Chapter XXIV A Hungry Dog （Brady）
XXIV
A Hungry Dog
(Brady)
The worst damn day of my life is also the loudest.
My phone won’t stop ringing off the hook. There must be at least ten frothing-mad voicemails from Dad I haven’t played.
No need. I know they’ll be nothing but awestruck horror and panicked demands. Plus, cursing me out every way he’s ever learned in his long, demanding life.
Too bad I can’t write it off as his usual bullshit.
He’s right to be fire-breathing pissed.
I’ve ruined his name. My name. The family name. Hell, the Pruitt brand.
After this, we’ll probably need a damn animal mascot, if the PR team doesn’t just advise us to ghost media entirely.
I’m sure Dad’s spitting demands are brutally simple.
Damage control. Break it off with Lena immediately, then get in front of a screen and tell the world how much she disgusts me.
Like I said, brutally simple—except for the part where I throw the woman I love under the goddamned bus, knowing she’s a victim.
Alec Pruitt will never understand that Lena never asked for any of this shit.
Every drama freak eviscerating her online makes me want to break my phone again.
What my father and the rest of the world don’t get is that if I go against her, it validates every flippant jackass who’s ever sent her a nastygram or talked her up like she’s a porn star.
I won’t fucking do that.
I won’t betray her.
And I also won’t stand by without defending my brand and my girl the best way I see fit.
I haven’t bothered looking at a single notification on my phone. For my sanity, they’re muted, even though I know they’re chirping like mad.
Thousands of chattering bees hell bent on making my business theirs because their own lives are so unremarkable.
Maybe because so many of those lives have issues that make our drama look easy, and they just want to feel better about themselves for two seconds by laughing at someone else’s nightmare.
I’m starting to appreciate how time slows to a crawl as your army of haters grows.
Right now, the whole world feels stalled on a knife’s edge while our spectators hold their collective breath, waiting for their next hit of excitement.
It’s a toxic addiction.
When will the Pruitts address their public meltdown? They have to say something.
They’re about to get it.
It’s taken an entire day to outline everything I have to say, plus speaking to all the right people to get the logistics in order.
Now, I’m ready to go live with at least a million viewers hanging on my every word.
Even with the entire universe on the line, there’s only one spectator I care about.
I had Luis tracking her plane from the very second we found out a jet chartered by August Marshall left Reno-Tahoe International.
It’s almost pathetic that I punched the air less than an hour ago when I found out she agreed to see me.
For all I knew, she’d want to hide forever in anger or shame.
Lena must know I’m responsible for this mess. I pushed that asshole so hard, he fired back. I’m the reason he leaked those dirty photos, detonating her life.
Of course, the fact that Harry Jay still had them isn’t my fault. Using them to retaliate also isn’t a choice I had a hand in.
But nobody can deny that I triggered the duel. I pulled my trigger, and he pulled his.
I fired my best shot over all her objections, over her proud demands for me to let her handle this alone.
If she decides to hate me forever, I won’t blame her in the slightest.
If she’s coming to see me, though, I don’t think she’s decided yet.
I still have a chance at a miracle.
Hearing footsteps makes me look up just in time to notice people are moving through my condo, heading for my studio room. Luis enters first, followed by Lena.
For a second, I don’t recognize her.
She looks tired, dark lines under her eyes, shadows formed by a thousand tears. Even her walk doesn’t look right—it’s slower, careful, more subdued.
Her chestnut hair looks frizzed. Not like its usual glorious mess after she comes home from a full day healing animals.
Even so, she’s goddamned radiant.
She can’t help being the most beautiful candle in the room, even when she’s got half the city trying to blow her out.
I’m not the only one who gets an adrenaline jolt when I see her.
Queenie leaps up from beside my desk and goes pounding over, her tail swishing so violently she nearly knocks a lamp off its end table in the corner.
“Hey, pretty girl.” Lena’s voice is subdued as she kneels down and buries her face in Queenie’s black fur for a second. “Oh my goodness, I missed you too!”
Oblivious to the drama, Queenie barks a few times, spinning in circles, before she leads Lena to the sofa facing me across the room.
I glance at Luis as he stops behind the camera tripod, already set up.
“Are we ready?”
“If you’re sure you want to do it here, yes. Live stream in three minutes.”
Not enough time for a proper conversation, but that’s what I planned.
