Aced

I WAKE WITH A START. It’s more than just the baby resting on my bladder. It’s that sudden awareness when I reach out to find cold sheets, realizing Colton’s not beside me. And then before I can shift to see if he even came to bed, yesterday comes flooding back to me.

In full 3D effect.

My whole body tenses. I want to pull the pillow over my head and hide, and in fact, I do just that for a brief moment to collect my thoughts and try to find the me that’s hiding underneath layer upon layer of humiliation and mortification. But I can’t live like this—hiding in shame—so I allow myself a momentary pity party before I get up to face the feared chaos.

The phone call to my parents last night comes back to mind. How supportive they were amidst my apologies for the embarrassment caused, and the promise that this footage was not something Colton and I even knew about. How my mom kept reiterating they were sorry someone was trying to exploit us in the worst way, but that the most important thing was to take care of the baby and my health.

Who thinks they’d ever have to make that apology to their parents? Ugh.

The baby shifts and reminds me how very hungry I am and how full my bladder is. I rise slowly from the bed, take care of my morning business, and then set off to find Colton and food. We need to talk. I shut him out last night so I wouldn’t take my disbelieving anger out on him when this whole thing is just as much my fault as his.

I prepare myself before I look out our bedroom window to the gates at the front of the house. Being on the second story allows me to see the street clearly and of course the minute I move the curtains, I wish I hadn’t.

Paparazzi lurk there, milling around, waiting for any movement from our house. They’re vultures waiting for the tiniest bit of flesh they can tear away and use to their liking: to sensationalize, to vilify, to exploit, and to manufacture lies.

And it’s not like they haven’t seen enough of my flesh already.

My stomach tightens at the sight. Too much. Too fast. I wince, worried what this is doing to my blood pressure. The room around me becomes foggy as dizziness overwhelms me momentarily. I fear what I’m going to find when I go downstairs to my laptop, which adds pressure to the constriction in my chest.

I sit on the edge of the bed and attempt to calm myself. The welfare of the baby my only thought as I try to regain the determination I felt ten minutes ago to face head-on whatever the day brings. A few deep breaths later, my cell on the nightstand vibrates. The name on the screen causes me to cringe. With quiet resolve, I have no choice but to answer him.

“Hello?”

“Are you okay, Rylee?” My sweet boy—now grown man in college—coming to the rescue.

“Hey, Shane. I’m okay. I’m sorry.” The apology is off my tongue in an instant. Two words I feel like I’m going to be saying a lot in the coming days.

“Do you need me to come home?” The simple question has tears welling in my eyes. I’d like to blame it on the hormones but I can’t. Yesterday showed me how cruel the masses could be to no one in particular and yet today, this moment, I’m shown once again how much good there is still in the world. That a boy once lost, who I spent a lifetime comforting and trying to help heal, has taken to me like I am his own. And there is something so very poignant about the thought that it’s exactly what I needed to receive.

“You have no idea how much that simple question means to me, Shane. I appreciate the offer more than you know, but there’s not much anyone can do. More than anything I’m mortified . . . It’s just . . .” I exhale audibly into the connection because what exactly am I supposed to say? I know he’s an adult now, that he understands as much as anyone the fishbowl world I now live in, but that doesn’t take away any of the awkwardness.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to say anything. Colton and I talked last night. He explained everything.” I breathe a slight sigh of relief because that saves me from having to take a step in this dance of discomfort. Well, at least when it comes to Shane.

I’ll still have to address the boys at The House at some point. The thought causes me to roll my shoulders in unease.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive down?” he asks again. “I can skip some classes tomorrow.”

“No. Thank you, though. I don’t want you skipping any classes. Just hearing your voice has made me feel better.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Positive.”

“Okay. Speaking of classes, I’ve got to get to one right now.”

We say our goodbyes, and I sit on the bed with my phone clutched in my hand. All I can think about is Shane and the little ray of sunlight his call afforded me. How that little boy I took in at The House way back when has grown into this incredible man who worried enough about me to call Colton to make sure I was okay.

