Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Darcy had made the mistake of thinking she could still get coffee.
Not coffee at some private studio where the barista knew her order and the back entrance had a security guard. Not coffee delivered and dropped off at their gate. Not coffee in the greenroom of some radio station while Eliana, her publicist, hovered nearby.
… and she’d been having a lot of meetings with Eliana in the last week. Normally, that week between Christmas and the New Year was a strange, liminal period of time. Not this year, not in the aftermath .
Emergency management was in full effect now.
And she just wanted to get herself and Juliet some freaking coffee before going into another meeting with their teams in an hour.
The café was in their neighborhood. She was doing all of the right things – sunglasses, her hair tied up in a messy knot. She was wearing one of the sweatshirts she’d stolen from her Juliet years ago, at the beginning of their relationship.
She’d made it three steps out of the café when the first camera flashed. Thankfully, she was wearing her sunglasses, or she’d have been fucking blinded.
Here , though? Here?! This was their normal coffee place. Darcy couldn’t possibly even remember the number of times she’d made a caffeine run here. Their neighborhood was full of high-profile residents; it wasn’t like Darcy had gone out somewhere she’d stick out.
Normally, paparazzi didn’t camp out around here. Even if they did, they were relatively discreet: stars, they’re just like us, kind of bull.
She didn’t let herself stop, though, not beyond a momentary pause.
Another flash.
Then another.
“Darcy! Darcy, look over here!”
Jesus Christ , it hadn’t been like this since she’d first experienced her rise to fame. Maybe not even then? Back then, she’d just been a newcomer on the scene. Now, there was gossip fodder. Some of the most intense gossip fodder.
Somehow, men in Hollywood who committed actually heinous crimes could get away with anything, but god forbid she be a lesbian.
She did exactly what Eliana – and in the last couple of years, Juliet – had taught her to do. She wasn’t going to respond. She wasn’t going to snap at them that she just wanted to get her fucking morning coffee.
She pushed through, continuing down the sidewalk, only for her stomach to drop when she realized there were more .
A man stepped around the corner, making her stumble back at how close he’d come to her, his camera already raised.
“What the fuck ?” She couldn’t help the words slipping out, even though she knew it wasn’t the ‘right’ way to respond.
“Are you and Juliet still together?”
“Did you two plan the kiss?”
“Did Juliet’s label know?”
Darcy was never one to pick retreat rather than progress, but she briefly considered it, as she glanced back toward the café door.
Too late. The paps who’d already been in her face had circled in behind her. They crowded around her, cameras clicking, questions overlapping until they became one ugly wall of noise.
“Darcy, are you and Juliet going to address the timeline around her relationship with Robbie Calder?”
“Are you two actually dating or was this just publicity?”
What in the world did this dude think she was gaining from this publicity?!
“No comment,” Darcy attempted to project, though her voice didn’t really ring through the barrage of questions coming her way.
She had a lot of comments, but – no. No, she knew it was best to keep things to herself.
None of these people wanted to hear anything real, anyway.
No one wanted to print a story about the fact that she and Juliet were actually in a loving relationship, and there had been no cheating, and – prior to coming out – everything in their lives had settled into something quiet and comfortable.
She kept walking.
“Darcy!” The photographer who’d cut her off moved alongside her, kicking up the agitation already boiling through her.
She walked faster, but he matched her pace, even as the others fell back several feet. Small blessings, she supposed.
“Just one comment, then, give me one comment.” God, she hated the sound of smarmy paparazzi men begging for more attention. “What do you have to say in response to the fact that you’re a predatory adulteress?”
Darcy stopped so abruptly that he nearly walked into her.
“ What ?”
The photographer lowered his camera just enough for her to see his grin that she’d finally responded to him.
“Oh, people are talking.” He raised the camera again. “Wasn’t she with Robbie when this started? And that’s why you hid it? You came along, a lesbian from the sticks, started worming your way in, working together…”
Something hot crawled up Darcy’s neck. Something ugly and sickening curled low in her stomach, burning up the back of her throat.
“Back. Off,” she gritted out.
He, unsurprisingly, didn’t. “Come on, Darcy. You’re a public figure.”
