2
EMERSYN
I held up one hand, fingers spread wide. “Four!” I shouted over the deafening thud of the music. “Four tequila shots!” I motioned throwing back a shot, hoping he’d understand.
The bartender winked and grabbed the tequila bottle, holding it up in question. I nodded enthusiastically and gave him a thumbs-up before holding up both hands, four fingers raised on each. With the bar this busy, I figured I might as well order two rounds to gain a little favor with my flatmates.
Elbowing my way through the crowd, my eyes glued to the shots to avoid spilling a drop, I gently lowered the tray. But just before I reached the table, someone bumped into me, toppling over two of the shot glasses.
I turned and glared at the culprit, but he just held up his hands in a gesture of apology, shrugged, and disappeared into the crowd. Apparently, I was invisible.
Tara grabbed two of the shot glasses, sliding one to Cody while holding the other glass high. Brady and Brittney did the same before clinking their glasses and throwing them back. I watched, fondly recalling the warm burn of alcohol sliding down my throat. Brady caught me eyeing the remaining shots and pushed one my way, brow raised. I shook my head, reminding him I didn’t drink, not anymore, then closed my eyes, letting the beat of the music fill my head and distract me from the urge.
Around me, my flatmates attempted to continue their conversation, their voices nearly hoarse from yelling. Tara and Cody were arguing. They had one of those on-again, off-again relationships. Technically, Cody didn’t live with us, even if it felt like he did. He stayed almost every night, but it wasn’t unusual for me to hear their raised voices through the walls of our small house, only to hear different sounds when they’d make up.
Brittney and Brady were the complete opposite. They never fought or argued, and they were so sweet it was almost sickening.
I was the fifth wheel—the one who tagged along on nights like this because they insisted, not because I wanted to be here. The one no one noticed until I opened my mouth. My voice was the only way I got attention, whether spoken or written.
“Wanna dance?” Tara threw out to the group.
Brittney sat sideways, her legs draped over Brady's. They ignored Tara's question, too engrossed in whispering sweet nothings to each other.
Tara raised a questioning brow my way.
“Why not?” I shrugged. Dancing was one way to break the monotony of the drunken antics of the patrons.
Grabbing Tara’s outstretched hand, I kicked off my shoes and let her drag me toward the dance floor. I didn’t care if my shoes got lost among the mass of bodies. They were just cheap knockoffs anyway, like everything I owned.
The club had recently reopened after renovations. They’d embraced a neon theme, with strobe lights flashing everywhere. Anyone with a sensitivity to light wouldn’t last two seconds here. The music was overly loud. The drinks were overly expensive—even the ones without alcohol—and the lights were overly annoying. But other than that, it was just your typical club, nothing new or unique.
“You like the place so far?” Tara yelled as she lifted her arms into the air, her body writhing sensually beneath them.
I shrugged. “It’s okay. Nothing special.”
A smile twisted across her face, and she threw her head back in laughter just as I felt the heat of someone behind me. Hands slid to my waist, and the smell of beer breath washed over me as some guy leaned close to whisper-yell in my ear, “Hey baby, wanna sit on my lap and we’ll talk about the first thing that pops up?” he slurred.
I jerked away, almost snarling at him.
“Bitch,” he grunted as he stumbled off.
Tara leaned forward to yell in my ear. “He’s not wrong, you know.”
I lifted a brow. “Did you hear that line?” I groaned. “And besides, you calling me a bitch is the pot calling the kettle black, is it not?”
“Who, me?” She placed a hand on her chest, her brightly painted nails glimmering in the flashing lights, and batted her eyelashes. “I’m positively darling.”
“Sure you are,” I laughed. “Besides, you know I’m not looking for anyone,” I shouted back. “Especially someone like that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She rolled her eyes again.
“I’m serious. I think I need to concentrate on being single for now.”
“You’ve been single for ages!” she yelled. “Just fuck someone already.”
After the disaster of my last relationship, the last thing I wanted was to dive into another one. I also didn’t want a casual fling, a one-night stand, or anything resembling intimacy. Tara, however, had trouble believing me.
Without the blissful numbing of alcohol flowing through my veins, the appeal of dancing began to wane. The music pulsed a little less, and the strobing lights became even more annoying. I waved to catch Tara’s attention and motioned that I was heading back to the table. She grinned, gave me a thumbs-up, and then slid her gaze behind me, smiling seductively as a guy pushed his way through the crowd, his eyes fixed on Tara.
“Cody is right there!” I yelled.
