36. JACK
36
JACK
A s soon as we re-enter the party, Elly gets dragged away by some new fans who can’t wait to talk to her and have pictures taken. She gives me a confused little glance then allows herself to be pulled away into the crowd. I watch her pert arse swaying in that little skirt, her full head of blond curls disappearing into the throng.
Nico appears at my side a moment later. “You like her, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” I sigh, sounding lovesick, even to my ears.
Nico smiles, but then his expression shifts to one of concern, and my stomach plunges.
“What?” I ask.
“Derek called me. Said he needs to talk to you and you haven’t been answering. Something to do with Elly’s social media. Can you call him?”
My gut contracts. Please say nothing is wrong . “Now?”
“Yeah, he said it was urgent.”
I pull my phone from my pocket and excuse myself, heading out of the main bar area so I can make the call where it’s less noisy.
“Derek,” I say when the call connects. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not good.”
“What? What isn’t? I thought the videos were going viral?”
“Yeah, they are. She’s getting loads of attention. A ton of it, but there’s something else. I wanted to call you before Elly sees. I don’t know where the fuck it’s coming from, but it’s going to hit hard. Gaining traction already.”
My heart races, and— fuck —my palms are sweating. I lean against the wall in the narrow corridor to steady myself. “What? Fucking tell me already. How bad is it?”
“There are photos of Elly out there. Circulating. They’re taking them down, because they’re basically porn, but they’re popping up again almost as quick. She’s being tagged in them. They’re everywhere.”
My blood runs cold. “Photos?”
“Yeah. I’ll send you the screenshots. People are making videos and montaging them. I’m blocking the users sharing the pics from her pages, but I can’t keep this back. It’s a fucking tidal wave of internet gossip. People love this shit. And they’re coming up alongside pictures of Amy Moritz, and she has ninety million followers. It's carnage. I’m sending it now.”
My mind scrambles. Surely it’s not the photos? My photos? Could I have accidentally sent them? Pressed some button and shared them? I have to check. Have to know what I’m dealing with here . Maybe I’m panicking for no reason.
Maybe Elly posed for other men. Maybe it’s not my photos. My stomach lurches. Would that be better, or worse?
“What do they look like? The pictures?” I ask Derek, and my panic bleeds down the phone.
He whistles. “Fuck, man. They’re hot. Explicit. She’s on a piano.” He chuckles. “It's on brand, I guess. That’s a definite pro.”
Sweat pearls on my forehead. The back of my neck. My torso. I’m so fucking hot right now, I might expire.
My phone pings as Derek’s message pops up, and my fingers shake as I go to open it.
“Jack.”
My name might as well be a gunshot fired in a library for the shock it gives me. My phone tumbles to the floor with a crack, and I look up to see my mother staring at me. She’s elegant as ever, dripping in jewellery. She stalks towards me like she’s on a mission.
I sink to pick up the phone. The screen is cracked, but I find Derek is still on the line as I put the phone back to my ear. “Derek, I’ve got to go. I’ll come back to you.” I hang up and slide my phone into my pocket, trying to push down my panic about the photos being out in the world.
“You haven’t answered my calls,” Mum says, her voice accusatory.
I force myself to focus on her, but inside I’m dying a slow death. “I’m aware.”
“You can’t ignore me forever.” She paces a little closer. “Elly was good out there. She can really sing.”
“You re-evaluating her?”
Mum snorts dismissively. “It makes her slightly less useless, I suppose.”
Fuck this . I stride towards her, waiting for her to move aside, but she doesn’t. Instead, she remains firmly where she is. Immovable. “You deserve the best, Jack. And Elly isn’t it.” I hear the echo of my own words in my mother’s, and it makes me feel sick. Elly’s comment rings in my head. A mother’s influence is like a virus … “Look at Kate with Nico. Now, he’s a catch.”
“Unfortunately, Nico’s taken,” I deadpan. Mum’s severe expression doesn’t crack.
“I’m thinking about the future. My baby boy, locked down by an unworthy woman.”
“Oh, fuck off. I’m done with this. If you don’t have anything good to say, then keep your mouth shut.” I push past her, heading back into the party.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me, young man.”
I don’t stop.
“You’ll live to regret this,” Mum calls after me, and for some reason this is the thing that hooks me. I swing back to face her.
