19. Sienna
Sienna
It’s the day of my funeral, and my period is about to show up.
Great way to begin the worst day of my life…
I throw a pillow over my face and try not to cry. Feeling shame while you’ve got cramps is not a good combo. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
And I have a lot of those floating around at the moment.
I glance at my phone on the nightstand and feel a fresh wave of shame rip through my gut. My nutritionist will be happy to know that I’ll be fasting from this point forward. I have no appetite for food whatsoever.
“Sienna,” calls a deep voice from outside my door.
“Leave me alone,” I groan, clutching my stomach as the cramps kick into overdrive.
“You need to eat something.”
“I can’t.”
The door opens a little, and I see Eli peeking into the room. “Yes, you can.”
“Easy for you to say. Let’s post your bare ass all over social media and see how you like it.”
“The guy is gone,” reassures Eli. “And he won’t be coming back.”
I throw my head back into the pillow, focusing my attention on Eli. “He might be gone, but that doesn’t erase what happened last night.”
Eli’s face hardens. He’s totally bothered by the shitshow that went down, even though he’s trying to hide it.
Knox had given me a hug when he carried me to bed last night. "Everything's going to be okay,” he reassured me as a drop of blood dripped from his knuckles.
“Please don’t tell me you all beat the living shit out of him last night.” I cringe now thinking about it.
“No,” says Eli, opening the door wider. “But we did what we needed to do.”
“A sudden wave of anxiety has me sitting upright in bed. “You could get arrested and charged. This is serious.”
“Not as serious as us threatening his life if he opens his mouth to anyone about what we did to his arm.”
“Jesus. What the fuck did you do?”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Eli. “He took one look at the rifle in Cash’s hands and ran for the hills. Pathetic little guy, really.”
Not as pathetic as me. I just can’t believe that happened.
“Come on.” Eli offers his hand, and I take it. I need all the strength I can get, and these men have so much of it.
Besides, they’re the only people I can face at the moment.
My eyes gravitate back to the phone on the nightstand.
“Don’t.” Eli levels me a look. “You’ll make things worse.”
“I need to?—”
“Eat. That’s what you need to do.” He takes my hand and pulls me out of my blanket cocoon. “Henry’s in his room playing with his stuffed animals.”
Guilt rips through my chest, opening a new wound. Oh god, not Henry. Please. He can’t be dragged into this mess.
Knox, seated at the table, faces me as I enter the living room with Eli. He tears off a piece of bread, pops it into his mouth and chews. The thought of eating makes me want to throw up.
And the flames roaring in the fireplace aren’t helping. I break out in a sweat as I watch Cash feed wood to the fire. All of a sudden, I feel faint and my knees begin to buckle.
“Here.” Eli steadies me and guides me over to the couch. “Sit down.”
Cash turns around to face me. I have to be dreaming. Is that pity I’m seeing on his face?
Eli fetches two slices of toast for me, slathered with butter. He knows how obsessed I am with his butter.
“I can’t.” I scrunch my nose up at him. “I don’t think I can keep it down.”
“You have to eat something, Sienna.”
“My career is over.” I feel tears come to my eyes.
“You don’t know that…”
“Eli,” I growl his name in hopes of making him understand. “What part of my ass all over social media aren’t you understanding? I’m more likely to revive a corpse than I am to revive my career at this point.” I bite into a piece of toast in frustration, forcing it into my mouth.
Just as expected, I feel like hurling.
I swallow the bread and set the rest aside.
Eli places a glass of water in my hand. “You at least need to drink something then.”
I’m only able to stomach small sips.
I find Knox staring at me, a pensive look on his face. His knuckles have seen better days, though it probably doesn’t even bother him. He seems like a guy who’s been in his fair share of fights.
I press two fingers to my temples, sighing. “How did he even get up here with all the snow?”
“Take a look outside.” Cash gestures to the window, and I feel even more deflated than before. The snow is only in certain patches now. I can see the ground again, which means I’m good to return home.
Except LA doesn’t feel like home. Not anymore.
“Where do I even go from here?” I say, rubbing the back of my neck.
Knox continues looking at me pensively. “You can stay here.”
“Yes,” adds Cash. “Until you figure it out, at least.”
There’s nothing to figure out. I’ll die if I ever set foot back into civilization again.
I wish it were still my acting they were tearing apart. At least that was salvageable. I could come back from that. Start again. I was caught red-assed last night, and the humiliation will last for the rest of my life.
