The door burst open after my pronouncement. English read the room and ushered me out. She spoke with Campbell for a few minutes. I didn’t even bother listening in. I was sure that she was going to keep him updated on me. When I reminded her that she was my publicist, she nodded and told me that Campbell was her friend.
Which was all I needed to know. I was her priority, but she wanted us to work. I could see it in her sad blue eyes.
She made a sharp and swift apology for what had happened at the event. But we both knew that we couldn’t change it. And it was probably better to get me out of the public spotlight until everything died down.
English retrieved my luggage from Campbell’s house, and I was on the first flight home. She promised to handle it. I believed her. Because I certainly wasn’t fucking handling anything.
When I landed in Lubbock, a barrage of text messages awaited me. One was from Piper, letting me know she was waiting in the cell phone lot. The rest were from Honey. I scrolled through them all, hoping that I’d have something from Campbell. But no, nothing. I’d told him not to contact me, and he hadn’t.
But the messages from Honey were never-ending. I finally gave up and called her, thankful for the privacy in first class.
“Blaire! Did you land safe?” Honey asked.
“Hey. Yeah, I just got in.”
“Are you sure you don’t need me to pick you up?”
“I’m sure. Piper is already waiting out front. I just saw all your messages. What did I miss?”
I’d asked Honey to hold down the fort for the business, which shouldn’t have been difficult since I’d also requested that we go entirely radio silent. No more posts. No more comments. No more emails. I wanted everything to come to a screeching halt. The only things we needed to do was pay bills and keep the lights on. Metaphorically speaking. Since I didn’t have my own office.
“Just sending you follow-ups from the business email. There have been a lot of media requests.”
“No,” I said flatly.
“I figured as much but wanted to run it by you. Maybe this would be better in person. I could come over, and we could discuss—”
“No,” I repeated.
As nice as it was to have Honey, she was maybe too happy to have me home. She seemed to have actually been concerned that I’d never leave LA.
“Okay,” Honey said quietly. “I hope you’re okay.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “I want you to hold all of this together. I don’t want to think about business for a few days. Can you do that?”
“Oh yeah, sure. No problem. I misunderstood what you said. I thought you wanted me to still inform you of everything coming in. I didn’t know you wanted me to go quiet, too.”
I closed my eyes on a sigh. “That’s not what I meant. I just need to deal with what happened in LA. Why don’t we plan to meet up later in the week? Once I start feeling better.”
“Definitely. But if you need anything in the meantime, do not hesitate to ask. Dinner, a movie, a shoulder to cry on. I’m your girl.”
“I know, Honey. Thank you.” I stood up as we reached the gate. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up and grabbed my boho bag before disembarking. My bag was the first one off at baggage claim, and Piper’s blue Jeep waited outside of the exit.
She hopped down and pulled me into a hug. “Aww, Blaire, I’m so glad you’re home.”
I started crying on the spot and held my best friend as tight as I could. “Piper, I hate this.”
“I know.” She brushed my hair back. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I hope so.” I swiped at my eyes. “And now, I’m worried someone is going to take a picture of me crying. I can’t shake the feeling of being followed.”
“Well, let’s get you out of here then. You’ll be better at home.”
I nodded. Though I couldn’t help but doubt it. That being followed feeling felt inevitable. It had been stronger in LA, where the paparazzi could be anywhere, but knowing that Campbell’s fans were stalking me online sure didn’t help anything. I felt helpless, and it triggered fight-or-flight in me.
Piper grabbed my bag as I got into the passenger seat.
“Have you heard from Campbell?” she asked as we pulled out.
I shook my head. “No. I told him I didn’t want to talk to him and I needed space.”
Piper sighed. “Yeah. That makes sense. I was rooting for y’all.”
I crossed my arms and stared out the window. “Me too.”
We arrived back at the house twenty minutes later. Eve greeted us at the door. But I just shot her a half-smile before retreating to my room. I crashed into the comforter, and tears hit me fresh all over again. Piper was worried. She wanted answers to what had gone down in LA, but I wasn’t ready for the conversation. I wasn’t ready for anything but crying and sleeping.
Which was what I did on and off for the next couple days. Nothing from Campbell. Only intermittent messages from Honey. A few from English. But even she went silent a few days into my heartbreak.
It felt like the first time all over again. Campbell was in LA. I was here. I had made that happen. I was the heartbroken one. But I couldn’t see how it could have happened any other way. I couldn’t suppress the pain from eight years ago. I couldn’t pretend that none of it had happened.
And worse, all this time, I’d thought he’d abandoned me in the middle of my miscarriage, but he had no memory that I’d even called him. Should I have called him again? I hadn’t been rational at that time. I was eighteen years old and had just lost everything. There wasn’t a moment where it felt logical to call Campbell after he never returned my call. I was alone. That was how it had been.
Again, I was alone. And I missed him.
Everything hurt. And I ached for him.
I hated every bit of it.