“Regret what?” I stalk back towards her, eating up the distance between us. “Falling in love? Because I love Elly. She means more to me than anyone else ever has, and if you can’t support that, then I don’t see that we can have a relationship at all. If you want me in your life, you have to accept my choice. And Elly is it. I’m thinking about the future too, and there is no version that doesn’t involve her. You, on the other hand… I’m not sure I see you there.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, I know they’re true. I’d choose Elly over Mum. I’d choose her over everyone. I love Elly in a way I’ve never loved anyone before.
Mum must know it too, because her face crumples into a vision of misery, and she lets out a keening wail. It should move me in some way, but I feel nothing as I watch my mother weep. She glances at me through the tears, and when she realises I’m not reacting, that I’m not going to hug her or put my arm around her, or attempt to make this better in any way, she says, her voice weak and breaking, “How can you speak to me like this? How can you?”
I grit my teeth, holding back the urge to fix this whole scenario. To apologise and keep the peace and add this to the list of other crap I’ve ignored over the years. But this time it’s too much. How can she accuse me of speaking badly to her, after the things she said to Elly? But then again, Mum’s always been one for double standards.
“If you’d rather I didn’t speak at all, I’m okay with that too,” I say.
Mum heaves breaths like she’s having an asthma attack, but the fact that I’m not going to change my mind must be seeping into her awareness, because her odd breathing ceases and she wipes the tears off her face, being careful not to ruin her makeup. How much of that display was even real? She ducks her head without another word, hurrying past me back into the party.
Fury is biting through me, tearing at my organs. If this is the type of shit Kate has dealt with for years, then I’m not sure how Mum and Kate have a functional relationship at all. Maybe they don’t.
I pace back and forth across the narrow corridor, trying to calm myself, willing the anger to fade, but it doesn’t until I remember why I came out here in the first place. The photos. At the recollection, fear sweeps in to take its place, and every thought of Mum vanishes.
I take out my phone and open the message Derek sent, fumbling to bring up the images, and what I see nearly brings me to my knees.
No, no, no.
Elly, draped over the piano. The hair, the cowboy boots, her skin, her legs, her breasts… fucking everything .
No one had those photos except me. No one.
I scroll through them, faster and faster, as if the speed might make them disappear. Might take this all away. But they keep coming, one after the other, more and more of them… every single shot I took.
My legs feel weak, and I slide down the wall, crouching near the floor. I feel sick. Really, truly, violently sick.
What am I supposed to do about this? There are pictures of Elly with her legs spread for me— for me— out there in the world. Guilt burns every inch of my insides like I’ve swallowed a bottle of bleach. My mouth gapes and I cover it with one hand, trying to buckle down the rising panic.
Another message comes through from Derek, containing a link to an existing video.
Derek : This one is gaining traction. Nearly a million views already.
With trepidation, I open the attached link to a video. It’s by User5498, and it’s a slideshow of the photos, blurred in all the appropriate places, but still horribly obvious. An AI voiceover is reeling off comments about Elly. “Elly Carter is a slut. A whore. A toxic disgrace—”
“What’s that?”
My heart crashes so hard against my ribs, it could almost break the bones. Elly . I shut the phone down and look up to see her standing in the doorway, her beautiful face creased with consternation.
“I heard my name. What is it?" she queries.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Nothing.”
“Don’t lie.” She paces towards me and sticks her hand out as though she expects me to put my phone in it. “Show me.”
“It’s just internet crap. Social media. It’s not worth—”
“Why are you out here alone watching it, then? And with that look on your face.”
An uncomfortable tightness rises up my throat. I have no good explanation for it, so I opt for the truth. “Derek sent it.”
“He told you to watch a video describing me as toxic? A disgrace? A slut?” Shit. How long was she standing there watching me listen to this fucking video? “Why? To warn you off? To make sure you knew what you were getting involved with?”
“Fuck, no. Nothing like that. He was worried because it might impact your marketing.”
“Let me see it. If you don’t let me see it right now, I swear—”
“No.”
She comes towards me, and I slide back up the wall to standing. My heart is pounding. There is no good conclusion to this. However this pans out, on some level, it’s my fault.
She grabs at the phone, but I hold it out of reach.
“Jack, what the fuck is going on? Let me see it.”
I shake my head, but Elly is tearing at me, jumping up, and I get the cruelest flash of her trying to reach her guitar that very first night I came back to the flat and she sang for me. I wish I could go back to that moment instead of being here on the precipice of everything going to shit.
