32. Chapter 31
Chapter 31
Kaitlyn
I’ve done nothing but cry and sleep the last forty-eight hours. You’d think I’d be wired with all that rest, but no. I’m exhausted.
If our phones aren’t ringing, someone is shouting from the street outside. Griffin has left a standing order with security downstairs that no one is allowed up to his floor, period, unless they call up for explicit permission first.
And if I’m not sleeping or crying, I’m scrolling through news articles and social media posts. It makes me sick, but it’s like I have to know what’s being said about me and about my family. It’s the only way I’ll be able to shield them from this vicious assault.
Griffin hasn’t stopped pacing. I’ve never seen him so angry, and on top of that, we’ve barely touched since he ended his conversation with my father and he held me in his arms. Does he think what we have is tainted now the entire universe has seen us together?
Finally, I’ve had enough. I let my phone flip out of my hand face down on the rug. As the phone hits the floor, Marilyn jumps up into my lap on the soft blanket I’ve been wrapped in. This fabric is what I’ve tried to use to soothe myself. Even the first night Griffin and I met, and fought, I always felt like I knew him somehow. That seems to have evaporated and I feel like when the darkness comes, we’re strangers.
I’m staring at nothing, stroking Marilyn’s fur when he plops down on the couch next to me. I don’t have to look at him to know he’s concentrating on the ceiling or the blank television screen in front of us. He’s looking anywhere but at me.
“What could I make for dinner that you’d eat?” he asks.
His words are compassionate, but his tone is my issue. “I don’t know.”
He sighs. “I’m really trying here, Kaitlyn.”
“Are you? Are you really?”
“What is that supposed to mean? You’re existing on coffee and toast. I just want to see you enjoy something, even just a little.”
“Maybe if I didn’t feel like I was in this alone…”
“Don’t do that,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. His usual stubble has begun trending toward a proper beard.
“Don’t do what? Tell you how I’m feeling?”
“I wish you would, Kaitlyn, because for the last two days since all of this bullshit started, I don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling besides sadness and hurt.” He places his hand on his chest. “I don’t know how to make you feel better. This is my fucking fault and it’s killing me.”
“I—” My thought is interrupted by my phone ringing on the floor. “Fucking great.” I groan and bend forward to grab it, seeing my sister’s face smiling on the screen, so I answer. “Hi, Gilly.” Thank God it’s a call from her and not the one million and twentieth reporter.
“Put me on speakerphone,” she demands and I comply instantly. She used the mom tone.
“Okay… Griffin and I are both here.”
He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “Hello, Gillian.”
“Look,” my sister starts. “I’m not dim enough to think that you can snap your fingers and make this go away, but there are reporters and cameras crawling all over my street, Griffin. They are trying to get onto my father’s property. My husband has been dealing with this every time he walks out the door. Not only has my sister been violated in the worst possible way, but now our family is being harassed. I don’t care what you have to do… just do it.”
“Wait. Wait. Hold on. I don’t want this for you. I don’t want this for any of you. Has anyone approached you?”
“Do you think Jason would have let them live? His partner, Nathan, has been a saint and he’s been able to get private security going here in Boston. It’s harder on the farm. The local police can’t just place people on the whole property line.”
“Fuck. I’ll have my security team get in contact with Jason and see what they can do. Whatever resources are needed, I’ll provide them.”
“How the hell did you let it get this far? I trusted you with her. How did you fail like this?” she screams.
“Gilly. Enough. This is not his fault. Blame the press. Don’t blame him.”
I feel Griffin slide his hand over and grip my leg. He flexes his grip over and over again. Each pulse of his finger sends a wave of comfort through me, even though this situation is anything but.
“I don’t want Joseph’s face plastered next to…the others.”
“That won’t happen. I promise.”
“I hope that promise means more than the others you’ve made. Kaitlyn, please take me off speaker now.”
I glance over at Griffin and I can see the pain and embarrassment in his eyes. It hurts me just as much as all of this other bullshit.
I press the button on my phone to take her off speaker and press it to my ear. “Gilly…”
“Are you all right?”
“Honestly? No, not really.”
At this point, Griffin stands and begins his pacing again.
“You should come home. You don’t need to be there. It’s bad here, yes, but I can only imagine the severity with it right in his backyard.”
The thought of leaving Griffin makes me unhealthily upset and nervous. “No. No. I don’t want to do that. I want to be here with him.”
“Well, you can’t just hide in an apartment forever, Pixie.”
“What else can I do? How do I take the power back?”
“If I take my sister hat off and look at it objectively, which is really hard to do right now, I’d say, you both didn’t do anything wrong. Technically, you were outside, yes, but you were on a private balcony. You had the appearance of privacy. You were owed that. The more you hide, the more people can say you were ashamed to be together. If you’re so in love, show that. If you’re truly a couple, let them deny it. I do stand by my opinion you should be here and not there.”
I look over at Griffin. “Let us have time to talk about it. I don’t want to make a decision off of anyone else’s feelings but ours.”