There is right in this world. And I helped make it. I hold on to that thought. I think I’m going to need it in the coming days.

I make my way down the stairs listening for sounds of Colton in the kitchen. That flutter of panic happens when dead silence greets me. When there is no response to my whistle for Baxter, I head toward the downstairs bedroom that houses our workout equipment to find the door shut, the beat of Colton’s feet hitting the treadmill coming through it.

And as much as I need to talk to him, I also need to face the reality of what my world now looks like through the microscope of public scrutiny. Besides, by the way he’s pounding the belt of the treadmill, I have a feeling Colton needs the release the exercise will bring.

I grab an apple on the way to the office but don’t even bother to take a bite of it once the screen of the computer flickers to life. Images upon images of myself litter the monitor. Good images. Bad images. Violating images.

No wonder the treadmill sounded like it was going to break. Colton must have been surveying the damage before he ran.

The pictures suck the air from my lungs so it takes me a moment, my eyes wide with horror, before I can even my breathing. And as much as I know I should turn the computer off and not click on the links to see the public’s perception, this is me. My life. I have to know what I’m facing.

With a reluctant hand, I click on the first Google link and am brought to a massive gossip news site. An image of some of the boys and me from a promotional event a few months back dominates the page, but it’s the title that owns my mind. “Risky Business: Sex tape vixen leads our troubled youth.”

My hands start shaking as I read the article and the comments that don’t have merit gracing the pages. “Rylee Donavan surely knows how to land the racing world’s most eligible bachelor. I wonder just what she’d do for you in exchange for a donation.” Or “Is this how we fundraise nowadays? Is Corporate Cares struggling to fund their next project so their most prominent employee decides to take matters in her own hands to raise awareness? She’s been known to say anything for her boys. We didn’t realize this was her anything.”

Link after link.

Comment after comment.

I don’t want to believe what I’m reading and seeing so I keep clicking, keep reading, keep being shocked by the cruelty of others.

Oh. My. God. This isn’t possible. It’s just not. Can’t be. I’m not that person. The media whore needing to further my career. Yet that’s what they’ve made me out to be.

My eyes burn as I search and scrutinize and look for some kind of good in the links, but I’m fooling myself if I actually think I’m going to find some. And when I do, the positive and supportive stories are buried four pages in by the sensationalized crap that sells.

I’m horrified by the images I’m not yet familiar with. The ones from the new version of the tape. And yet I can’t stop clicking the links and reading the bylines. I can’t stop seeing all of my hard work and dedication to a worthy cause dragged through the mud because some asshole wants to prove a point none of us are privy to.

I replay it again. Paralyzed. Lost in the images. Mortified. Wondering for the first time if there is more to this than just an attack on Colton. The obvious go-to answer. What if this is about me? What if someone has a vendetta against me because I was the person taking care of their son?

It’s a ridiculous thought. I shake my head to clear it from my mind. It’s not possible. Even if it were, they’d have no clue this video even existed.

But the thought lingers. Worries around in my head. Draws my eyes back to the video on the monitor and the final image frozen on screen when the video ends. I close my eyes and sigh because the lasting image is more damaging than the sex itself. It’s a close up of Colton and me as we leave the garage. He is looking over to me and I am looking ahead, almost as if I’m directing my face toward the camera. Like I knew it was there. The worst part is that I have the happiest of smiles on my face. Emotions I can still feel all these years later rush back to me, but this time they’ve been tainted. Because with the grainy quality of the video, the smile I have on my face can now be misread.

I look smug, calculating, manipulative. Like I knew exactly where the camera was, and was telling anyone watching, “Look who I landed.”

Lost in thought, I stare out the windows beyond and try to figure out what we need to do and where we need to go from here because my worst fear is that this will hurt the boys somehow. Boys that have had way too much happen in their short lifetimes to be affected by this too.