I can’t hide this from her forever, but I can damn well try for now. Why did this have to happen tonight, when everything was going so well?
She gives up, knowing she can’t reach my phone and I won’t relent. “I’ll just look it up myself,” she says, tugging her own phone from her pocket.
“No. Don’t do it,” I rasp, my hand covering hers. “Please don’t. Not now.”
She raises worried eyes to mine, and somehow the severity of the situation seems to become truly apparent. She backs away from me, still holding her phone, her fingers moving rapidly over the screen, scrolling, typing. I hold my breath.
Her hands begin to shake as she swipes over the screen again and again. It doesn’t take long for small whimpering noises to slip from her lips, increasing in frequency until, finally, she sucks in air in one enormous gasp. “Oh, God,” she cries, her phone tumbling to the ground before she grasps her stomach with both hands as if she’s going to throw up. She bends over, repeating over and over, “Oh, God. How? How? How ?”
She totters on the spot like she’s drunk, and when I try to steady her, she pushes me away. Her head snaps up. “You said you deleted them. Did you? Did you delete the photos?”
“I…”
“Jack.” Her voice is sharp and desperate, and she’s still bent nearly double. “Did you delete them or not?”
Panic rages through me. I can’t think. Can’t fucking work out how to fix this. Every good thing in my life hinges on the answer to this question, and I don’t have the right fucking one. “No,” I admit, and she wails, tremors running through her body, my heart clenching at the sight. “El, please. I don’t know how this happened. I would never have shared them. Never. You have to believe me.”
I reach out, wanting nothing more than to take her in my arms and ease her distress, but she backs away, waving me off with thrusts of her hands.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” she spits.
“El, please,” I beg, and my voice sounds like it’s breaking.
“Jesus, Jack. The photos. All the photos.” She covers her face. “Oh, my God.”
Her terror spears me, searing pain following in its wake, which I do my best to ignore. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” I promise, even though I don’t know that it is. “We can manage this. We can—”
“We can what? What can we do? Shut down the fucking internet?” Her words tremble in the air, hopeless.
“Shit,” I mutter.
She lets out a pitiful whimper. “I knew it. I knew getting involved with someone like you was a mistake. I knew it.”
Someone like me. What does that mean? “I did not do this… I didn't... I have no idea how they got out.”
“You made me do it.” For a second I think she means I made her pose for the photos and I’m about to object, but she continues. “You made me start the social media crap. You put those videos up. You pressured me to put myself out there. To open myself up to this kind of scrutiny. This is your fault.” Her voice is high and screechy. She doesn’t sound like herself.
“El…” Shit . I can't calm her, can't bring her down this time. “I swear I didn’t share the photos with anyone. And I didn’t make that video.”
She slams her hands against my chest. “I don’t care if you made the fucking video or not. This is your fault. Those pictures are out there because of you. You lied to me. You said you deleted them.” She staggers back and scrapes her nails down her cheeks, leaving angry welts. “You fucking bastard.”
“El, please. Shit.” I don’t know what to do, what to say to stop her spiralling. “I didn’t do this. I swear.”
She continues as though she hasn’t heard me, driven forward on a wave of anger as she fists her hands and thrashes them down at her sides. “I would have stayed at the Marchmont. That was enough for me… but it wasn’t enough for you, was it? You wanted me to be more than I was. You needed it. You needed it so I would be good enough for your fucking mother.”
“Fuck. No.” I rake my hands through my hair. How the fuck did this get so twisted up? “ That’s not what—”
“Yes, it was. I wasn’t good enough. Special enough. Because God knows, Jack Lansen couldn’t possibly date a waitress, could he? Fuck you.” She presses her hands to either side of her head like she means to crush her skull between them. Desperate . “And now… it’s all out there. All of me. All over the fucking internet, proving your mother right.”
“Fuck, El. No. Don’t do this. You have to be bigger than this shit. Do not let that”—I point at her phone, still lying where she dropped it—“ruin this. This is your moment. Fucking seize it. You’re on the cusp of changing your whole life.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want it.” Her eyes glimmer with unshed tears as she bends to pick up her phone and shakes it at me. “I don’t want any of it. I can’t handle it. This feels like shit , and you fucking led me here. I knew… I knew I didn’t want to do this, and you came along trying to fix me, telling me how great I was and turning me into some kind of product—”
“Product?” I cover my face with my hands and groan. “What the fuck are you talking about? No one cares about the photos. Not really. You’re a beautiful, naked woman, and that’s it. No one will care. It’ll be forgotten about tomorrow.”
