Chapter Twenty-Seven
Donovan
Not going to lie, I’m not sure Derek even realizes I’m here.
Sure, when Janie showed up at the Red Earth office and gave Hunter the car keys, Derek grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go.
He kept his jacket over my head as well as his while he darted out to the waiting SUV.
He nervously rubbed his fingers along my thigh as Hunter drove to their hotel, where the police held the crowds at bay so we could get inside.
But he hasn’t looked at me since pulling me into his hotel suite, where he’s been pacing for at least ten minutes and looking almost defeated.
Based on their shared looks and silent conversations, Hunter and Janie know exactly what’s wrong, and when Janie set Derek’s phone on the coffee table after he made no moves to take it from her, she looked on the verge of tears.
She tried to talk to Derek multiple times between Red Earth and here, but she lost her nerve every time.
Hunter hasn’t said a word except to alert the hotel staff that Derek is not to be bothered for any reason.
I thought about asking Hunter what was happening before he went out into the hall, but I lost my nerve too.
Whatever this is, it feels bigger than a paparazzi photo.
Derek hasn’t given his phone a second glance, though it keeps buzzing and driving me crazy.
I can’t decide if he would stop me if I reached for it, but something tells me Derek’s phone is even more important to him than the notebook he carried around all week.
I’m not about to invade his privacy like that.
Derek’s phone lights up with a call, and when he doesn’t even look at the name on the screen, I read it out loud to him because I can’t sit in silence for much longer. “Cole Evanson.”
He curses under his breath and pauses to look at the phone, grimacing at the incoming call until it disappears.
He looks almost green, and he’s starting to worry me as he resumes his frenzied pacing.
This can’t just be about getting caught mid make-out by paparazzi.
Yeah, that’s going to cause some problems, but I’m pretty sure Derek has kept a cool head through worse.
“Derek, what’s wrong?” I want to touch him. Grab his arm or take his hand. But I don’t want to make things harder, and until I know what spooked this man, I need to tread carefully. At least he’s responsive…
The phone lights up again, this time with a call from Liam Connolly.
Derek ignores that one too, even though he keeps his pained gaze on the phone.
I wish I knew what would help him. Apparently when I said I could handle his life, that was a bald-faced lie.
I’m completely out of my depth here. “Why aren’t you answering your friends’ calls?
” Curse my independence from my phone! I want to search news outlets or Google Derek’s name, just to see if I might get even a morsel of helpful information, but I don’t even know where my phone is.
Somewhere in my garage apartment. “Did something happen to them while you were gone?”
He shakes his head as his steps slow, and his expression is so hard to read that I don’t know if he’s sick, sad, or angry.
This is driving me nuts! And if I really do want to be with Derek, I need to stop being afraid to push past whatever wall he put up so I can help him. “Derek, you have to tell me what’s going on.”
“Hunter told me the first day on the river that I was trusting too easily.” His words come out rough and strained, and he rubs his hands down his face. Then his hard gaze turns to me as he stops. “It kills me that he was right.”
My stomach twists with discomfort and offense. It wasn’t a direct accusation, but I sure feel his glare. I sit up straight. “Wait, do you think I did something? Are you kidding me?”
He groans, dropping to the couch next to me and resting his elbows on his knees. “No, of course not.”
“If that’s supposed to be sarcasm, you need to work on—”
“I know you wouldn’t do something like this, Donovan.” With slow, exhausted movements, he laces his fingers with mine.
I’m going to lose my mind. “Something like what, Derek?”
As his phone starts buzzing with another call—it’s his brother, Elliot, this time—Derek reaches out and declines the call, then unlocks the phone and opens his browser. With two quick taps, he pulls up a tabloid article with his name in bold letters at the top.
Ignoring the fact that he keeps an open tab with the trashy site, I take his phone to see what he’s showing me. “‘Rehab or Romance,’” I read with a scoff. “They like to sensationalize, don’t they? But this doesn’t come as a shock, Derek. Not with the way you were kiss—”
“Look at the date.”
My stomach twists tighter when I see that the story was posted on Wednesday.
Three days ago. “Oh.” I read through it quickly, but nothing about the ridiculous story feels like it’s enough to completely break the man next to me.
He looks worse off than he did when I told him he would have to row the Big Drops.
