly. “Stand up, babe, let’s show her what we talked about.”

Nolly nodded and stood up for Blaze as if she was a robot. I was so fucking confused that I couldn’t even leave the little side show I was watching.
 

Blaze turned her around and lifted her shirt, he pinched her side and said, “See this, Solo? This is the result of too many pancakes and potatoes. But we’re going to change that. She’s going to be so fucking hot when I’m done with her.”

My mouth hung wide open as Blaze pinched a centimeter of skin off of her body. I was pretty sure he was just pinching skin, not fat. There was no fat on her damn body. I was so furious that I stood up from my seat and just stormed off; I couldn’t even begin to think of what to say. There was nothing to say except that Blaze needed to go. His negative talk was not good for Nolly, especially since she already had low self-esteem, thanks to all her break ups.
 

I locked myself in my room and flopped on my bed. I looked down at my phone and tried calling Adam again, but his phone went straight to voicemail. Feeling a little desperate, I decided to call Scout. He had to know where Adam was.
 

As the phone rang, my heart twisted in my chest from all the bad and negative thoughts that were running through my mind as to why Adam was not answering his phone.
 

“Hello?” Scout said into his phone. At least someone had their phone on.
 

“Scout? It’s Solo.”

“Uh…hey, Solo. What’s going on?” The tone of his voice instantly made me nervous.
 

“Um, I was wondering if Adam was around. I know you two roomed together last night, and I wasn’t able to get in touch with him. His phone seems to be off, and I just wanted to see if he was okay.”

“Yeah, umm…he’s fine.”

The way he paused had my heart beating rapidly.
 

“Is he with you; can I talk to him?”

Silence came through from the other end until I heard Scout exhale. With his little exhale of air, my heart sank to the floor, and tears started to form in my eyes.
 

“Solo, I can’t lie to you.”

“Then don’t,” I said, on the verge of losing myself.
 

“I don’t want to be the one who tells you this, but I guess I don’t have a choice.” He cleared his throat and continued, “Last night, Adam never came back to the room.”

My ability to breathe all of a sudden stopped, as I continued to listen to Scout.
 

“I saw Zia slip a room key into his pocket at the party. I asked him if he was going to use it and he said he would never because he had you, and I believed him until he never showed up last night and didn’t show up this morning, and neither did Zia.”

“Wh-what?” I asked, trying to take big gulps of air. “He wasn’t on th-the plane with you?”

“No. I’m sorry, Solo. I want to say this is some bad coincidence, but I can’t think of any other reason why he wouldn’t be with us.”

“Oh, my God,” I cried into my hands as I thought about Adam with Zia. Was this really happening again? It couldn’t be; there was no way. I talked to him all day yesterday. He told me how much he loved me, how much he wanted me.
 

“Solo, do you want me to come over?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I just…I just don’t know if I can believe it.”

Scout let out a heavy breath and said, “I know. I think the same way because of the way he looked at all the text messages he received from you yesterday, but…”

“But what,” I asked, just waiting for the dagger to make its final plunge into my heart.
 

“Fuck,” he stuttered for a second and then said, “Last night, Ty went to go check out Zia’s room, you know, see if she needed any…”

“I get it,” I cut Scout off.
 

“Well, when he went to knock on the door, he distinctly heard Zia moaning, and it was because she was fucking someone up against the door of her hotel room. This was right after our group picture, when Zia and Adam disappeared at the same time.”

The room started spinning as my entire body went numb. Blackness started settling in as Scout’s voice kept talking through the phone. I couldn’t register anything he said. All I could think about was the fact that what I had with Adam was fake. Every moment, every kiss, every laugh was all fake, because no man would ever cheat on his girl if he even cared one ounce for her.
 

The question was, why would he lead me on? Was it because of his job? Was it because I helped him out during photo shoots and he needed my help in handling Zia? Flashes of his last photo shoot ran through my mind, as I guided him through what he was supposed to do, how he was supposed to pose. His desperate need for money, his inability to pose without me….it all made fucking sense.
 

I hung up on Scout, barely whispering a goodbye, and buried my head into my pillows. Ty might have cheated on me with Zia, but he never used me.
 

I didn’t want to believe that kind and sweet Adam used me; he didn’t seem like the type, but then again, you could never truly know someone, could you? One day, they could be your best friend and the next, they could be hiding some deep, dark secret.
 

There were couples all around the world who broke up because someone in the relationship was hiding someone, like a secret affair, a fetish, or even the fact that they no longer liked the opposite sex. It was all around. Humans were hard to trust, especially when it came to being in the spotlight.
 

Thoughts of Adam telling me how beautiful I was or how much he loved me and wanted to be with me kept running through my mind as I sobbed into my pillow. Everything was a lie, a fucking lie, and I fell for it.
 

I pounded on my pillow and cried until there were no more tears left for me to shed. My eyes eventually closed and sleep captured me until there was a knock on my door from Nolly, telling me Adam was at the front door.
 

