37. ELLY
37
ELLY
N othing has ever felt this bad. I’m clutching my chest as I hurry away. My entire world is falling apart, and I deserve it. I brought this on myself, falling for someone like Jack Lansen, losing my mind for him, trusting him. And worse than that, I let him influence my career. I let him set me on this upwards trajectory… I gave him control .
He hooked me with hope, making me believe it was possible to be greater than I was, and that maybe I deserved more. So fucking cruel . I thought this time it would be different. I thought Jack would be there for me, to help me…. To save me.
How could I have been so foolish?
I feel sick. Those photos, out in the world, for everyone to see. Me, my body, strewn across the piano. My legs spread… the most intimate parts of me exposed and shared a million times over.
How is this possible?
My mind goes into overdrive, thoughts racing like drunk drivers on a motorway. I can’t get a handle on them until one thought booms louder than all the rest: Jack must have shared the pictures. He said he didn’t, but there’s no other way they could have got out. He’s the only one who had them.
I can’t contain the agony that’s splitting me open. Jack’s cum is still leaking out of me as I push through the party. It strikes me as unbelievably cruel... I’m trying to escape him, and part of him is still inside me…
I hate him for putting me in this situation. How dare he come into my life with his ‘fix this, do that, make this happen’ attitude. He can shove that shit up his perfect arse.
I catch sight of Kate in the crowd, smiling at me, but when she sees me—I must look a mess—her face falls. I push past her. I can’t do this. I can’t talk to her. Not now…
She runs after me, calling my name. “Elly, stop. What’s wrong?”
Her features are creased with concern and seeing her staring at me like that makes my heart break all over again. I try to explain, but the words won’t come. She’ll discover soon enough; everyone will. I need to get out of here.
Kate grips my shoulders. “What is it?”
I start to sob. “I want to go home.”
She puts her arms around me. “I’ll get Jack. He can take you.”
Jack’s name lances through me like a laser beam, and I pull out of her embrace, almost doubling over with the impact. “No. Not Jack.” The tears well up, choking me. “I can’t see him. Not now.”
As if my words have summoned him, I catch sight of him coming through the door I just left. He looks distraught, and seeing him like that, as devastated as I am by our fight, wrenches my guts into a tight knot. I grip Kate’s arm, and she turns to see what I’m looking at before quickly turning back to me, eyes popping wide as she says, “What happened?”
I squeeze her arm tighter. “Let’s go. Please.”
Kate hesitates, and then I remember it’s Nico’s party. She can’t ditch her boyfriend’s party for me. Jack is getting closer to us with every second that passes, and I can’t face him now. This is his fault. It’s all his fault…
I tug away from Kate and run for the exit. Where the fuck am I going to go? I can’t go back to the house. Jack will follow me, and I can’t lock him out this time.
I hurry out onto the street and call Marie.
“Hey,” she answers.
“Can I stay with you?”
There’s a brief silence, and in the background, I hear her boyfriend’s voice. “She’s seen that video, hasn’t she?”
Fuck. Everyone knows.
Marie’s voice cuts through my panic. “I’ll buzz you in. See you soon, babe.”
I spill my heart out to Marie, and she sits and takes it all in without judgement. Her boyfriend, Kevin, goes out for a walk so we can be alone. We sit together on her tiny sofa, and I tell her everything I did with Jack, although she knows most of it already.
“He took those photos?” she interjects at one point. “Shit.”
I tell her that yes, he took them, and yes, I let him, and yes, I’m an idiot and yes, somehow they’re all over the internet now. I tell her that Jack lied about deleting them, but claims he has no idea how they got out.
I don’t know what to believe, and I don’t know what to think. Marie says very little, and although it’s good to talk, it feels like I’m speaking to a wall. She’s never been my first choice of a shoulder to cry on, but she’s here, listening, and I love her anyway. But the pressure to hold it together in front of her, even though inside I feel like I’m dying, is immense.
The doorbell rings, and Marie glances up, then back at me, before she shrugs and gets up to open the door.
“Oh, Elly,” Kate’s plaintive voice fills the room as she stands in the doorway, taking in the sight of me. I’m a tear-stained wreck.
I stand to greet her but immediately cover my face with my hands. Could this get any worse? My heart is galloping, trying to escape the prison that is my ribcage. If I could, I’d run. Kate is my best friend, and I share everything with her… but this … this is next-level humiliation. If she’s here, she must have seen those photos… photos her brother took. She’s seen… everything .
I want to disappear. Barricade myself into a cupboard and hide, but I can’t because she’s here, staring at me.
I drop my hands, and her eyes lock onto mine. Her face crumples as a slideshow of emotion passes over her face, and sadness crawls right up my throat until my vision blurs and my eyelids prick.
