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AS I SAT IN MY APARTMENT, a glass of wine in hand, scrolling through the article once more, I couldn’t keep the big, cheesy grin off my face. How could I not indulge myself in feeling a little stab of victory, knowing that I had pulled this off? I had done it. I had written a damn good article, and I had proved that I had a place in this industry just the same way that anyone else who worked at the Press did.
A few people had come over to congratulate me on how well the article was doing—apparently, it was pulling in big numbers, though I could hardly believe that people had that much interest in something that I had done. It didn’t seem as though it could be possible, but here I was—sitting in this place, staring at the shares and likes and the comments that were stacking up with every passing second.
Most of the comments revolved around Jesse, of course—particularly, how much he had helped people. It seemed as though every person in this town had a story of how he had helped them or their cousin or their best friend out of some hellish nightmare and then managed to save them in the process. He really was an awesome guy, no doubt about it, using all that money for good. Sure, this article might have been more about what we didn’t know, but it seemed like most of this town only cared about what they did know for sure about him. And that that was pretty damn flattering, actually.
It made me proud to think that this was the guy who had shown such an interest in me. He really liked me—he wanted to see me again, in fact—and he must have known that he could have had his pick of anyone in this town, man or woman. I tried not to think about all the competition that I must have been fighting off in that moment because I knew that he was only focused on me, and that was all that mattered.
I knew that this was an important piece for me, the first that I would proudly display in my portfolio if I ever went to get another job. It carefully toed the line between coming outright and saying that there was something fishy about his past and acknowledging everything that we knew about his present. It was a solid article, impressive enough that Allison had only changed a couple of details on it before she had put it out on the site. I knew that it would be the talk of the town over the week to come, and I could hardly wait to see what everyone had to say about it.
Because surely someone knew something that I didn’t about what had drawn Jesse to this place, right? I was still curious to know why he had been so eager to leave his past life behind. What had happened? What had gone down that he had wanted nothing more than to forget that it had ever happened? I was sure that it had to be something serious, but I had no clue what he could have been involved in. Why did he change his name? Why did he shut down when I asked him certain questions about his past? There was so much I wanted to know, and I knew that I was going to have to go deep-diving for all of it if I wanted to find out the truth. He was never going to come clean with me, and I just had to find a way to deal with that.
Even if I knew that my curiosity was going to get the better of me sooner or later.
Well, we had another date soon—I didn’t know when, but surely, he wouldn’t leave me waiting too long after that incredible kiss in his car. Even just thinking about it now was enough to make the soles of my feet tingle. Did he think about me as much as I thought about him? I hoped so. I wanted to see the look on his face when we laid eyes on each other once more, that confirmation, once and for all, that all that chemistry wasn’t going to go to waste.
I kept scrolling through the comments idly, flicking my eyes back and forth over the words and taking in all the praise for him that seemed determined to insulate against any of the questions that might have been swirling around him now that my article was out. People wanted to cover for him, that much was for sure, and I had to admit, I didn’t blame them. With everything that he had done for this town, it was hard to think of him as anything other than a do-gooder who should be protected at all costs. After all, who could say when they might be the ones in need of his help...?
I slowed as I saw a comment that broke from the theme of the rest of them. It was short and written in a blunt language that made my stomach stir.
We all have to pay for our sins sometime.
I stared at it for a little while, trying to work out if it was meant for another article—it was cheesy, sounded like the tagline for a movie that the arts department might have reviewed or something. What was it doing on my post? I clicked on the blank icon next to it to find out who had left it there, but there was no name attached to it, no face, no nothing. Just that strange statement, laced with a vague threat, that made a shiver run down my spine.
I closed the laptop. Well, I could catch up on what everyone else had been saying later—for now, I wanted to get myself another glass of wine, maybe order some takeout, and revel in the fact that I had actually managed to pull this off. I had hardly pictured this being my very first major article on the site—writing about the history of a man that I had been on a date with just a few days before—but hey, you take the wins where you can get them, right?
I heard a car outside but didn’t bother going to check who it was—likely just one of the neighbors coming back late from work or something. Maybe they would have questions about me, about the article, about Jesse—if they waylaid me in the stairwell, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to provide them much in the way of answers, but I would try my best. Since it seemed as though I was becoming the resident expert on Jesse Miller in this town...
Suddenly, there were footsteps on the stairs—they sounded urgent, as though whoever was coming up here had reason to be in a rush. I thought about cracking the door, sticking my nose out to make sure that they were okay, but I decided against it. I wanted to relax tonight. I didn’t want to deal with anyone else’s shit. I felt like I had done enough of that as it was, going into Jesse the way that I had, and I intended to make the rest of the evening totally and utterly and completely about nothing but myself.
I was about to pour myself another glass of wine when I heard an urgent thumping on the door. It made me jump—who the hell was that? One of my adoring public already? I tried to keep it light in my head, but I couldn’t. There was something about the sound of those fists beating on the door that made my stomach feel like it was curdling, and I couldn’t handle the dread that was already beginning to inch up inside of me at the sound of it.
I peered through the peephole—and, to my total and utter surprise, I saw Jesse standing on the other side of the door. He looked ferociously pissed. I winced. Whatever this was, whatever he was doing here, I doubted that it was good news for me. I opened the door and stared at him for a moment, and he just glared back at me as though he was having to restrain himself from ripping the damn door off its hinges.
“Jesse, what are you doing here?” I began, but before I could get any further, he stormed into the room, pushing past me without asking for permission to come on. My eyebrows shot up, and I felt a bristle of annoyance in my chest at the way that he was acting. Who the fuck did he think he was? He couldn’t just barge in here with no warning—we might have agreed to another date, but that didn’t mean that I was just going to lie down and let him walk all the hell over me like this.
“Get that article down,” he told me, and he turned on me with a blazing anger in his eyes that made me stop in my tracks. He was so different from the man that I had seen before, the one who had gone out on that date with me—the one who had made me feel so wanted, so alive, so desired. I could still remember the way that he had kissed me that night, but that seemed to be the very furthest thing from his mind as he stood there, fists balled at his sides, in front of me.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest defensively. There was no way in hell that I was going to pull that post down—I had worked too hard on it, and I wasn’t about to let this guy storm in here and tell me how to do my job. Not a chance in hell.
“Get it down,” he growled to me, and his voice had dropped to this deep tone that I knew was meant to scare the shit out of me. I felt fear begin to ball up in my chest. I knew that I should have been able to stand up to him, but when he had just walked in here as though he was owed an apology, I didn’t know that I could. I wasn’t sure how he could have shifted so swiftly from the version of him that I had seen on that date to whoever this man before me right now was...
But it was clear that the article that I had posted about him had been the difference one way or another. Whatever I had said there, it had been enough to earn this reaction from him, and that, in itself, was interesting. I knew that I shouldn’t have been thinking in terms of my next story, but there was a journalistic instinct in the back of my mind that had lit the fuck up now that he was here in front of me and acting like he was the king of the world.
“It’s my work,” I snapped back at him. “It’s not going anywhere. I’ve worked hard on it and I intend to—”
He took a step toward me. I moved away without thinking. There was something about the way he was starting at me, the intensity in his eyes, that made it impossible to think about anything other than what he wanted to do to me right now.
“Take. It. Down.”
His words were sure. But I sure as fuck wasn’t.
