Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 108974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
At least her mom didn’t believe it. Her mother had moved the tablet out of Brynn’s grasp, but she couldn’t take away the memory of those articles.
They played father and daughter on TV, but will they soon have a family of their own?
How long have this TV father-daughter duo been playing house?
It made her sick inside, but it wasn’t the only thing that had her gut rolling. She could still hear Major talking about how what his father wanted didn’t matter.
He was only scared. That was at the heart of why Major was thinking about making a decision that wasn’t his to make. He would wrap his head around the blow and do the right thing. She knew him. Even his reason for why he hadn’t wanted to talk to her about it reenforced her belief.
I don’t need the opinion of someone who won’t be around when I have to watch him die.
Those words were going to haunt her until they talked about them. He was scared and it had made him mean. Like a dog in a shelter who nipped at those initial hands trying to pet him.
She’d sent him away because she’d been numb in that moment, unable to process more than one blow at a time. She’d known something had changed inside her, something fundamental. It was about more than just Major. It was about her whole life, about what she wanted out of it, but he was a part of that.
Would Major see those pictures and believe the tabloids? They’d had a fight and he was obviously angry with her for the stance she’d taken. It would be easier to look at this “evidence” and see something she didn’t want him to see. Would he read the headlines and think it was far better to break things off now since she would be dealing with scandal for months?
Maybe that was a question she should think about. Did she really want what could be his last months with his father disrupted with this?
The enormity of the situation threatened to overwhelm her. All that work. All the struggle, and this was what her career might end up being defined by. There were pictures now. Before, it had just been nasty rumors. Now the press could point at a picture that was entirely innocent and twist it.
It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t true. Some people would always believe it. Some people would always see her the way the tabloids portrayed her. For a long time that had been as the good girl, the hard-working TV sweetheart.
She feared she was about to see the flip side of the coin.
“It’s only a couple of sites,” her mother said in a soothing tone. “And they’re not popular sites.”
“Entertain America is covering it.” Gavin took another drink. “It’ll be on their eleven o’clock show, and that means the larger entertainment and tabloid sites will pick up the story. The fact that they got a camera crew out here so quickly is proof that they think this is going to be big news. They’ll bring back all those old rumors. We’ll be lucky if the studio doesn’t fire us.”
“They’re not going to fire either of you.” Her mom stood back up. “I know one picture looks like you’re kissing, but that is easily explainable by the angle of the camera. The studio has too much invested at this point.”
“They haven’t even started principal photography,” Gavin shot back. “It will be easy to replace us.”
“You have a contract,” her mom countered. “They’ll have to pay you whether you do the job or not.”
“So they pay me out this time and neither of us gets another job for years.” Gavin’s jaw tightened. “I don’t see how we get through this.”
Her mother crossed her arms over her chest, a sure sign she was settling in for a long argument. “The same way we got through it before.”
“Before it was one jerk who was angry with me. I got him fired for doing the very thing he went out and accused me of. Everyone in the business knew what he was like. Three other young women came forward to talk about how he’d treated them when he was their director. No one believed it because Brynn was seventeen at the time and there were absolutely no pictures. I know those aren’t completely believable, but it’s enough. People love a scandal, and they don’t care who they hurt. There are people out there who will be thrilled to put me in that hot seat and see if I can come out of it alive.” He focused on her mom.
“Unless we change the narrative,” said Brynn. “What if we go out and talk about it? We call the producers in the morning, tell them we’ll handle it, and then we explain the whole thing. I tell them I have a boyfriend. You can talk about whatever woman you’re seeing now. Who are you seeing? I know you tend to keep things casual, but if there’s any way she could join us here, that might be helpful.”