Chapter 55
fifty-five
. . .
WHITNEY
My phone buzzes with a text, and for a second, I think it might be Connor, but it’s from an unknown number.
There’s no message or explanation, just a link.
It’s probably spam. Another you can make thousands a month working from home or your mortgage may qualify scam. I’m good on the job front, and I don’t have a mortgage, so I tap on it more out of curiosity than anything else.
A video fills my screen.
It’s dark, and in what looks like a bar. The person filming zeroing in on a booth where a guy sits laid back like he’s got no cares in the world.
I’m about to exit the screen when I do a double take. Because it’s not just some guy. It’s Connor.
Except he’s not the Connor I know now.
This version of him is younger, all careless swagger and sharp-edged cockiness, the kind that mistakes recklessness for charm and thinks being the loudest person in the room counts as power. He’s laughing too hard, eyes glassy, body loose with alcohol and bad judgment.
Then I hear his voice, and it hits like a punch.
At first, it’s just the sound of it—familiar and wrong at the same time. He’s slurring. Performing for whoever’s holding the camera, leaning into some uglier version of himself like he knows exactly what kind of man gets rewarded for saying the worst possible thing out loud.
“Rory Shields is a prick who thinks he’s better than everybody,” he slurs into the camera.
My grip tightens around the phone.
“He thinks I’m a joke, but you know what would be really funny?”
His mouth twists into a crooked, drunken smirk, and something in me already knows this is going to hurt before the words even land.
“If I really wanted to mess with him, I’d fuck his sister. That would be funny.” He lifts the whiskey bottle in his hand and takes a swig. “Could have her begging for my cock. Make her fall for me. Rory Shields’ sister in love with the guy he hates. That would be something.”
I go completely still.
For one suspended second, everything in me just stops.
I can’t reconcile that the man in the video is the same man who held me like I was something precious, or washed my hair in a hotel shower, or put my initials on his skin, but the words still land on my oldest bruise.
The one that says I’m easiest to understand in relation to somebody else.
Rory’s sister. An extension. Not just Whitney.
And maybe the reason it hurts this badly is that Connor is the one person I hadn’t realized I’d stopped bracing myself against. The one person I’d started to believe saw me clearly.
Just me.
So, this doesn’t only hurt because of what he said, it hurts because for one sick second, it drags that old fear back into the room and makes me look straight at it.
What if I was wrong?
My throat tightens.
It doesn’t matter that he was drunk. It doesn’t matter that someone was filming him. It doesn’t matter that the Connor in this video feels miles away from the one I know now.
He said it.
Those words came out of his mouth.
And whether he meant them or not, or whether he even remembers saying them, they exist now. They’re real.
And they hit the exact place I thought, with him, I might finally be safe from.
My phone buzzes in my hand. Then again. And again.
I look down like I’ve forgotten I’m holding it.
Texts start stacking over the video.
Winnie.
An unknown number.
Marcy, my agent.
A second later, Vivi’s name lights up the screen, but I let it ring.
The room has gone strangely small around me, like the walls have inched closer without asking permission.
The paused frame of Connor’s face is still there beneath the notifications, younger and drunk and grinning like he has no idea he’s about to say something ugly enough to reach years into the future and hit me right where it hurts.
My phone stops buzzing, then starts again.
Another call. Another text.
I still don’t answer, because I can’t. Not yet.
Because the second I do, this stops being just mine for a minute. It turns into a situation. A thing to handle. A problem with language around it and strategy and whatever version of do not respond right now people always seem to say when life drops a humiliation in your lap.
Right now, I’m not interested in strategy because I’m standing here with my pulse in my throat and that old, awful ache waking up under my skin.
The knock at the door startles me hard enough that I nearly drop my phone.
Three quick raps. Then Connor’s voice, low and tight through the wood.
“Whitney. It’s me.”