For the first time since she stepped into the room, we lock eyes.
“There’s something I need to say,” I tell her, nodding to Luis and his camera setup.
Through the large window, it’s a peaceful day, the sunset gleaming off the city and the ships on Elliott Bay like a fever dream. The shiny silver and glassy water make such a striking contrast you’d never guess the world is falling down around us.
Any other day, it would be an ideal romantic backdrop for my quiet penthouse.
Today, it’s just the calm before the storm.
“Brady, what do you mean? You’re streaming right now?” Lena stares at me, her eyes wide and questioning.
No time to explain.
I can’t risk scaring her off.
“Everything’s set,” Luis says, checking the equipment one last time. I checked it myself three times before he showed up.
Queenie butts her head under my arm, her tongue flopped out with excitement. It’s going to be anticlimactic as hell if this dog jumps on me while we’re live, but what can you do?
If that’s all that misfires today, I’ll be a lucky man.
“I don’t understand,” Lena hisses, annoyance flashing in her eyes. “Can’t you just tell me what’s going on—”
“It’ll make sense in five minutes. I promise. Thanks for coming,” I say gently, checking my watch. Sixty seconds to go. “Humor me one more time, Lena. It has to be like this if I want it to come out right.”
She clenches her hands, her nails biting her skin as she shakes her head in confusion.
Damn.
I can’t begin to imagine what she’s been through over the past twenty-four hours, what she’s thinking, but there’s no time for doubt.
The live stream is about to start.
With the deepest breath, I face the camera. The tablet on my desk shows there are already over ten thousand people tuned in and waiting, with thousands more joining every second.
The counter on the screen ticks down a few more seconds.
I feel the weight of the world crushing me as I try to ignore the beautiful, hurt Medusa in front of me, promising to turn me to stone if I look at her.
Sorry, Sass.
Not now.
Not yet.
Once she’s heard me out, I’ll let her decide if those big brown eyes are heaven or portals to hell.
“Hey, everybody,” I start, without my usual smile. “Brady here, and today it’s all business. I couldn’t leave you in the dark a minute longer with all the rumors flying, so let me clear this up.
“First, on behalf of my family and Pruitt Ag, I’ve made some heaping mistakes recently.
” Off camera, Luis hides his face. Lena looks pale, motionless.
I force a smile. “That’s all on me and nobody else.
Honestly, it hasn’t been great for my state of mind.
A few hours ago, I even thought about socking a man in the face. ”
Comments trickle in on the tablet. I glance at them, then at Lena, who’s watching with a frown.
Nobody ever said radical honesty was easy.
“Here’s some more truth—I’m almost thirty years old.
Until this summer, I didn’t know I still had a lot of growing up to do.
I know how that sounds, so go ahead and laugh.
But hell, I’ve been stuck in the mud for too long.
I haven’t been growing, not while I’ve been crashing out, haunted by my past. You know my reputation.
That’s why half of you are here, I’m sure—you logged on to see a rich playboy punk get kicked in the nads by karma—but I’m going to disappoint you.
I’m still a walking mess, just not the kind I used to be. ”
Lena’s eyes brighten. I can practically hear her panic through her slow breaths, her shoulders rising and falling. All the ways she’s tensing, silently screaming no, no, no.
“Before, I felt paralyzed about my future,” I confess. “About what everyone expected from me. What they said my destiny had to be. The public eye is never easy, especially when your reputation is ruled by stupid mistakes you made years ago.”
I sigh.
“So, I made a snap decision to spruce up my image. I found a beautiful, smart, outrageously kind woman to get engaged to—to play my temporary fiancée. I set up a master sham.” I hold up my hands, but I’m not looking at the camera anymore.
My eyes are welded to Lena.
The whole truth and nothing but. That’s what I owe them.
My whole soul. That’s what I owe her.
“Stupid doesn’t begin to cover it, and when you mix ego with stupid and desperate, you get me.
I didn’t want to deal with my image worries honestly or get tangled up in an arranged marriage with someone I didn’t love, so I did the next worse thing.
I tried to pull one over on Seattle, my family, and my fans,” I growl, watching Lena every second.
She’s so still she’s barely breathing. “I tried to buy myself time, hoping I’d become a real man rather than a wooden cutout.
To figure out who the hell Brady Pruitt is supposed to be, because I still don’t know.