“Okay, yeah, this isn’t ideal, but we already knew they were going to figure out who I am sooner or later. ”
Shaking his head, Derek highlights a line higher up. …as our favorite insider source hinted at earlier this week… “Janie,” he croaks, and the admission seems to cause him a lot of pain.
My eyebrows fly high. “What?”
“She’s been feeding Hot Scoop information. I don’t know how long.”
My stomach is in a full knot now, but I try to stay logical. “How do you know for sure? This article isn’t enough to tell you that she was the source. It wasn’t even a correct hint.”
One of his eyebrows lifts as he lets out a tired laugh. “Not at a breaking point?” He waves his free arm over himself. “I’m falling apart.”
“You had a big week,” I argue.
“I’ve also had months of my bodyguard and my assistant secretly venting to each other about how much of a mess I am.”
I…have nothing to argue that point. Not after the conversation I had with Hunter the other day.
“They’re worried about you?” I don’t mean for it to sound like a question, but it does.
I’m not asking if it’s true, but I’m not sure it holds up as an excuse.
“I mean, I don’t blame them for being worried. Your life isn’t a walk in the park.”
He lets out a weak laugh as his eyes roam the extravagant suite around us before returning to me. As if his ability to pay for a nice hotel room negates the pressure of his career and fame.
“You deal with a lot, Derek.”
“I do,” he agrees. “And no, working for me isn’t painless, but I…” Sighing, he runs his hand through his hair. “They never told me how hard it was.”
He has to know how much strain he puts on his employees, right? Derek is too observant not to. Whether he’s accepted his role in Hunter’s stress and Janie’s distress is another story.
He sees something in my face and narrows his eyes. “You knew.”
I hold up a hand before he gets too far with that one. “I talked to Hunter about how much he cares about you. That’s it.”
“He’s been lying to me,” he snaps. “More than anyone, he’s supposed to have my back. If I can’t trust him, how can I ever…” He clenches his jaw and lifts a finger to brush my cheek. “And he messed up today. He left you vulnerable.”
“You make it sound like Hunter is supposed to protect me,” I say with a frown. “That’s not his job.”
Derek’s brows pull low on his forehead. “You were with me. So yeah, keeping you safe is his job.”
Since I’m still holding Derek’s phone, I go to the homepage of the tabloid to see if they’ve posted any updates about my identity.
But it looks like the story from Wednesday was the most recent one involving Derek.
“I guess it’s a good thing they waited. Now they have some juicy footage to add to their reveal. ”
Derek exhales sharply. “How…” He swallows and tries again, his eyes on the screen in my hand instead of on me. “Today didn’t scare you?”
Getting filmed and photographed while enjoying the best kiss of my life isn’t going to make my top ten favorite moments of my life, but I went through way worse as a kid.
He has to know that. Sighing, I lock Derek’s phone and set it back on the coffee table.
Then I curl my legs on the couch beneath me so I can sit facing him and take his hand with both of mine.
My wrist is still wrapped, something Derek is all too aware of as he lifts our hands to press kisses to the knuckles on my injured hand, one at a time.
The gesture is so sweet and romantic that I almost laugh.
Years of avoiding men, and somehow I found myself in a potential relationship with someone who has been labeled as the “swooniest man alive.” I feel like I walked onto a movie set, though I’ve never been on a set this intimately private.
Maybe I would have been less of a brat if I hadn’t had such a big audience.
“First off,” I say, trying to focus, “I’m not going to pretend I didn’t get a little freaked out by being on camera like that. I’ve been hiding for half my life, and that was…a lot.”
Derek grimaces. “I told you that you don’t have to—”
“Second,” I interrupt, “you should know by now that I’m not going to lie to you just to make you feel better. I said I can handle your fame, and I can.” Hopefully. “And third, I think you have bigger problems if your assistant really has been sending content about you to a tabloid.”
His whole body slumps, like he’s too tired to hold himself up anymore, and he falls against the back of the couch with a long exhale.
“I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner,” he says mournfully.
“Hot Scoop started going after my friends around the same time I hired Janie, and they always seemed to know things they shouldn’t.
But they never attacked me, so I never thought…
” He groans and covers his face with his hands.
“Has she been gaslighting me this whole time? I don’t… Why would…”