Bombshell (The Rivals Book 3) Read online

  But I don’t really believe it.

  There’s no getting around the fact that things have changed, and definitely for the worse. It’s almost like there’s an invisible third person in our relationship. Every moment, every kiss, every touch is possessive like he’s marking his territory.

  I’m torn in two directions whenever we talk. I want him to relax and just be with me, free from all the crap in his head, but I can’t relax myself, because I have to vet everything I say through a filter. No talk of my family or money or me moving out. We even got into a heated argument over a book.

  It’s exhausting.

  The only reprieve seems to be an early spring, by Tennessee standards. By the first of March, it feels like May. I can’t see it as anything other than a gift as the whole world longs for change as much as I do. The early warm front brings surprises with it. Magnolias are in full bloom, nearly two months early, in every garden, window box and flower bed at Valmont. The air, still cool and crisp in the mornings, seems to warm up just to carry their scent. It makes me think of Mom. It makes me wish she was here to help me make sense of Sterling and life and everything. If she were still around, would she have been able to keep my father from interfering in our relationship? Probably not. But, at least, she might have tempered it.

  And every time I let myself wonder, I get angry. Because she isn’t here. Because it’s stupid to want what’s gone. Because I have to make my days diamonds, whether anyone helps me do it or not.

  I have managed to avoid my father, at least. We haven’t had a single conversation since the wedding. But one day, as I come out of my Intro to Creative Writing class, I find his Maybach parked outside Stanton Hall.

  One of our family’s security staff is standing by the rear door, and when he sees me he calls loudly, “Miss MacLaine? Your father would like a word.”

  He opens the door to the Maybach, its rear seat nearly the size of a limo’s, and there’s my father, looking dead ahead, his jaw set with anger.

  All the other students milling around stop in their tracks to look at me—some entitled bitch who’s father calls her to business meetings. All I want is to run the opposite direction. Take every class on campus, then do all the homework, before reading every book in the library. Anything but get in the car.

  And why shouldn’t I?

  Because he pays my tuition. There’s been no way around it. No financial aid for someone claimed on her father’s tax return. Someone who’s father makes billions.

  And I need that tuition money, because, if I ever want to be free of him, I have to finish school and make the kind of money that means I’ll never need him again.

  But mostly, because this moment was inevitable.

  So, I get in.

  It takes a second for my father to acknowledge me as he finishes something on his phone, and when he does, it’s to let out a long sigh. “Adair, there’s a matter we need to discuss.”

  “And now’s the time?” I ask flatly. It’s not like he’s ever needed to talk to me before. “If this is about Sterling, there’s nothing to talk about.”

  “You made that very clear the night of your brother’s wedding. And I did my best to stay out of it—”

  “Bullshit.” He’s probably just been too busy with things that actually matter to him to bother tracking me down for round two.

  “—since then,” he continues, despite my outburst. “But something has arisen that requires that to change.” He lifts the top of the armrest centered between us, and reaches inside, withdrawing a large manilla envelope.

  “If you changed your mind, the least you could do is come out and say it,” I snap, trying to ignore the appearance of the envelope, which fills me with cold dread. “You don’t need to be dramatic.”

  “I received an email three days ago. The contents of that message are in the envelope,” he says, handing it to me. “You should prepare yourself.”

  For what?

  My fingers tremble as I unwind the figure-eight string closing the end of the envelope. Inside, there is a small tablet computer and a single, folded piece of paper. The message on the paper is a print-out of an email:

  To: Angus MacLaine ([email protected])

  From: ([email protected])

  Please view the attached video.

  To avoid disclosure of its contents, send a check for $1,000,00,000 to the following address:

  I stop reading as soon as I see Queens, NY. What am I reading? My head snaps toward my father, and the muscles near the corner of his jaw are as tight as cables. There’s none of his usual perverse joy at my discomfort, if anything, he seems uncomfortable himself.

  “The video has been muted,” he says. “You should know that I did not watch it in its entirety, Adair.”

  He’s beginning to scare me.

  I tap the power button on the tablet, and the screen blinks to life, a media player already loaded. An alarm somewhere in my brain tells me I’m suffocating, and I realize I haven’t even been breathing. I take a second to steady myself before pressing play.

  It’s Sterling’s dorm. He’s standing near his closet, halfway out of the frame. Then I see myself coming in from the other side, wearing a pair of his boxers and one of his undershirts. When we both come together near the center of the frame, I realize it’s a video from the night of the wedding. We had just come back from Little Love in the rain, and we’re about to promise…

  My eyes want something else to latch onto, and it feels like the car itself is spinning, my stomach doing flips that send wet, hot bile up my throat. I close my eyes to avoid throwing up, and when I open them again, we’re having sex. He’s biting my shoulders and back, and I’m...just letting him? Letting him touch me. Letting him claim me.

  And, worst of all, letting me trust him.

  Confusion gives way to revulsion. Then a sense of violation. It detonates inside me, rending my heart to pieces. But—worst of all—my brain keeps flashing images of then and now, which play like a hellish, repeating slideshow.