“Ry?” Colton calls to me from the doorway where he’s standing with a towel draped around his neck, both hands pulling down on it. His chest is misted with sweat from his workout, and a cautious expression plays on his face. And there are so many questions in that single syllable. Are you all right? Are you going to speak to me yet? Do you know how much I missed you?

And just the sound of his voice quiets the turmoil within. Whereas last night all I wanted to do was lash out at him—blame him when it’s not his fault—today I just want him to pull me into him and hold on tight.

“Hey,” I say as I stare at him in a whole new light. This is the first real problem we’ve encountered since we’ve been married, and yet he was able to step back and give me the space I needed when I know it was killing him not to rush in and try to fix what can’t be fixed. “Good run?”

He shrugs. “Just trying to work off some shit,” he murmurs as he moves into the room behind the desk where I am, and clicks the computer screen off. “Please don’t read any more.”

“Look, I’m the good girl. I don’t do things that get attention so this is . . .” I blow a breath out not sure what I’m trying to say. “I needed to know how bad it was,” I explain quietly, as my eyes follow his when he leans a hip on the desk in front of me. We sit in silence for a moment, until I reach out and he meets my hand halfway, our fingers lacing in an unexpected show of unity that sounds stupid but feels so very significant.

Us against them.

“And . . .”

“It’s bad,” I say as I look up from our hands to meet the somber expression in his eyes. When I just purse my lips and nod my head because there is nothing else I can say, he just squeezes our fingers.

“I talked to my parents. To Tanner. To Shane.” My voice fades off as the disbelief I have to take stock and let him know the damage control I’ve done takes hold. Unsure how to respond to me when he’s always so sure, he just nods his head as our eyes hold steadfast. “Our baby is going to grow up knowing this is out there.” My voice is so soft, it sounds so very different than the storm of anger that rages inside me, and yet I can’t find it within me to show my emotions. I can feel his fingers tense from my comment, see his Adam’s apple bob from the forced swallow, and notice the tick of muscle as he clenches his jaw.

“We’ll get through this.”

The condescending chuckle falls from my lips, the first break in my fraudulent façade because it’s so damn easy for him to say. “I know.” Voice back, emotion nonexistent, tone unsure.

Colton stares, willing me to say more but I don’t. I just match him stare for hollow stare as images of myself from Google flickering through my mind. Finally he breaks out connection and reaches his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose before blowing out a sigh.

“Scream at me, Ry. Yell. Rage. Take it out on me. Do anything but be silent because I can’t handle when you’re silent with me,” he pleads. All I can do is shake my head, dig down within myself to will the emotion to come. When I can’t find the words or the feeling behind them, it unnerves him, worries him. “I’m sorry, baby. Were we stupid that night? Maybe. Do I regret that night?” He shakes his head. “I regret all of this, yes, but that night in general? No. So many damn things happened that put you and me where we are now. So for that? I’m not sorry. You pushed me that night, made me question if I could give someone more of myself.” He reaches his free hand up to brush a thumb over the line of my jaw. His touch reassuring, his words helping soothe the sting of our situation.

“It’s not your fault,” I say, trying to ease the concern in his eyes.

“Maybe not directly . . . but I made you color outside of your perfectly constructed lines . . . do something against your nature, and look what happened. I’m so sorry. I wish I could make this right,” he says, dropping his head as he shakes his head in defeat. “All I can try to do is mitigate the damage. That’s it.” He throws his hands up. “It’s killing me because I can’t fix this.” The break in his voice and the tension in his body would have told me everything I needed to know even if he hadn’t uttered a sound.

I look at my achingly handsome husband, so distraught, so desperate to make wrongs right that aren’t his to be held responsible for. And seeing him as upset as I am makes me feel a little better and allows me to dig into the deep well of emotion. I finally find the words I need and want to tell him. The decisions I came to last night when I sat on the deck and considered the life-altering situation we were in.

“Stop. Please quit beating yourself up over this. I don’t blame you.” I pause, my teeth worrying my bottom lip as I put words to my thoughts and wait for him to hear that last sentence. “Thank you for giving me space last night. At first I was pissed at you . . . just because you are the one here to lash out at. But the longer I sat and thought, I realized that more than anything, my fury is aimed at whoever did this. They took a moment between the two of us and made it something for others to judge and ridicule.”