“And he’s being a dick. Bad boys don’t get rewards.” She fluttered her lashes as the guy slid his hands around her waist then stretched to her tiptoes to loop her arms around his neck. I shook my head and looked back to see Cody’s jaw tighten, but he didn’t move. He didn’t try to stop her; he just sat there glaring at them. I’d never understood their relationship. It was as though they thrived on drama.
The floor was sticky beneath my feet, but I really didn’t care. We’d been here for two long hours, alternating between dancing and talking—or at least attempting to talk over the music. That was long enough for me to not care that my hair was slicked to my head with sweat or that my dress had inched its way so far up my thighs it was barely a dress anymore.
After retrieving my shoes, I flopped back down at the table. Cody’s gaze was still fixed hard on Tara dancing with the stranger, while Brittney and Brady remained wrapped up in each other. I glanced around the room, hoping for some sort of drama to unfold or a sordid conversation to overhear, but the club seemed unusually tame. A girl was crying at the entrance to the bathroom, her blue eyeshadow applied so thickly that I wondered how it wasn’t falling from her lids like some sort of glittery dandruff. Part of me considered striking up a conversation with her to see what gossip she could share when my attention was stolen by the person who’d just walked in.
Even though he had no idea who I was, I knew exactly who he was: Gable Thornton. The youngest of the Thornton brothers. One of the objects of my obsession. It felt as though everyone in the bar swiveled around and held a collective breath—not that he noticed. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, hands shoved in his pockets, as a woman who looked like a supermodel dragged him through the crowd. She was tall, unnaturally thin, with lips that formed an instinctive pout.
Typical.
He was insanely good-looking, cut like a fucking god, and he was rich. Of course, he was accompanied by a supermodel look-alike. My heart skipped a beat with the excitement of it all. A Thornton. A real live Thornton in the flesh. I hated him, hated everything he stood for. If even I was obsessed with him.
Absently, I wrapped my fingers around a glass of water sitting on the table and brought it to my lips, sipping slowly while my eyes remained glued to Gable Thornton.
I’d become infatuated with the lives of the Thornton brothers ever since I first came across them. It started innocently enough; after all, it was my job. I was a reporter—sort of. Maybe ‘writer’ would be a better description, at least according to other people. I worked for myself, and without the distraction of alcohol in my life, attending clubs and parties had become far less appealing. So, I spent most of my time merely observing people. You could learn a lot just by watching, and even more by asking a few well-timed questions of highly intoxicated people. So, I started a website detailing the lives and stories of our city’s rich and famous local celebrities (if you could call them that). The wealthy, dumb and pretty ones. It was mainly to keep myself entertained, but I soon gained a following. I wrote about their antics at parties. I told stories that were drunkenly spilled at local nightclubs and bars, and I exposed a lot of people. But the Thorntons were my favorite. My readers from all over the world followed the lives of the people I posted about. Some of them became overly invested. Consumed, even.
I understood the feeling.
The Thornton family was well-known. It was my ex who first made me aware of them; he hated them with a passion and insisted everything had been handed to them on a silver platter.
They started in real estate and eventually moved into construction and development. Wealthy. Beautiful. Assholes. And drama seemed to follow them everywhere. They were my perfect victims.
Despite knowing about them for years, the first article I posted was almost a year ago, just after the head of the family, Mr Hamish Thornton, got so drunk he crashed his car through the front windows of his brand-new casino.
During the grand opening.
In front of witnesses.
Including me.
I was with my father at the time, waiting in the basement. Boredom having gotten the better of me, I wandered up to the foyer and was there to watch the excitement unfold.
That was when I got my first real taste of the Thornton family's magic. The crash hit the local news stations. People relished seeing the privileged make fools of themselves.
But I couldn’t care less about the drunken antics of the father, even though I wrote about it and took numerous pictures of his vehicle impaled in the front entrance. It was what had happened before that caught my attention and led to the article that drove more traffic to my website than ever before.
I’d been filling in time by watching others drink when I noticed a woman sitting at the bar. She was attractive, with an abundance of brunette hair and big doe-like eyes which, at that point, were blinking furiously to hold back tears. She downed the liquid in her glass quickly and asked for another. The bartender left the bottle for her, which piqued my interest.
Then Gable Thornton came over, although I didn’t know who he was at the time. All I saw was that he was young, probably around my age. Younger than the woman by a good decade. And he was gorgeous. I mean fucking gorgeous. Blond hair. A smile that made me melt even though it wasn’t directed at me, and eyes that twinkled with mischief as he tried to make the woman smile.
And she did.
He tried to hold her hand, but she pulled away. That’s when I pulled out my phone and pretended to scroll when really I was covertly taking pictures.
Don’t blame me. Blame the job. I was a reporter—sort of.