She closes the distance between us, throwing her arms around me. “I’m so sorry,” she says. The sympathy destroys my defences, and I burst into tears, and Kate only holds me tighter. “Oh, don’t cry. Please don’t cry. You’re so amazing and wonderful and I wish I could be more like you, posing for pictures like that. You’re free and gorgeous and owning your sexuality and proud of it and I love you. Please don’t be embarrassed. Not in front of me.”
I cry harder, wishing her words were true, but I’m not free and owning my sexuality. I’m dying of shame and hating myself for being an idiot. Maybe Mrs Lansen was right. I’m nothing but a stupid slut.
“You left the party,” I croak when my weeping eases.
“Of course I did.”
“But Nico—”
“He’s fine. I’ll go back, but I couldn’t let you leave without checking you’re okay.” She rubs a hand over my back. “Jack told me what happened.”
The mention of Jack’s name burns like a flame, and I physically recoil. Kate’s arms snap off me and she steps back, eyes wary.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I can’t think about him now. I’m so angry.”
Kate nods. “Okay. That’s okay. We’ll work this out.”
She sounds like Jack, wanting to fix everything. A lump rises in my throat and I worry I’m going to cry again, because how on earth can anyone fix this?
I wake the following morning when a weight drops onto the end of the sofa. I slept here all night, curled up with a blanket draped over me. I open my eyes to see Marie sitting by my feet, a guitar in her lap.
“Kevin’s guitar,” she says, tapping the instrument.
“Okay,” I say, not understanding, my mind still whirring with everything that happened last night. Kate stayed for an hour or so before leaving me to go back to Nico’s party. She tried not to talk about Jack, but inevitably he came up, and Kate staunchly defended his position, claiming he would never have shared the pictures. It still doesn’t answer the question of how it happened, but Kate had no explanation for that one.
“Yours until you get your stuff from Jack,” Marie continues, still tapping the guitar. “You might as well make the most of all this heartache.” She waves at my face, which I didn’t even wash last night. There must be mascara all over me. “Get the creative juices flowing.”
A lump rises up my throat and I swallow around it. “I can’t…”
“Course you can. It’s what any self-respecting musician would do. Use the pain. Plus, I’m not going to sit around comforting you. I don’t have time, for one. And for two… it makes me uncomfortable. I’m not Kate. And three, I agree with Jack so I don’t have any sympathy. You have to let this shit slide right off. If it were up to me, I’d send you right back to him.”
The mention of Jack’s name crushes me. Will I ever be able to hear it without that happening? “You don’t get it.”
“Oh, I do. I get that having naked photos leaked really, really sucks. But you look smoking hot in those pictures.” I cringe, and Marie raises her eyebrows. “Sorry. But I couldn’t not check them out, could I? And maybe Jack’s right, they might actually work in your favour. You don’t know that this is all bad. I also don’t believe he did it deliberately. Accidentally, maybe.”
“He lied. He said he’d deleted them.” I sigh, more to stifle the onset of tears than for any other reason. “If it weren’t for him, none of this would ever have happened.”
Marie has the decency not to deny this, and we sit in silence, letting the comment hang in the air.
“He’s done good stuff too, though, hasn’t he?” Marie argues. “I watched the video of you singing with Amy. I mean, fuck, you sang with one of the world’s biggest music stars. Without Jack, would you have done that?”
The inside of my nose begins to sting. “Yes. I was going to sing at Nico’s anyway. I was always going to do that.”
Marie arches a brow that’s been dipped in scepticism, and I slump under its weight. I only agreed to sing at Nico’s because of Jack. Because I’d overheard him insulting me.
“But you wouldn’t have put it online, would you?” Marie asks. “There would be no way for anyone to identify the singer as you if not for Jack setting up all your social media crap. Now you can be tagged whenever someone films you.”
I grunt in acceptance. That much is true, but it doesn’t feel like a good thing. I’d rather be unknown, unavailable, unsearchable. No hashtags here, thank you very much.
Marie nods like she thinks she’s made a very valid point. “I get that you’re pissed he pushed you outside your comfort zone, but you should be thanking him. There’s no growth in the comfort zone. You could spend your whole life there and convince yourself you’re okay because it doesn’t feel too bad. It’s ‘comfy’.” She twitches her fingers in air quotes. “But really… part of you is dying in the comfort zone. It’s where dreams go to die.”
“I thought that was the Marchmont,” I grumble.
“That’s where they bury the bodies,” she says with a chuckle.
But I can’t share her amusement. I press a hand to my heart, attempting to soothe the ache of all these fucking people telling me how to run my life. “I preferred you last night when you said nothing.” I groan. “This isn’t growth. This is painful. It feels like part of me is dying right now. Maybe you should bury me in the Marchmont.”