“That doesn’t mean you can–”
“Predatory Lesbian Corrupts Country’s Sweetheart – the headline writes itself, really. She brings her lover’s career down just as swiftly as her own ended.”
The words landed harder than the cameras.
Darcy set her jaw, doing her best to ignore.
Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Even though it went against everything inside of her.
Every piece of her that had always had to fight her own battles, and there had always been battles to be fought.
From the bullies and mean girls in school, to the drunk, handsy men in the bar.
“That's what they’re calling you online,” the man said, continuing to keep pace with her. “Is it the truth?”
“No,” she bit back, regretting it instantly. She bit her inner cheek so hard, it hurt.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that Darcy could smell coffee on his breath. Coffee that he’d obviously been given the time and grace to drink this morning, unlike her. Something about that smarted even harder inside of her.
He was close enough that his camera was almost literally touching her face.
“Then tell us what happened, then,” he pushed. “Tell us what kind of person you really are. Tell us the full story, the timeline. Tell us your side . If you want your version of events out there, you’ll have to give it to me.”
His phrasing rankled, hitting against that part inside of her from her past at the bar. Like she owed him – like she owed anyone, any man – anything.
“Get away from me,” she growled out, especially when she realized he was so close now that he had her essentially boxed in against the six-foot-tall privacy fence at her back.
It pinged at a place she hadn’t felt ringing in a very long time.
The last time had been Bill Hooke the year before they’d released their album, when he’d cornered her, closing her in.
Making her feel claustrophobic and unnerved.
Telling her what she owed him in order to progress.
In order to make her life better, easier.
Her heart pounded harder, the fear licking coldly through her, before it shifted into something else. Something darker, edgier. Something in her that had long decided she wouldn’t let herself be intimidated in situations like this, and that she would instead fight back.
The photographer raised his camera again, so fucking close to her.
“Come on, Darcy, give me–” When he moved to aim the camera, he miscalculated, and it hit her cheek, and – and that was it.
“I’m not giving you anything ,” she shot back, dropping the coffees she’d been clutching in her hands. “And I told you to get the fuck away from me.”
As if on autopilot, channeling the life she’d led before all of this – before paparazzi stalking her on the streets of the Hollywood Hills – she shoved him. The contact on her palms was solid and made her feel good, just for a few seconds. Because he wasn’t here, cornering her in, anymore.
She hadn’t pushed him hard enough to knock him down, mostly because she hadn’t hooked her foot behind his ankle when she’d done it. In Darcy’s opinion, she’d done him a fucking favor.
He stumbled back a step, his camera swinging wildly from its strap.
The other photographers behind them went silent. The man stared at her, his eyes wide. Then the cameras came back up from behind them. Click. Click. Click. Every click of the cameras was a reminder that this was going to be memorialized.
Darcy looked at the lenses pointed at her and realized, all at once, what she’d just given them. Her hands were shaking, the reality of what had happened settling over her. She could already see the headlines forming through her mind’s eye, the way lyrics usually did.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, her stomach sinking. God, Eliana was going to be so pissed.
And there was a chance Juliet would be, too. Juliet, whose biggest rule was to never engage with these people. Smile and move along .
The photographer straightened his jacket. “You just assaulted me.”
“I told you to back away,” she shot back, incredulously. “And you touched me first.”
There was a legal leg to stand on there; she was positive about that. Even so, her emotions were running high, and her chest felt like it was getting too tight, especially as some of the other patrons from the café had come outside and were looking at them. Phones were out.
Fuck.
Taking advantage of actually having the space to walk again, Darcy started hustling down the sidewalk again. Toward the safety of their home – their security-gated, camera-monitored home.
“I just wanted a coffee,” she murmured to herself, almost feeling a little dazed. And now she and Juliet’s drinks were littered on the sidewalk.
Behind her, the shutters kept clicking.
Juliet had already seen the video three times before Darcy returned home. It would be impossible to miss the video, actually, because she’d been alerted to it by not only the headlines popping up on her phone, but also by about a million texts.
The first time she’d watched it was because she didn’t want to believe it.