Colton pulls on our hands so the chair I’m sitting in rolls toward him. He leans forward, our faces inches apart, and looks into my eyes. “No one knows us. No one understands why our relationship works but us. I know the real you, Rylee Jade Thomas Donavan. They don’t have a clue how fucking incredible you are. Only I get the privilege of knowing you like ice cream for breakfast and pancakes for dinner. I’m the only one who gets to know that when you scream and rage you get that little crease in your forehead that’s so fucking adorable. I love that you love those boys like they are your life and would never do a goddamn thing to hurt them. I know you’re disciplined and modest and hate coloring outside the lines, but that you do sometimes just for me. The fact that you do means the world to me. And more than anything, I love that you raced me even when I didn’t have any wheels on the fucking track.”

His words hit me and wrap around my heart like a bow on a package that’s wrapping is tattered and torn. They crawl into my soul and take hold because they are exactly what I need to hear to reinforce the love I have for him. My gruff, arrogant husband can be the man I need him to be when I need it the most and that says volumes for what I mean to him.

He leans forward and presses a kiss to my lips so tender it makes me adore him more. When he leans back he rests his forehead against mine, our noses touch, his exhale my next breath, and I feel a bit steadier even though nothing’s changed.

“We’ll get through this, Ry. Just like we have before. Just like we always will. What we have between us,” he says, voice thick with emotion as he pauses to find the words, “is a beautiful thing.”

“A beautiful thing is never perfect,” I murmur.

“You’re right. We’re far from perfect. We’re perfectly imperfect.”

If I wasn’t already madly in love with my husband, that two-word description would win me over. It reinforces the arrow shot through my heart. Words I used once to describe him have now come back to represent exactly what we are as a couple. And the fact he realizes, accepts, and acknowledges it, makes it that much more meaningful.

“You’re right,” I say with a shaky voice. He presses a kiss to my nose and leans back, hands smoothing my messy hair out of my face before holding my face in his hands so I can see the intention in his eyes.

“I promise you, I will find out who did this and make them pay.” His statement means a lot to me but I know even if he does find them, the damage is done. We’ll never be able to get those images, the privacy of that moment back, and so I just nod my head in response.

“I need to talk to the older boys about this somehow.” Although I’m at a loss for words of what exactly I’m going to say to them. Everyone but Auggie is a teenager. Teenagers and their long-reaching fingers into social media will find out about this. The thought makes my heart fall.

“No, you don’t.” He scrubs the towel through his hair and shakes his head like I’m crazy.

“Some of the pictures splashed all over the Internet are of them, Colton. Of course I have to.” A tinge of hysteria laces the edges of my anger. “Kids at school are going to talk. They need to hear it from me. Have to. I can’t let them think I’m some kind of . . .” My voice trails off as I try to figure out what exactly I think they are going to think of me now.

“Ry, listen to me. They love you. You don’t have to say any—”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll speak to them,” he states matter-of-factly, causing my head to whip up at the response since I know how uncomfortable he is with that kind of thing.

“You what?”

“You’re not leaving the house right now with the press out there. I’m not letting them take pictures of you to have fodder for their lies. They can have me . . . let them vilify me. Not you. No way.” I’m shocked by his words and yet shouldn’t be. “Chase is issuing a statement to the press for us. Hopefully that will help all of this die down.”

“Mm-hmm.” I must look at him like a doe in the headlights because as much as I know this will die down, people will forever know what I look like naked. That’s not an easy thing to swallow. Not now. Not ever.

And even when Chase issues that statement, it will do very little to dim the sparkle of the sensationalism.

“I’ve got to go take a shower. Then I’m going to work from home the rest of the week,” he says as he rises from his seat, his comment causing my stomach to churn in anxiety.