Marie lets out an extended breath. “I’m not trying to say this isn’t horrible… being exposed that way sucks, and people slut-shaming you is shitty. It’s always shitty, but publicly, on that scale…” She shakes her body as though she’s trying to rid herself of the contamination. “If we find out how the pictures got leaked, I’ll kill the perpetrator, but I do not believe it was Jack. And there is no way he made videos sharing them all over the internet, did he? He didn’t make slideshows of your photos or videos calling you a slut and whore and all the rest. That was someone else. User 5498, whoever the hell they are. That was the initial video that got over a million hits, wasn’t it? And that had nothing to do with Jack. We can establish that?”
“Can we?”
Marie’s expression morphs into one of disbelief. “Yes! Even I know Jack wouldn’t have done that.”
I rub the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, wishing Marie would fuck off and give up her attempts to make me see reason. Now is not the moment for reason. Now is the moment for tears and rage and excruciating, heartrending pain. “Okay,” I concede. “It’s unlikely he did it.”
“Good. And on the plus side, no one would have bothered making videos with your photos if things weren’t changing for you. You wouldn’t be interesting. No one would care. But you are and they do, and you’ve worked for that. People are paying attention, and you deserve it. This is a good thing.”
I press my fingers into my scalp and groan. “I wanted attention for my music, not for getting indecently naked.”
“How is it different from the stripping?”
My head jerks up. I can’t believe she’s gone there. “Seriously? That was in a tiny club in the backstreets of Newcastle. No one knew who I was. It was completely separate from me , Elly Carter. Whereas the music… that is me . That’s who I am. That’s my soul . It’s personal, and to have these pictures associated with my music… it’s unbearable.”
A muscle contorts along Marie’s jaw. “It sucks. I get it. But you can’t blame Jack—”
Of course I fucking can . “Stop talking about him.”
Marie leans away from me, her lips pressed tightly together, and we sit in silence for a few moments before she speaks again. “I called Kate. She and Nico can have you to stay. I’d let you crash here, but the place is too small. And Kevin—”
“You’re throwing me out?” I sit up, uncurling from my foetal position on the sofa, an intrusive memory shunting to the forefront of my mind of me asking Jack the same thing about my old flat, right before he asked me to move in with him. His gorgeous smile appears in my mind’s eye, bringing with it a pain that feels like Wolverine just raked his talons across my internal organs. Fuck this shit.
Marie raises an eyebrow. “Sorry, babe. It’s all the crying. I can’t do it.”
I blow air out over loose lips, trying to hide the hurt pounding through my veins. “Shitty night sleep anyway. Your sofa sucks.” I fist a hand and thwack the nearest cushion.
“Woah. Easy there.” Marie shifts the guitar onto the sofa next to me, taps her hands on her thighs, and stands. “I’ve got to get to the hospital, and you need to channel all these feelings into the music. You won’t be sorry. Every great artist needs to have their heart broken. The more times the better.”
“You sadist,” I spit.
“Go on.” She nods at the guitar. “Make the most out of this. Write a hit song. And whatever you do, don’t delete your profile. You’re just getting started.” Marie blows me a kiss and adds, “Love you, babe.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her I don’t believe her, when the memories of saying that exact thing to Jack last night swarm at me, stinging every inch of my body. Christ, I can’t do anything, can’t think anything, without him invading my mind.
As Marie leaves, closing the door behind her, the stinging shifts to blistering, scorching agony. It’s burning me up, engulfing me, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get through it. I might die right here on Marie’s sofa. The pain rages through me, splitting me open and I hinge at the hip, my breasts grazing my thighs, hands clawing at my chest and shoulders as I desperately try to contain it.
I wish Jack was here. I wish he could hold me and let me cry and fuck … I hate him. I wouldn’t be crying like this if it weren’t for him and all that pressure he put on me. If it weren’t for the photos and the fact that somehow, somehow , he let them get out into the world.
I weep until my face is soaked with tears, and my sleeves too, from the vain attempts of wiping them away.
Eventually, the incessant flow of sobbing begins to ebb, and it’s then I notice the guitar. All I want to do is snatch up the damn thing and smash it against the wall. But seeing as it’s not mine, I don’t. I pick it up, check the tuning, and begin to riff.
The next few days pass in a blur of tears. I don’t remember ever being this miserable. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m a nervous wreck. I can’t stop thinking about Jack and what happened between us, and the look on his face after we fought. It’s destroying me.
I’ve been living with Nico and Kate. They’re sweet to be around, if a tad sickening, but I’m pretty sure they’re being careful not to rub their happiness in my face. Not that I’d notice because I’m completely preoccupied. Those photos are everywhere. I’ve received so many messages about them from people I haven’t seen for years, people I thought I’d never hear from again, and a string of old boyfriends. Even my parents called, but I didn’t answer. The last thing I need is a reprimand from them.