“Knock, knock,” a voice called from the hallway before someone pushed the door open.
Annie stood in the doorway. “Hey, Blaire.”
I was still under the covers. My hair up in a messy bun at the top of my head. My eyes red-rimmed. Four days into this depression, and I didn’t feel any better. Maybe only worse.
“Hey, Annie. Are you off work?”
“I am. Residency is crazy but worth it.” She stepped inside and sank into the foot of my bed. Jennifer, Piper, and Eve peeked their heads in as well. “We want you to know that we love you and are worried about you.”
I sat up on the bed and rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to worry you.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” she said gently. Annie, who was always brash and loud, was being gentle with me. I must have looked even worse than I felt.
“You know you can tell us anything, right?”
I nodded. “I don’t know how to begin to talk about it.”
“And that’s okay. We were actually thinking…it just might be good to get you out of this bed.”
I groaned and flopped back. “I’m not ready to be a person.”
“You’ve barely eaten, and you haven’t left this room in four days.”
Piper stepped in. “We can all crash in here with ice cream if you’d rather.”
Jennifer took a seat opposite Annie. “We’re here for you, whatever you want.”
“I don’t want to be seen in public right now. I’m a mess. And I have this uncontrollable fear that someone is going to photograph me, and everything will be fucked up again.”
Piper rested her hands on my footboard. “You can’t let them control you like that. You are bright and vibrant and wonderful. A few paparazzi can’t scare you off. What happened was in the past. They shouldn’t have dug it up or however it came out, but it doesn’t define who you are now.”
“That’s right,” Annie agreed. “And I think Hollin would beat the shit out of any paparazzo who got within a dozen feet of the winery. So, you’d be safe there. He said he’d bring in more security tonight for you in case you wanted to get out of the house and just be a human being for a night with no expectations.”
“That’s…nice of him,” I whispered.
None of them said that it was because Campbell was his brother and he’d do anything for him. But I could feel it.
“I don’t know if I can pretend I’m okay though.”
“Maybe the best step would be the couch,” Jennifer suggested. “Forget going out. Just get out of this bed.”
I laughed at her enthusiasm and agreed, “All right. Couch it is.”
“Plan B activated,” Annie said. “Eve, ice cream.”
I shook my head. “You planned for this?”
“Of course. We love you,” Piper said.
“But first, shower,” Annie said.
A half hour later, after a shower and my long, dark hair was piled back into its messy bun, I was seated on the couch with my girls. Annie had chosen How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days for us to watch, and we were binge-eating the ice cream. Eve looked positively excited. I wondered if she had ever done something like this before. She kept looking around at us like we were some rare breed.
“Thanks for the ambush,” I finally said after I gave up on my ice cream and snuggled into the blankets.
“Anytime,” Piper said.
“Can we talk about what happened?” Annie asked.
I sighed. “I didn’t have an abortion.”
“It’s okay if you did,” Eve said softly.
Jennifer nodded. “We’d be here for you regardless.”
And so I told them all what had really happened. How everything had been leaked, the mobbing, the red carpet fiasco, and the reality of my miscarriage. They all looked back at me with various pitying looks, but I knew it was more than that from them. They loved me. I could see that.
“I hate that you went through that alone,” Piper said, pulling me in for a hug.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “I should have called Campbell again. I should have made him be there for me.”
Annie reached for my hand. “That is not your fault. None of this is. You were just kids.”
“I know. I know, but maybe this all would have been different if we’d been…I don’t know—rational.”
Eve laughed. “Yeah, all eighteen-year-olds are rational.”
“Pregnant eighteen-years-olds at that,” Jennifer said.
“You’re right. Okay. I know.” I held up my hands. “Just lots of fucked up.”
“It is,” Piper agreed.
Eve bit her lip and leaned forward. “Who knew about you and Campbell in high school to begin with? You said some Campbell Soup girl dug up your medical records, but before that. How did they even find out you’d been together?”
“Yeah, who would have snitched about you being the ‘I See the Real You’ girl?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, at the time, just my mom and stepdad. But they didn’t know he’d written that song about me. They could have guessed, but I don’t know why they would. They don’t seem to care about my life.”
“I just figured someone snooped in your past to find out,” Piper said.
“I don’t know how they could have. No one knew about us. All the pictures from that time are in a photo album in my room. It wasn’t common knowledge. It had to be someone who knew.”
“But none of us told,” Piper said.
And then a dawning realization hit me at the same time a pit formed in my stomach.
“Someone else had to know, right?” Eve asked.
“No,” I siad quickly. Then I paused. “Wait,” I whispered. “Oh no.”
“What?” Annie asked.
I’d been so terrified by what had happened to me with the press in LA that I hadn’t really considered how they’d found out about our relationship. The Campbell Soup girls had dug into my past after they found out we’d had a relationship as teens. They hadn’t done that before because no one else had known.
But one other person did know. Because I’d told him.
“Nate King.”