Gillian sighs so close to a whimper. “I wish I could hug you.”
“You just did,” I whisper.
“I love you, Pixie. Call me if you need me. Day or night.”
“I love you too.”
I end the call and toss my phone back to the rug, opting to resist the urge to doom scroll.
“She’s really angry with me,” Griffin says.
“She is.” I nod.
“What was it you told her you would talk to me about?” He stops pacing and stands right in front of me.
“She thinks we can take our power back by doing the opposite of hiding. We should go out there and show everyone what we have is real.” I lean my head back on the sofa and stare up at the ceiling.
“Is that something you want?”
“I’m scared, but… she’s right. We can’t win by staying hidden.”
“It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about your safety and your mental health.” I can feel him stepping closer to me, then around me, until he’s behind the sofa, upside down in my view, looking at me. “I don’t know if I want to risk either of those things.”
“Do you still love me?” I ask him.
“Why would you ask me that? It’s the only thing I know to be true right now.”
“Then we need to show all of those assholes behind the cameras and keyboards this isn’t breaking me or us.”
I’ve never been more nervous to leave the safety of an apartment before. There’s a semblance of safety in these walls, and leaving just invites the chaos in.
But Gillian is right. We can’t hide. We have to show them our love is real, no matter what vitriol they spew at us. We’re keeping it simple at first. A quick trip out in his car for dinner then we will come back home. Easy and a good starting point.
It feels good to get dressed up tonight, even if it’s just in a little sundress and denim jacket. I even put on a little makeup to hide the dark circles and obvious lack of rest.
“Are you ready for this?” Griffin asks me as we approach his front door.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“If you need to leave and can’t say it, grab my pinky finger and tug. No one will know and we’ll go straightaway.”
“Will you do the same?” I ask.
“Of course. I have reservations at one of my favorite local spots. We’ll have a table in the back. No windows.” With that piece of information, I relax a little. “Your shoulders just dropped.” Griffin places a soft kiss on my forehead. “I’ll massage you when we get home and erase the rest.”
The thought of him touching me in that way makes my heart perk up. “I’ve missed you touching me.”
“Know it was out of respect, not for a lack of want.”
He takes my hand and opens the door. It’s quiet in the hallway, which is normal, but I, for a split second, let it give me a false sense of hope. The elevator ride down to the parking area is smooth, and we don’t cross paths with anyone on the walk from the lift to the car. Maybe this won’t be so bad?
I was wrong.
When he pulls out from the underground parking lot, we are accosted by flashing lights, people shouting our names, and standing in front of the car, preventing us from driving forward.
Griffin honks the horn. “Move!”
“Maybe we should just back up?” I grip the armrest on my side.
“We can do that if you want, but I know this is important.”
I look down, trying to block my face from being photographed. “I want to go.”
“Then I’ll make it so,” he says, honking the horn again in quick succession.
It doesn’t take long for building security to come to our aid, clearing the area enough for us to safely pull away and onto the street proper.
“Griffin, what the fuck? Are they seriously willing to get injured just for pictures? I’ve read this shit in magazines before and thought those people were just being dramatic. I mean, they’ve seen me naked. What more could they possibly need? This is straight out of hell.”
“I hate to say it. I’ve dealt with this from time to time my entire life. We haven’t talked about what it was like after my parents divorced or my brother’s plane crash. It was even worse than this.”
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper. “How could it get worse than this?”
Griffin doesn’t answer my question. I don’t know if I expected him to. It was partially rhetorical and if it is worse than this, I don’t want to know how. I can see by the look I know is there behind his sunglasses that it’s painful for him to even remember.
Griffin
I know that my knuckles were white for the entire drive to the restaurant, and probably even whiter when I was fisting the hand that wasn’t on Kaitlyn’s lower back as we pushed our way through the throngs of people, press and otherwise, trying to eat a simple goddamn meal together. I was trying to maintain my cool all the while, in my head, I was going over who could have leaked our reservation plans for this mob to have assembled.
This throng of savages was shoving cameras in our faces, cell phones too, looking for some kind of audio recording or statement. A few women even grabbed onto Kaitlyn’s arm, trying to force her to stop and comment.
And I had to ignore the names and disgusting things being shouted our way by some punk teens from across the street.
Thankfully, this establishment is not a stranger to well-known guests, so they lower privacy shades over the windows and allow us to eat in a small booth toward the back of the dining room. It’s dark back here, but it doesn’t hide the fact there are tears in my girl’s eyes.
“Kaitlyn, I’m sorry this is happening. I need you to know that I never expected anything like this to happen.”
“Stop,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all I’ve thought about for days. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want you to apologize anymore either. You didn’t ask for this either.”
I take my thumb and brush the tears away from under her eye. “Fine. I won’t say I’m sorry. Instead, I will say my heart is breaking because yours is broken. Let me get us your favorite wine and a basic meal, some comfort food if you will. Then, if you don’t finish, we will have some comfort to take with us. Hell, maybe we should eat dessert first.”
