80. Wren
”Hawk Jameson Secret Love Child.”
The words screamed at me from the screen, making me want to throw up and cry at the same time.
Under the damning headline was a photo of Cooper, my beautiful girl, her face red and tear streaked as she exited my car that very morning.
Grabbing the phone from Daniel, I tried to read everything at once, my eyes skimming the article as fast as I could. They speculated that Cooper was Hawk’s and that she and I had been the reason for the divorce of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Golden Couple five years ago. They went on to say that Hawk was embarrassed by his infidelity and so he’d left us in a small Midwestern town, away from prying eyes to hide his shame.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, my heart racing in my chest. “She’s gonna see this.” Looking up at Daniel, I could see the pity on his face, but I didn’t have time to be angry about it. “Daniel, she can’t see this!”
Cooper was already under the impression that Hawk didn’t want her anymore; if she got a look at these headlines, she’d be completely crushed. She was too young to understand that the media was made up of liars and profiteers, only looking to make a buck off her pain.
“I have to get to her.” My panic was riding me hard, making the room spin as I hyperventilated. “Daniel, how am I going to get to her?”
“Okay, breathe,” he said, his hands brushing up and down my arms, distracting me. “Wren, come on, now. Deep breath with me.”
I copied him, feeling the breath shakily exit my body as my thoughts swam. This was a disaster. Being the subject of local gossip was one thing. I had been dealing with that my entire life, and I knew what to expect.
National headlines were a completely different thing all together. I’d been in enough comment threads and Subreddits to know that the internet was not kind. If Cooper and I had caught their attention, things were about to go from bad to worse.
“Alright,” Daniel said when my breathing had returned to a normal pace. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to distract that crowd of trespassers out there, while you sneak out the back.”
“The back?” I asked stupidly. I knew there was a back door, even though I’d rarely ever used it.
“Yes, the back,” he repeated patiently, pulling me along behind him as we moved toward the emergency exit out of his office. “Then you are going to go to the school, get Cooper, and go home.”
“I still have to do the files for the—”
“No, you don’t. You’re done here.”
“Are you firing me?” I asked, my panic rising again. “Daniel, I need this job. Please, you can’t—”
“You’re not fired, Wren. Jesus.” Taking a step back, Daniel went to the window of his office, twitching the blinds apart to look out into the street, shaking his head at whatever he saw there. “But realistically, it might be a while before this blows over, Wren. You need to stay out of the spotlight, and I can’t have my business disrupted because you happen to know someone famous.”
I could hear it in his voice, the touch of resentment when he spoke about my connection to Hawk.
“Daniel, I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.” I wanted to say more. To tell him that he’d been one of the best parts of my life for the last few years. That if things had been different, the maybe we could have been different.
But I didn’t say any of that. It wouldn’t have been fair.
“I know you didn’t,” he said, and I could see the regret in his eyes, too. Daniel stared at me with a gentle kind of longing, his heart fully on his sleeve as he offered me a sad smile. “Maybe in another life, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Because in this life, there was no one for me but Hawk.
“Here,” Daniel said, grabbing his suit coat off the rack behind his desk and handing it to me. “Take my vehicle. Yours is probably surrounded out front. Keys are in the pocket.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. Your keys are in your desk, right? I’ll just take yours at the end of the day and come by to switch them out later.” Offering me another smile, Daniel gave me a little shove toward the back door. “Now, go on.”
Pausing with my hand on the knob, I turned back to him one more time.
“Thank you, Daniel. Truly.” I said, and he just nodded before turning back to the main hallway and hollering about lawsuits and trespassing charges.
Taking advantage of the distraction he was causing, I tugged his suit jacket on over my skirt and blouse in a lame attempt at a disguise and dashed out the door, hustling as fast as I could toward his Land Rover. Daniel usually parked at the back end of the lot, as far from the door as he could get, and today was no different. Looking around, I could see that there were only two photographers standing outside, the rest presumably still inside the building, trying to get a shot or an exclusive of some kind.
Perfect. Now was my chance to make a getaway. Stuffing my hand into the pocket of the jacket, I pulled out the keys and pressed the button, wincing when the horn gave a sharp honk in response, causing one of the photographers to glance in my direction.
“Hey! There she is!”
Climbing behind the wheel, I pressed the ignition button and threw the car into gear. Not having time to adjust the position of the chair, I sat with my ass perched on the very edge of the seat so I could reach the pedals. Pressing my foot down hard, the SUV lurched forward, the expensive vehicle so much more responsive than my old clunker. Swerving toward the exit, I did my best to keep my head down as a camera was now pointed in my direction again. Leaving the lot, I took a sharp left, narrowly avoiding side swiping a big brown Cadillac before I took off down the street in the direction of the school. The two photographers who had been outside had scrambled for their own vehicle and were now following me, the passenger holding his camera out the window as the driver sped through the sleepy streets of Grand Rapids in pursuit.
“Holy shit!” I squealed, slamming on the brakes as a tractor pulled out into traffic in front of me, causing me to cut hard to the right. Looking in the mirror, I could see that same car still following me, having also dodged the slow-moving tractor. “These guys never quit.”
Reaching the next intersection, I turned right, then left again, now driving parallel to the main road but still headed toward the bridge that would take me over the river and to the school. Pressing the gas even harder, I flew down the road, blowing past stop signs with a grimace, until I could go no farther. Forced to take one more left when the road dead-ended at the riverbank, I immediately found myself at the main road again, this time, right at the bridge. Mentally crossing my fingers, I zoomed onto the bridge, now finding myself ahead of the tractor that had originally cut me off.