If they were ashamed of me before, they’ll be furious now. Maybe even blame me for tarnishing their professional reputation. Well, that’s their shit to deal with. Not mine.
But in spite of all the messages, it’s not enough to distract from the pain of losing Jack.
I’ve been going over everything in my mind, trying to make sense of it. How much of this is his fault? He didn’t delete the pictures, but not because he wanted to use them against me, and he didn’t force me to pose for them. He didn’t force me to do anything… But they were private, and he failed to keep them that way. How can I forgive that?
“Can you tell your brother to control himself?” Nico’s voice blasts from the living area just as I’m coming to breakfast. He doesn’t sound angry. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s laughing. “This is madness.”
“This has absolutely nothing to do with me,” Kate says. “Plus, I think they’re beautiful.”
I turn into the kitchen to see the entire place is full of flowers. Every inch of floor space is covered. It’s as though I’ve walked into a field of blooms, and every one of them is a different shade of orange. It’s the most spectacular floral array I’ve ever seen. My throat tightens immediately, as Jack’s voice rings in my head. I fucking hate orange, but I love you . Both Kate and Nico turn to me with strange, guilty expressions on their faces.
“What’s this?” I croak out, speaking around the lump that has formed in my throat as I make my way through the bouquets that litter the floor. The scent of roses and lilies fills the air.
“This is Jack,” Kate says, spreading her arms to encompass all the flowers. “I think you’ve sent him crazy. These are all for you.”
“No one needs this many flowers,” Nico mutters. “Orange, too. It’s like fucking Halloween in here.”
“It’s more like a stunning sunset,” Kate says.
Nico throws her a disapproving glare, gesturing at the flowers. “They can’t stay here.”
I swallow, hoping the lump in my throat will disappear, but it doesn’t. “Oh.”
Nico waits a moment as if to see whether I’m going to say anything else, and when I don’t he adds, “I’m going to call him.”
Tears prick behind my eyes, and Kate, noticing the emotion on my face, turns to Nico, one palm up in a stop sign. “Don’t call him. We can redistribute the flowers.” She steps carefully through the bouquets and puts her arms around me. “You okay?”
I moan a laugh into her shoulder. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I take a shuddering breath. “Sorry. I’m not ready to talk to him.”
She rubs my back. “Sure. Take your time. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”
“I love him,” I murmur. Kate pulls back from me, her hands still on my shoulders, a curious look on her face as though she’s trying to work out how serious I am. Behind her, Nico has gone very still, watching. “I love him,” I repeat. “I’m in love with your arse of a brother. And I hate him. I fucking hate him. And it’s driving me mad because I don’t know which one I feel more strongly.”
Nico’s eyes go wide, and when he moves, he creeps through the flowers as though he’s trying to leave without me noticing he’s there.
“It’s going to be all right,” Kate says. “Nico probably has a hitman he can call.”
Nico straightens, shooting an alarmed look at us. “I’m not knocking off my best friend because he sent flowers.”
Kate laughs. “I meant for User5498 .”
For a second, everything is very quiet. “You’re joking, right?” I say, glancing between her and Nico.
“Of course she’s joking,” Nico says. “I’m in hotels. Not… that shit.” He waves his hand as though the suggestion is insanely farfetched, and although I laugh through my sniffles, part of me wonders if it really is that crazy… what would Nico do if someone had done this to Kate?
Before I can ponder it more, Kate pulls me into a hug again. “Don’t worry. Karma is a bitch. Whoever did this will get what’s coming to them, whatever happens. You spread bad shit in the world, it comes back to bite you. Always. Jack, on the other hand, is only spreading flowers. So… I’m hoping maybe you’ll talk to him?”
I give a brief nod. “When I’m ready, yes. Don’t pressure me.”
She gives me a sad smile. “Okay. Now…” She claps her hands together. “I’m going to see what we can do with all these bouquets.”
I bend down to inspect some roses, inhaling their scent.
“Jack also left these for you with the concierge downstairs,” Nico calls out to me.
I look over to see him dangling the Lamborghini keys from his fingers. Kate inhales a sharp gasp.
“Apparently you forgot your car,” he says, his voice as smooth as silk and his focus all on me, despite the fact that Kate is clearly exploding with questions. “It’s parked in the basement.”
Kate’s mouth goes wide before her hand flaps to cover it. “He bought you that car? The one you tried to buy?”
I scrunch my eyes closed for a second. “I can’t keep it, obviously. I can’t afford the insurance, and driving it terrifies me. I only have to tap it and it shoots off like a bullet.” An idea occurs to me, and I look back at Nico. “You don’t want to buy it, do you?”
He laughs. “That orange thing? God, no.” The amusement slides from his face as a thought occurs to him. “I know someone who would though.”