Well, if they thought that, they had another thing coming. I could see their intentions from a mile away. Both of them were useless, irresponsible, awful people.
“June, wait!” I walked faster, intent on avoiding everything and everyone, until a hand clasped my shoulder. I spun away from it, not caring who it belonged to. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to listen to anyone.
“This was a huge mistake,” Devon said. He was the one who caught up to me first. “Kelly blindsided us, June. We had no idea this was going to happen. This wasn’t fair to you at all. Not at all.”
“That rotten bitch.” Chaz jogged up, huffing. “What a curveball.”
I punched him square in the jaw.
“What the fuck!” the agent exclaimed. “What was that for? We’re on the same side of this! It was a horrible interview.”
“She didn’t ask a single one of your questions,” I said. “And she knew too much about me.”
“Kelly Kane’s a lot of things, but unprepared isn’t one of them,” Chaz said, rubbing his jaw. “She did her homework on you. Your parents’ names—those are public record. Once she chose the angle on her interview with you, all she had to do was make a few phone calls.”
“Were those really your parents?” Devon asked quietly.
“I don’t fucking know!” I cried. “I’ve never seen my parents! Nana was all I needed.”
Chaz’s cringe told me I was getting shrill, but I didn’t care. This was too much for a person to cope with. I refused to deal with it.
“Let’s just go home and regroup,” Devon said, keeping his voice calm for my benefit. “We’ll talk about a plan of action there after everyone’s had a chance to cool down and process everything.”
“There aren’t going to be anymore plans of action,” I informed him. “I think America’s going to get to know me pretty well after that. And I’m not planning on giving the people any other details.”
“You might want to hide away, but that’s not the right attitude to have,” Chaz said, still eyeing me balefully for the sucker punch. I didn’t care. He fucking deserved it for arranging the entire ordeal.
“I don’t trust you at all anymore,” I said. “You can go right to hell.”
“Chaz is right, June, please listen to him,” Devon urged. “If you hide away now, that’s all people will talk about—the fact that you had a meltdown on live television and couldn’t even handle going out in public.”
“I am done worrying about what people think. If you are so concerned about your image, if you’re so worried about what being associated with me will cost you, then I’ll be happy to get on a plane to Dallas right this fucking minute.”
I loved Devon. I was in love with him. But I was also shaken to my very core. I’d been forced into this interview because he and Chaz thought it was a good idea, but the worst possible thing that could happen had happened. All I wanted to do was crawl in a hole and stay there, and if I had to go all the way to Dallas to make that happen, that was just going to be my new reality.
“I don’t want you to go back to Dallas,” Devon said. “I want you to stay here with me. I want you to be happy.”
“You want me to be happy?” I put my hands on my hips, studying him through the tears that hadn’t stopped falling since I fled the studio.
“Yes. That’s all I want. For you to be happy.” He looked so anxious, but I didn’t have a shred of pity for him.
“Then take me home. Now.”
Devon only hesitated a moment before nodding. “Chaz, get the car.”
We left the studio lot in a squeal of rubber, the cameras still filming our escape.
Chapter 6
“June, you can’t stay in here forever.” Devon was studying me, his hands on his hips, his mouth turned downward in disapproval.
“The hell I can’t,” I countered. I was wrapped in an oversized terrycloth robe, tucked neatly into bed, a pile of books beside me. I wished it could’ve been fat, glossy fashion magazines, but it was too risky. My story had gone viral after the interview, and I could enjoy loads of unsolicited features on myself in the strangest of places. There were speculative pieces about my intentions with Devon, about collusion with my “long-lost parents” to get sympathy from people, even one story that decided I’d mercy-killed Nana to spare her the misery of further health declines. No, I was going to stick to classic literature for now. It was a good distraction, and it reminded me of the required English classes that I had had to take in college.