“Yes!” I shouted, watching as the car full of photographers was immediately cut off by the lumbering tractor, unable to follow me any farther as the wide load blocked the entire bridge. “Finally, small-town living comes in handy.”
Feeling confident that they would be held up, at least for a little while, I dropped back down to a more reasonable—but still too fast—speed, finding myself in front of the school in record time.
I was just striding for the front doors when they burst open before me, a familiar face cooling my blood.
“Did you post it like I told you?” Denise hissed at Britney, her face painted in evil glee as her daughter hustled to keep up with her. They were in such a hurry that neither of them had noticed me following them back toward the parking lot.
“Yes, Mom,” Britney replied, her tone annoyed. “I made three different accounts and have been commenting all morning.” Suddenly breaking out in a little dance, Britney added, “I can’t believe my photo is going viral on all the gossip sites.”
So she was the one who had taken that photo of Cooper. I should have fucking known.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Denise said, sounding thoughtful. “We need something else. Something that will really humiliate that stupid bitch, Wren. Finish that family once and for all.”
“Do you really think he’s Cooper’s dad?” Britney asked, shocking Denise into freezing on the sidewalk. “Because that would be kind of cool.”
“Are you insane?” Denise snapped, rounding on her daughter. “That would not be cool! That would be a goddamn disaster. There’s no way that disgusting witch and her filthy spawn are going to make me look like a fool and get away with it.”
“I don’t get it, Mom. Why do you hate them so much?” Britney asked, sounding honestly confused.
And for the record, so was I.
“Yeah, Denise,” I called, and they both whirled on me, shock on their faces. “Why exactly do you hate us so much?”
“Wren. What a surprise to see you here during the day. Don’t you a have job you’re supposed to be at?” she said instead of answering. “Or is that something you no longer need, seeing as how you’re a gold-digging groupie now?”
“What the hell is your problem, Denise?” I asked, taking a step toward her and feeling an intense rush when she actually stepped back. I’d never had the upper hand over Denise before, and it was a heady feeling. “I have been taking your shit since middle school, and I am just so fucking tired of it.”
“Classy as always, Wren.” She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her blazer with its dainty pearl buttons.
“Oh, fuck off, Denise,” I clapped back, and Britney gasped. “It was always so easy for you to shit on everyone around you. You’d show up at school, strut around in your fancy clothes, making sure that everyone around you knew exactly who your daddy was.”
“Well, why not? They sure as hell knew who your daddy was?” she fumed, her voice rising. “The guy responsible for destroying the town. The guy who put them all out of work. Big Tom Blackburn. Thought he was a tough guy, torching my damn house, but all he did was torch his own life. Remind me, Wren. Just how many people came to his funeral again?”
I swallowed, remembering that shitty day over ten years ago like it was yesterday. After far too many nights of drinking himself to sleep, my father had finally drank himself to death. My mother and Jasmine had stood on one side of his open grave, Cooper and I on the other, with only a small handful of his drinking buddies in attendance, scattered around the gravesite like pebbles.
Not one single person would make eye contact with me, not even the preacher.
Afterward, my mother had stalked out of the cemetery, refusing to look at me or even acknowledge that I was there, holding the hand of her three-year-old granddaughter.
It was the only time she and Cooper had ever been in the same place at the same time, my mother determined to carry on with my father’s banishment of me, even after his death.
“You’re right,” I said, clearly surprising both of them. “You’re completely right. My dad was a drunk and an arsonist and an all-around shitty parent. I won’t even try to deny it. But none of those things had anything to do with me, or why you and your terrible friends took it upon yourselves to make my life miserable at every opportunity. I mean, God, Denise, you had fucking everything—”
“And you cared about none of it!” she screamed, her careful composure shattering. “You were always so superior, walking around town in your wannabe goth clothes, skipping church to listen to that god-awful music. You never once came to a pep rally or the spring fling dance or any of the other regular, normal shit we were supposed to care about.” Her eyes were wild, her body visibly shaking as she ranted at me, and I could only stare, open mouthed, as she raged. “Why did you have to be so fucking different, Wren? Huh? Why couldn’t you just conform like all the others? You and Sabrina always had to go your own way, like you were so much better than the rest of us. It made me fucking sick.”
I blinked at her, my gaze darting from her angry face to Britney”s shocked one, completely at a loss. That was why she’d made my life hell? Because I wouldn’t fall in line and become one of the gaggle of girls who trailed after her, hoping for a scrap of her attention.
“You know what, Denise?” I said after a moment of contemplation. “You can have it. You can have your sweater sets and your church socials and your high school sweetheart. You can have this awful town and it’s hoard of judgmental liars fawning all over you. I never wanted any of it.”
Looking again from her to Britney, I shook my head, seething.
“But today, you crossed a fucking line. Sharing my daughter’s photo? Outing her to the world? That put her in danger, Denise! Do you have any idea what could happen if some deranged fan spots her now? Not to mention the fact that all the things they’re saying about her are straight-up lies!”
Denise at least had the decency to look ashamed, even if it was only a little.
“So I’m gonna go in there and get my daughter, and then I plan to leave this place, and you, behind us forever. I hope you enjoy ruling over this town, Denise, because it’s all you’re ever going to achieve.”