Chapter Thirty

Adam

The last twelve hours had been hell. Once I was able to get to the hospital, I was greeted by my Aunt Sarah in the waiting room with red-rimmed eyes and mascara running down her face. I broke down right in front of her before I could even find out what happened.
 

I held her in my arms as she sobbed into my chest and I cried into her hair. There could only be one reason why she was crying so much.

It wasn’t until the doctor tapped me on the shoulder and escorted me to another room that I realized we were in public.
 

We sat down and the doctor folded his hands on the desk that sat between us. He explained to us that my mom had a stroke, and in the midst of the staff trying to combat her stroke, someone on another floor passed, with the same blood type as my mom and a healthy heart. My mom was instantly rushed to the operating room, where they performed open heart surgery on her, but because of all the trauma my mom had gone through in the matter of an hour, she was put into an induced coma and was now in the intensive care unit, where her chances for recovery were fifty-fifty.
 

When my Aunt Sarah called me, my mom had just had the stroke, and Sarah was freaking out, rightfully so. But it wasn’t until I got to the hospital that we found out all the information.
 

I spent the entire day in the hospital, watching my mom from behind glass. We weren’t allowed near her because of the risk of spreading germs, so I could only see her from a distance. It was torture, knowing that there was a chance her body was going to reject the new heart, that she would never come out of the coma, and that she was bordering on never coming back to me again.
 

There was only one thing that could make my heart feel less pain and that was Solo, but when I went to her house, I never expected to be greeted by a pissed off Nolly, who wouldn’t even let me back into Solo’s room.
 

“I want to see her,” I told Nolly, not in the mood for her antics.
 

“You can fucking stay in the doorway while I go ask her if she wants to see you.”

“Why the fuck would she not want to see me?” I asked, as Nolly walked away, dismissing me.

I gripped the sides of the door in frustration, not needing this right now. I needed Solo; I needed her arms and her laugh and her smile and her warm skin.
 

It almost seemed like hours until Solo popped out of her room, but once she did, my body went numb from the tear stained face that looked at me, but what really was gutting me was the look of total devastation that crossed her face.
 

“Solo,” I went up to her, but she stepped back, as if I was plagued. “Solo, what’s wrong? Are your dads okay?”

“Don’t!” she held up her hand and croaked. Her voice was raspy and her eyes could barely open from the amount of puffiness surrounding them. “Just don’t. Why are you here?”

Absolutely confused, I looked at her and said, “Because I needed to see you.”

“Because you feel guilty for what you did? Did you just have to come here and see how you fucking annihilated me?” she said, as a sob escaped her throat. “Well, here I am. Take pictures, get a good look. You destroyed me, okay?”

What the fuck was going on?
 

“Solo, I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Stop!” she screamed, as she fell to the floor and started crying. Nolly fell to the ground as well and put her arms around Solo, while glaring up at me.
 

“I think you should leave,” Nolly said between clenched teeth.
 

“No, I’m not leaving until I find out what the hell is going on.”

“Don’t play stupid,” Nolly responded, fighting Solo’s fight.
 

“I don’t want to be a total dickhead here, but I don’t want to be having this conversation with you, Nolly, so if you could fucking get lost, I would appreciate it.”
 

My temper was getting the best of me. Everything was piling up, and I was bound to lose my shit at some point.
 

Nolly was about to fire back at me when Solo squeezed her hand and asked her to give us some privacy, which I was grateful for.
 

Nolly helped Solo up and then brushed herself off. She glared at me and said, “Biggest fucking mistake of your life,” and then walked off.
 

She slammed her door shut, and that left Solo and me alone. I longed to hold her, touch her, feel her, but from the look in her eyes, I knew that wasn’t an option.
 

Taking a calming breath, not wanting to scare her, I said, “Can you please tell me what’s going on? Because right now, I feel incredibly lost.”

Pressing her hand against her forehead, she sat on the edge of the couch and said, “Just tell me why you decided to use me.”

“Use you? What are you talking about?”

Another sob escaped Solo, right before she looked up at me and said, “I hate that you’re playing stupid right now; it makes it so much worse, as if you can play me again. Just admit it, Adam, you slept with Zia last night. Scout told me everything, okay? Just fucking own up to it.”

In an instant, my heart stopped beating and the blood in my veins turned black.
 

“Scout told you everything, huh? Well, did you even care to come to me? To ask me what was going on?”

“I tried calling you, multiple times, but you never answered. Ever think about trying to get in touch with me?”

I nodded my head as my lips pursed together. “Awesome, so instead of waiting to hear from me, you decided to listen to someone else and make accusations.”

“Tell me it’s not true,” she shouted at me, now becoming mad.
 

“I don’t even know what you think the fucking truth is, so how could I deny anything?”

She laughed and said, “Perfect. I just fucking told you, and you’re still tap dancing around the truth. Let me lay it out for you, Adam. Yesterday, Zia slipped a key card to her hotel room into your pocket. You two just so happened to disappear at the same time after the party, and Scout never saw you come back to the room, and the next morning you never showed up. Ty had a fantastic story to tell about how Zia was getting fucked up against her hotel room door all last night as well. Sound familiar?”