The mention of dessert makes the corners of Kaitlyn’s mouth turn up slightly. “Chocolate layer cake?” she asks.
“Order one of everything. Calories don’t count today. Only your happiness.”
Maybe food is the answer to everything?
For the entirety of the meal, things feel better, feel normal.
She smiled while she ate the chocolate cake. She laughed when she twirled pasta on her fork. She reached over and laid her hand on mine while she finished the last of her wine.
After paying the bill, walking to the door, and thanking the waitstaff, I have a sense of hope growing in my chest, but the moment we step into the night air, that all disappears. I’d hoped the small crowd of trolls would have evaporated. Unfortunately, they only multiplied.
We hear voice after voice coming at us from all directions and distances
“Kaitlyn, is it true that you’re pregnant?” a reporter I’ve known for years yells from my left.
“Griffin, have you accepted any offers on the sex tape? We hear there are over a dozen!” another reporter yells from Kaitlyn’s right. I pull her in closer, trying to shield her at my side.
“Slut!” The word echoes around us. My head is on a swivel, trying to find the source and shut it down when the worst comes at us.
“Stop trying to screw your way to the top and go back to America where you belong!”
Some large man with an even larger lens on his camera shoves it in our face, hoping to get a reaction, and he gets one quickly. Without even thinking, I yank it from his hands and smash it into the ground. “Back the fuck off! Everyone. Back. The. Fuck. Off!”
The valet brings the car to the curb as I wrap my jacket around Kaitlyn so the sobs I hear are between us and not for tomorrow’s pages. Once she’s belted in the car, I stalk around to the other side.
“Someone call the police!” I hear someone yell. “He destroyed that man’s camera!”
In a moment of anger and the desire to get the fuck out of here, I pull my wallet from my pocket, grab a hefty stack of banknotes and toss them at the photographer. “For your property.”
I take my key from the valet and slip behind the wheel. It’s no longer a secret that Kaitlyn is crying and it fucking kills me.
“How can they say such horrible things about someone they don’t even know?” she whispers as I try to pull the car forward, but am hindered by the people still swarming around us.
“They’re scum of the earth arseholes who get off on making other people miserable so they can feel better about their pathetic lives.”
I’m finally able to pull free from the valet stand and back out onto the street… and for a moment, we’re all right.
Until we aren’t.
Lights shine brightly behind us as a car quickly approaches.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Kaitlyn, make sure your seat belt is tight.”
“Wha…what?” she sobs.
“They’re following us and I might have to drive in a way you won’t like.”
“What?” Kaitlyn turns her head toward the rear window as the dark sedan gets within inches of our bumper.
“Hold on.” I yank the wheel to the right, diving between lanes and cars to gain some distance. It works for a moment until the headlights are back in my mirrors. “What is this fucker playing at?”
“Griffin, I’m scared.”
“I know.” I reach across the console to take her hand tightly in mine.
We sneak onto the motorway and weave into traffic. I’m dodging in and out of cars like it’s a chess game. I’d hoped the fading light and the number of dark SUVs would confuse our would-be stalker, but to no avail. Within a kilometer or two, the frightening episode shows a sequel.
The car switches lanes, pulling up beside us and holding steady.
I can see clearly through their windows. It’s one man behind the wheel of the car, driving with one hand, and snapping photos with the other.
“He’s chasing us for a fucking picture?” Kaitlyn asks, the terror in her voice clear.
It’s busy on the motorway tonight, and I’m not able to safely speed up and get away from him anymore. Fuck.
“Just look straight ahead. Don’t look at him. I’ll take the next exit ramp and get us away from him. I’ve got you.”
And it’s the truth, at least for the next two minutes, then everything happens in the blink of an eye.
Our persistent pap, not paying attention to his driving, coasts over into our lane without realizing and BOOM, nails the side of my car with his.
“GRIFFIN!” Kaitlyn cries out.
“Shit!”
The force causes my car to jerk to the right and before I can correct our path, we collide with the barricade just off the shoulder. Our airbags deploy as steam is instant from under the hood. I’m stunned for a moment before I pound the bag away from my face. “Kaitlyn?”
Her front and side bags have both deployed. Her body is surrounded in white with the exception of a trickle of blood red from her hairline. Fuck. “Kaitlyn, Jesus Christ, talk to me. Please say something.” I’m tugging at my seat belt to get out of it to get across the console to her. As I’m finally getting it undone, I hear a quiet groan. “Baby, say something. What’s my name?”
Just as I’m asking her, several bystanders are rushing the car to check on us. “We’ve called for an ambulance,” one says.
“I got the plate,” another says.
“Don’t move, love,” a sweet woman says to Kaitlyn.
“Griffin,” Kaitlyn says, reaching for me. “I’m okay. I’m all right.”
“You’re not all right. None of this is all right. We could have been killed, and for what? A photograph?”
An ugly reality sinks deep into my chest with the weight of an anvil. This is my fault. Look what I’ve done to her. She’s trapped inside this circle of darkness. I lied to her father again .
I can’t keep her safe. I thought I could, but I can’t.