“I have my shift tomorrow,” I say, suddenly realizing reality needs to continue amid this storm of chaos. “Can you and Sammy figure out how to get me out of here so I can get there?”

The minute his body stills, I know a fight’s coming. He doesn’t disappoint but goes straight for the kill. “Dr. Steele called this morning.” I’m immediately irritated and defensive before he even says another word. I feel like he’s been waiting to make this point. Inwardly I groan because that means he knows about my blood pressure issues.

“Yes?” I say nonchalantly even though inside I’m already preparing for World War Donavan.

“The way I see it, you’re staying home tomorrow.”

“That’s bullshit!” He just quirks an eyebrow to say try me.

“Well, seems to me she called to check on you. Said she was worried about your blood pressure . . . with all of this.” I avert my eyes to my hands folded in my lap.

“I’m fine.” I nod my head with a forced smile on my lips in hopeful reassurance.

“That’s not what she said,” he says, making said blood pressure feel as though it is rising.

“Colton, I’m going to work tomorrow, with or without your help. If you want my blood pressure to stay low, you’ll help,” I fire back, lips pursed, eyebrows raised. Two can play this game. We stare at each other, both daring the other to back down but neither budging.

“Exactly. I’ll help. I’ll go instead and talk to the boys about it,” he lifts his eyebrows, “while you stay here.”

“Don’t push me on this,” I warn.

His chuckle fills the room. “That’s rich, Donavan,” he says with a shake of his head as he walks toward the door. “I need to take a shower but this discussion is over.”

I snort in response. He stops abruptly, back still to me when he speaks. “I love the boys, Rylee. More than you know. I said I’d never come between you and them . . . but you, and that baby of ours you’re carrying, are my first priority. Numero Uno. You’d better start making both of them yours too, or we’re going to have a huge fucking problem. End of discussion.” And he doesn’t even give me a chance to pick my jaw up off the floor to respond before he waltzes out of the office, tossing, “Don’t look at the computer anymore either,” over his shoulder.

Staring at the empty doorway, I’m not quite sure what to think so I lean back in the chair and blow out a slow and steady breath to calm myself. Colton’s never said anything like that to me before, and while everything he just said holds serious merit, I’m still astounded he said it. And while a small part of me warms, knowing he wants to take care of me, a larger part is irritated he’s laying down the law. The irony.

It doesn’t mean I have to abide by it though.

I look toward the ceiling and close my eyes momentarily. The many things I need to do run through my head, but I can’t do any of them because I can’t leave my house, can’t carry on my life like normal. I’m stuck here and that thought alone makes me feel claustrophobic.

I’m exposed to the world but trapped in my house.

Feeling defeated, my eyes flutter open to see the beach beyond the windows down below. And for the first time since we’ve met, I truly understand why Colton finds such refuge in his beloved beach—the crash of the waves, the feel of the sand beneath his feet, and the sense he’s this tiny blip on Mother Nature’s radar.

A soft chuckle falls from my lips as it hits me. On the beach, he feels inconsequential. How very fitting for a man who once told me I would never be that to him to have the need to feel that way at times.

My mind shifts back to that place and time. A ghost of a smile turns up my lips of the welcome memory of the Merit Rum party: dancing in the club followed by him chasing me into the hallway. Angry words. Contemptuous kisses. Hungry eyes. An elevator ride to the penthouse with a promised threat to decide. Yes. Or. No.

I find comfort in the memory. Without that night, there most likely wouldn’t be this. No Colton. No baby on the way. No chaos to want to hide from.

My eyes are drawn back to the beach. To the temptation of Colton’s place to escape. Sadly, right now, I couldn’t escape down there if I wanted to. At least he can get on his board and paddle out beyond the break to get some distance from the photographers. I’m not so lucky.

What I’d give to be inconsequential right now.

And yet deep down, no matter how hard I try, I know I will never be that to Colton. He’d never allow it. My handsome, complicated, and very stubborn husband takes too much pride in the two things he never thought he’d have—a wife and her love—to ever let me feel inconsequential again.