His Big Offer(14)

I slip on my underwear and bra before I go to the bathroom because I  feel weird walking around Chance's apartment entirely naked. I spend  some time splashing water on my face before I decide to grow a pair and  just tell Alice the truth. But when I click on my phone, the stream of  notifications on my home screen is longer than I've seen it in forever.  The top ones are from Alice.



Caroline, where are you?



Have you seen this?



What on earth is going on?



I don't know where you are but you need to look at the Heart Makers site RIGHT NOW.



What the hell? I open up my web browser and navigate to the site, and I  almost drop my phone. The site is covered in pictures of me. Only  they're not really pictures of me. My face-from the Heart Makers site  pictures and my blog and some I don't even remember where-photoshopped  onto porn. In the photos ‘I'm' being fucked my multiple men at once.  Some are pictures of just my face, with cartoon dicks drawn on it like  they're coming all over me. Some have my eyes scratched out with the  words ‘Cunt,' and ‘Bitch' scrawled over my mouth.

I feel like my entire body has gone numb, and dread sinks through me.  Who could have done this? The answer is already in my mind. It is  probably the anonymous poster from this morning, the one who called me a  fake bitch. I should have listened to my instincts when I felt  something was oddly personal about it. Fuck, what am I going to do?

I open my email, and it's filled with panicked emails from Heart Makers  PR people, and friends asking what the hell is going on. But there's one  that stands out: with the subject line ‘Hey Bitch.' I have to hold my  breath as I open it.



Dear Caroline,



By now you've seen what I can do. This is what you get for being a  selfish cunt. Delete Rock Bottom Caroline, and quit that ridiculous job  you have thinking you can tell people how to date, or these pictures  will go national. Do it by Monday, or you'll be viral-I guarantee it.



I barely make it to the toilet in time before I'm dry heaving into it.  Oh God. What do I do? This is the other shoe dropping. I knew things  couldn't be perfect, but this? Chance is going to have to fire me. He'll  never be able to keep me on staff after I managed to turn his  matchmaking company into a porn site. And he doesn't even know yet. I  have to tell him.

I go back into the bedroom, and to my horror he's awake, and looking at  his phone. He's pulled on sweatpants and is sitting on the bed, frowning  at the screen.

"Chance," I say.

"I know." He doesn't sound mad, but he doesn't sound … anything. "Do you know who did this?"

I shake my head. "My best guess is the guy who commented this morning. I don't know who he is."

His phone vibrates in his hand. "It's the chairman of my board." He  swipes the phone call on. "Hi, John. Yes, I've seen it." He listens for a  minute and I can hear the frantic voices on the other end of the line.

"Chance," I say, "Can you call them back? I want to talk to you-"

He holds up a hand, telling me to wait, and he stands and goes to the  window, still listening to the phone. My stomach drops to my feet. He is  mad. Every line in his body is taut, and he won't even look at me.  They're going to tell him to fire me, that he should never have hired me  in the first place, and that it's a PR disaster. All of those things  are true, and I don't think I have the strength to hear them in the same  place as I just had the most amazing night of my life.

Chance's back is still turned, and I jump into my clothes, slipping out  of the room before he can notice. I don't want to see him angry, and I  don't want to see the regret and disappointment on his face when he  realizes that I just wrecked everything.                       
       
           



       

I stop for a second in the hall outside his apartment. I just wrecked  everything. I can't stop the tears that start to fall as the elevators  doors close.



When I wake up I'm surrounded by tissues. I think I've used a whole box  now. Alice was out of her mind with worry when I came home a crying  mess, and sat with me while I cried and told her everything. She was at  once shocked and unsurprised when I told her about me and Chance, and  she was so great as I pretty much ruined the shirt she was wearing by  crying on it. Even Noodle was sweet, laying his head in my lap and  licking my hand.

Now my head hurts, and I feel swollen from all the crying that I did.  But all I want to do is cry more. I had a perfect week, and then it all  fell to pieces. Never trust something that looks too good to be true. It  always is too good to be true. Always.

My phone was buzzing when I woke, with Chance's name on the screen. I  can't talk to him yet. Even if it's inevitable, I need to hang onto the  dream of what I had a little while longer before it's final. It's late  in the morning-I slept for longer than I have in a while. I think Alice  is still asleep since it's Saturday and she stayed up late with me.

I pull my laptop off the coffee table and put it on my lap. I guess I  should get to work on taking down the blog. As bad as the pictures are, I  don't want naked photos of me to be the top news story in the country.  If this guy is good enough to do everything he's done so far, I'd be  stupid to call his bluff.

Checking the Heart Makers site quickly, I see that they've taken down  all the photos. Thankfully. I flip to Rock Bottom Caroline, glancing  through the posts and reading some of my favorites. The thought of  leaving the blog behind doesn't make me as sad as I thought it would,  but deleting it because I'm being blackmailed leaves a bad taste in my  mouth.

I get to the more recent posts, and I go completely still. I'd  practically blocked this guy from my memory, the fucking asshole that  thought he could force me into having sex because he bought me  dinner-the whole reason I quit dating for months. He wouldn't have known  that I had a blog talking about my dates anonymously. But if Heart  Makers pushed my blog posts out to the dating sites, he would have seen  my picture, and then looked at the blog, and … oh God. It has to be him.

I didn't know that he was a hacker or that he had the ability to do  something like this. And even though I didn't give him my address, he  knows what street I live on. If he's a hacker, it won't be hard for him  to figure out my real address, and if I don't delete the blog …

There's a knock at the door and I jump. Noodle barks in response. It  can't be him, right? That's too coincidental, and it's not Monday yet.  Even so, I grab the baseball bat Alice keeps behind the door and peak  through the hole. My body relaxes immediately because it's not that  guy-who's name I barely remember-it's Chance. How the hell? I lean  against the door. I filled out paperwork for the company. Of course he  has my address.

I unlock the chain and let the door swing open. "What are you doing here?"

He glances at the bat in my hand. "You disappeared last night and you weren't answering your phone. I was worried … "

We stand there looking at each other for second before he asks, "Is it  all right if I come in or am I going to get beaten with the bat."

I put the bat down again, "Yeah, sorry. I'm just … on edge."

"Why? What's going on?"

I shake my head, and he catches me by the shoulders. "You know more about what happened than you're telling me, Caroline."

I didn't really think that I had any more tears to shed, but they spring  to my eyes, and I can't stop crying again. I tell him everything. About  the asshole and punching him in the face and my very small revenge on  him by writing about him on the blog, and Chance nods because he'd read  that post too. I tell him about the email and the ultimatum and then I'm  telling him I'm sorry because it's all my fault.

We're on the couch now, and Chance has me cradled in his arms. "Hold up a second," he says. "None of this is your fault."                       
       
           



       

"Of course it is," I say. "I didn't have to write about him. I didn't  have to have a blog at all. I could have taken it down when I got  hired-"

Chance's voice is stern. "That asshole got what was coming to him. You  had every right to tell people what happened, and it's important that  you do. The fact that this man is so insecure and so angry that someone  wouldn't have sex with him, that he'd stoop to this level has absolutely  nothing to do with you."

I lean my head on his shoulder. "Alice spent all last night telling me  that, but it still feels that way. And I still have to do what he says  or else everyone in the world is going to have those pictures."

Chance kisses me softly. "Of course you don't."