When Gable tried to kiss the woman, another man appeared out of nowhere and pulled him off her. And that’s when shit went down.
It was all a blur as the two men started fighting. Curse words were thrown. Fists flew. Blood seeped from faces. And the woman screamed at them both to stop.
At that point, I’d abandoned my cover and started openly taking photos, capturing the action blow by blow. They even made the news. They stole them from my website, without crediting me, might I add.
After that night, I began stalking them on social media. I discovered who the woman was and talked to people who claimed to know the family. I conducted all the research I could and posted the story.
Then I didn’t think about it again.
But it blew up. People were fascinated with the story of the woman who had captured the hearts of not one, but two of the Thornton men. Of course, I speculated a bit in the article; the best ones were always filled with speculation. I was careful never to claim anything as truth, only using quotes from unidentified sources who said they knew the family or the woman involved.
Was there a part of me that felt guilty? Sure. I’d thrown this woman into the unwanted spotlight. But the page views and the thrill I got from people suddenly contacting me, wanting to advertise on my site, dulled that guilt enough for me to continue.
I updated my website and came up with a new name: ‘Hearsay.’ The logo featured bright red lips, with the letters forming the teeth. The colors and imagery were bold, loud, and confident—everything I was not. I created a faux online persona who thrived on drama and gossip, gathering secrets to spill them. A regular Dan Humphrey or Lady Whistledown, if you will.
A year later, I was still making money off them. I was in the middle of writing an article about Tyler and Lauren’s wedding, which had occurred only a few days earlier. I just needed the right angle. Of course, I would remind my readers that Lauren had originally dated Gable before she dated Tyler, the brother who was now standing forlornly at the bar across from me, hands shoved in his pockets, swaying slightly and staring at the floor. But I needed more. More drama. More angst. More trouble.
I didn’t generate a lot of money from my website, which is why I was supplementing my income by telemarketing. But I was getting there. Slowly. One day, I’d come across a story that would be my big break. People would start to take me seriously, and then who knew how far I’d go? I’d always dreamed of being a writer; I just never thought I’d essentially become a gossip columnist. I was both proud and ashamed of my writing, but at least I had the freedom to do as I pleased—mostly.
Despite knowing intimate details of the Thorntons’ lives, I’d never actually spoken to any of them. Maybe this was my chance.
Sliding my phone out from where it was stuffed in my bra, I took a few discreet photos, deliberately ensuring Gable was in the frame while pretending to capture the décor.
Hoisting myself from the table, I readied myself to push through the crowd and attempt to meet the subject of my hate-filled fascination, but some idiot—not looking where she was going—walked straight into me, spilling her drink down the front of my dress. It just wasn’t my night. I flicked the liquid off my hands before I felt the urge to lick them.
“Emmy?” A hand wrapped around my wrist as slightly glazed eyes widened. “Oh my god! Emmy, it is you!”
I looked at the girl, confused. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her. It happened a lot. I went out, made friends, stole their gossip, and then promptly forgot about them. I just assumed they always forgot about me too. It was an easy thing to do. I was forgettable.
“Lucy,” she said when my expression didn’t register the correct amount of recognition. “Lucy Blaire. Conrad’s cousin?” she prompted.
“Oh!” I feigned recollection and wrapped her in a hug, even though my brain was glitching and I couldn’t remember her at all. “How are you?”
“I’m great!” she replied too enthusiastically. Her face twisted into a grimace as she leaned closer. “I’m so sorry to hear about you and Conrad. You guys made such a cute couple.”
I forced a smile and shrugged. “Shit happens.” I said it nonchalantly, as if I didn’t care, and hoped she didn’t notice the lump in my throat as I swallowed. It wasn’t from missing him or what we had. I didn’t want him back. But the mere memory of who I was back then, and what he turned me into, brought a discomfort like no other.
She gave me a smile of pity before leaning in even closer to whisper in my ear. “Conrad told me about your issues.” She pouted in what she probably thought was a sympathetic manner, her eyes unconsciously drifting to the rows of bottles stacked above the bar. “Are you doing okay now, sweetie?”
I resisted the cold annoyance that swept over me. “Look, I’m actually here with someone and—”
Her dilated pupils grew larger. “Oh my god, are you on a date? Am I like totally ruining it?” She glanced around as if my mystery date would suddenly appear, then wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled me in for an a too warm hug. “It was so good to see you again, Emmy. We simply must catch up soon.”
I mimicked her exaggerated grin. “I’d love that,” I lied.
Turning around, I searched for Gable Thornton in the crowd, but he was gone.
I’d missed my chance.