She puffs a quivering breath, her face shifting into a mask of devastation, and I know I’ve said the wrong thing. “Not by me it won’t. I care. I fucking care,” she spits, her cheeks turning a fiery red. “This is my life. My reputation. Those pictures… those are you and me, Jack. That’s what I gave to you, and I was a fool to do it.”
Guilt rakes through me, tearing my insides into shreds.
“And the videos are horrendous. The things they’re saying about me…” She slams one hand over her heart, still clutching her phone in the other. “I’m deleting my profile. I’m taking it all down.”
“Don’t do that.” I hold my hands out as though I’m trying to stop her jumping off a ledge. “You can’t let them win. You’re this fucking close to breaking out, El. The photos might even help—”
Slam . Her palm hits my cheek with a brutal sting, making my eyes water. Jesus . This shit is out of control.
“Fuck you, Jack. Fuck you. Did you do it? Did you release them as PR? Is this another game for you? Another fucking play?”
Her words sting more than her slap. “God, no. How can you think that?”
“I know what men like you will do for success. I know how hard you push for it. How fucking ruthless you are. You don’t care what it might do to me, do you?” My head is spinning, but Elly’s thoughts seem to have taken a dark path, and I don’t know how to guide her off it. “And you dare to stand there and tell me it’s a good thing—”
“I’m sorry. Fuck, I don’t think that. But it is what it is. It’s done. We have to make the best of it.”
“The best? There is no ‘best’ here.” Her face turns hard. “Everything’s ruined. The damage is done. I’m a slut and the whole world knows it.”
“A million people is not the whole world,” I blurt in a clumsy attempt to ease her concern, but she lets out a sob of a laugh, and I wish I’d contradicted the slut part of her statement instead. I scramble for something to say that will calm her down. If she’d only take a decent breath, she’d see that this really isn’t as disastrous as she thinks it is.
“You pushed me too fucking far and then threw me to the dogs.” She clenches her jaw, but the rest of her body shakes. She turns to walk away, but I’m not going to let her.
I grab her elbow. My heart is racing so hard I can barely think. “That was the best night of my life. Finally being with you… fuck . Those pictures are precious to me. I’m sorry I kept them. I am… so fucking sorry . If I could go back in time, I’d never have taken them. Having you in my life is worth a million pictures, and I’m an idiot not to have known it. But I didn’t share them. I didn’t do it. Tell me you believe me. You know I wouldn’t do that. You know it.”
I want to hold her, to soothe her, but there’s too much resistance. She’ll only push me away.
She tugs her elbow out of my grip. “It doesn’t matter if you did or you didn’t. They were your photos. And now that they’re out there, you dare to say it might be a good thing? Fuck you.” She breathes heavily, then repeats, “Fuck you,” in a tone that makes my stomach feel like it’s been slit open with a knife.
“Damn it, El.” My voice comes out full of pain. “Everything I did was for you. I only wanted to help.”
She’s quiet, her chest rising and falling aggressively with each breath. “Well, thanks. You’ve helped me. You’ve made your fucking mark on my life, Jack Lansen, and I really, really wish I could delete it. I wish I’d never listened to you. I wish I’d never let you in.”
My throat feels clogged. Is she ending this? “What does that mean?”
Her chin trembles as she turns away from me, but I march after her and spin her back to face me. Tears are falling freely down her blotchy cheeks, and the sight of them causes my stomach to cramp and a dull ache to spread through my torso. “What does that mean?” I repeat, my voice low and hoarse.
She swallows as though there’s a great fucking lump in her throat too. “I can’t…” she stammers and breaks off, shaking her curls at me. “I can’t do this. I can’t be who you want me to be.”
The ache spreading through me threatens to send me to my knees. Don’t fucking leave me. I reach for her hand, hooking my fingertips onto hers. “I don’t want you to be anything. I just want you to be you. Exactly as you are.”
She holds my gaze, her eyes watery and bloodshot, and for a second, I think she’s going to relent. Then she snatches her hand from mine and says, “I don’t believe you.” She throws the words up like a barricade, and I know to my core that even if I held her down and yelled in her ear, nothing I said would get through to her.