That dark corner of my mind can’t help but wonder what people are saying. My stomach churns, and the anxiety starts clawing at my chest again. But I have to know. It’s part of my job to know what people are saying about me.
I take one look at Eli and Cash standing on either side of me and jump off the couch, through the hallway, into my room for my phone.
“Sienna.” Footsteps pound on the wooden floorboards behind me, but it’s too late.
I’m already unlocking my phone with shaky hands and experiencing multiple heart palpitations as I read through messages and emails. New notifications are coming through each second.
“Sienna, we need to talk.”
“Sienna, we need to do damage control.”
“Sienna!” Eli has my attention, but only for a moment. “You can’t do this.”
“I have to know what’s going on. I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“No, you don’t.”
“This is my life!” My vision blurs as tears run down my face.
And then Knox is grabbing Eli’s arm, forcing him away. “Leave her alone. She needs to see.”
“Are you stupid?” yells Eli. “She’s upset. She’s crying.”
“I know.” Knox yanks him out of the room, banging the door shut. I can’t hear what they’re saying now, but I don’t have the energy to get up and listen at the door.
There are bigger things going on in the world.
I focus again on my phone, opening social media.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I find.
I scroll through social media feeds.
My ass is all anyone is talking about.
The picture is pixelated to “protect my modesty”—how thoughtful of them. But uncensored images are available if you hit the subscribe button and join the page’s email list.
My finger hovers over the page, and I shriek when I see the number of subscribers. More are coming in each second. I watch the bar climb higher, approaching half a million.
My direct messages are exploding. One in particular catches my attention—a director from a porn site wanting to collaborate. Fucking typical. Block. Delete. Report.
Messages are flooding in like crazy. I choose to ignore them all, navigating to the comment section instead. It lights up something in my brain, and not in a good way. But it’s second nature to look. People mention your name, and it’s your duty to check.
When the media site is roasting you in the headline, you know the comments are gonna be wild.
“Sienna Lane found getting her rocks off with three men at once.”
The first comment, of course, has to be ‘WHORE’ in capital letters.
My ass is the shock of the century, apparently.
“I never thought Sienna Lane would be into foursomes. Or threesomes. What is this called anyway?”
“So THIS is why she’s been missing for days.
“She’s too sensible.”
“Yeah, and vanilla.”
“It looks like we got her all wrong.”
“I wonder if she’d let a fourth join in.”
“What about a hundred?”
“This is so not like her.”
“Clearly you don’t know the woman.”
“I met her in person. She seemed so sweet.”
“Yeah, well everyone derails every once in a while.”
“Her ass looks great.”
“I’m loving this new side of her.”
“Get it GURL.”
“She’s just letting loose. Let her live.”
“No. This is so embarrassing.”
“I won’t be able to see her the same again.”
“Shame.”
“Big shame. I wish we could see more.”
“No, I mean SHAME. She should be ashamed of herself.”
“I know, right? Imagine what her family must think.”
I drop the phone and gasp. Mom was killed in a plane crash. Grammy suffered a heart attack alone and died. At least they never have to know what I did.
I jump when my phone starts ringing. But it’s Jules, and she’s the only person in LA I’m willing to talk to right now.
“I have officially fallen from grace.” I crawl back under the covers and groan into the pillow. “I cannot begin to tell you how sorry?—”
“Shut up for a second and listen to me,” says Jules. “This is not the end of the world.”
“Yes, it is. It’s worse than death.”
“Good PR? Bad PR? It’s all the same thing.”
“No, it’s absolutely not the same thing.”
“Every celebrity I’m representing has either gone through this or is about to. You’re human, Sienna. Cut yourself some slack. Don’t listen to these people’s opinions. We all do things we’re not proud of, and these horrible trolls are no different.”
I hesitate for a second. We all do things we’re not proud of? I hate the fact that I was caught, but do I regret it? Nope. I felt like I was falling in love with life all over again.
“These people’s opinions are responsible for my income, though.”
“Exactly. People talk, you get paid. It’s none of your business what people say about you.”
I lay back, sighing. I wish that were true. It totally is my business.
People are supposed to like who I am. Every step I take is with other people’s opinions in mind. I learned quickly that playing it safe is the best way to go. Keep your emotions out of it, and you can’t go wrong.
It’s nice to be liked and to be celebrated for something after being torn to shreds growing up for not being able to afford new shoes. For not having parents. Being too weird. Too quiet. Too unlikeable.
It felt good to be finally liked.