  My father, sitting beside me but looking away, his hand shading his eyes against the sun streaming in through the car window.

  My hands, as foreign as someone else’s, holding a screen that shows my bottomless humiliation.

  My love, not loving me.

  Me, sitting in the car, somehow still whole. A lie.

  Slowly, reality resolves as a soundtrack loops through my mind:

  This is not okay.

  This isn’t happening.

  I did not consent.

  I did not want this.

  And the one question at the center of all of them: Why?

  The tablet is gone, the note, too, before I find myself fully in this moment. My father is stuffing them back into the envelope. He glances at me sidelong, one arched eyebrow betraying his indifference.

  “What do...” I manage, but by the time I get it out I no longer remember what it was I meant to say.

  “I’ve had some incredibly discreet individuals—none of whom saw the video—look into everything. I’m afraid there’s no other conclusion but that it is exactly what it seems: blackmail.” His dark eyes are soft, his voice gentle. It’s the closest he has ever gotten to empathy.

  The part of me that’s desperately, all-consumingly in love with Sterling screams that it’s not true, and those words somehow make their way out of my mouth.

  Empathy turns to pity, and I look away as he speaks, “I intend to pay this demand. I know you think I don’t care about you. I know you hate me. But I would pay a great deal more than he’s asking to keep you from ever feeling like this.”

  “But you hate me, too.” I don’t understand what he’s telling me. I always wanted him to say he loved me, or just give any hint he liked anything about me, however small. Until I realized he never would. “Malcolm is your perfect one. I’m…”

  “My daughter. And a MacLaine.” For once, he doesn’t bother telling me I’m wrong. I want to accuse him, tell him he’s lying.
Scream at him. But there’s no fight left, just a barren hole where my heart is supposed to be.

  I can’t help remembering what Sterling said at Little Love that night, he didn’t even offer to buy me off. “What did you say to Sterling at the wedding? I have to know.”

  “I told him I knew what he had done in the past, that he was unsuitable for you, and that he would never provide you with the kind of life I could.”

  “And that’s all?” It doesn’t make sense. Unless Sterling planned something like this all along. But I can’t believe that. I would have known. I try telling myself that if Sterling did it, it was to support me—that it came out of him wanting to do something good.

  But there’s nothing good about this. Nothing justifies this.

  “I asked him what his intentions were regarding you. This is not the answer I expected, Adair.”

  “You caused this,” I say. I’m not thinking clearly, but I know at least that much is true. If my father hadn’t come after Sterling, none of this would have happened.

  “If it helps you to think so.”

  How do I even begin to respond to that?

  But Angus MacLaine has another surprise, something completely beyond my ability to process, bombshell or not. He sniffs, a tick borne from having destroyed the blood vessels in his face and sinuses with booze, making them a leaky faucet. When he begins to speak, his voice is thick and strangled. “I’m sorry your mother isn’t here to help you through this.”

  No.

  It’s all wrong. How dare he throw regret into this? How dare he take my worst, most vulnerable moment and use it to remind me of what I need and can never have? How dare he offer that non-apology?

  My hand fumbles for the door handle, and when I find it I can only seem to get the door open by throwing my weight against it. It flies open and I fall out, landing me face-first on the pavement.

  I hear the driver get out of the Maybach, trying to figure out what’s going on. A gaggle of passing students laugh.

  “Adair,” my father’s voice calls behind me, but I don’t want to look at him. Now or ever.

  I struggle to my feet, quickly, before anyone can try to help. Even though no one does.

  One foot in front of the other, Adair. Just keep doing it.

  It feels like every one of the hundred eyes on me has seen my sex tape.

  I have a sex tape.

  Ignoring is surviving.

  I survive the last, soft plea of my father to get in the car.

  I survive the laughter, the humiliation.

  I even survive the path ahead of me, a dense blanket of fallen magnolia petals, paying the price for their early, reckless bloom, their lovely pink and white turning a rotting yellow on the pavement.

  6

  Sterling

  “See you back at the dorm?” Cyrus says, checking his knobby Hublot watch, or as I like to think of it, a year’s worth of tuition wasted on his wrist.

  “I thought I’d walk over to Adair’s,” I reply. I’ve been avoiding going there ever since she accepted my offer to help her move—when she arrived late and didn’t need me after all—and apparently it bugs her enough she’s stopped returning my calls. It’s time to do something about it. “If Poppy’s free, you can come with.”

  “You haven’t heard?” Cyrus says with a guilty, sidelong look. “She’s back at Windfall.”

  “What?”

  “I heard from Poppy. She came back from class yesterday and said she felt sick. So she went home. Poppy said she took half her stuff, though.” Cyrus studies me carefully. “Poppy thought maybe you two…”

  “She didn’t tell me.” I don’t know what’s going on, but if Adair was really sick she should have called me. I would have taken care of her. At least it explains why her phone has gone straight to voicemail for twenty-four hours.

  Things haven’t been good between us. It's true. After the wedding, she didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about what happened. I didn’t, either. But after a few days, I realized it was just avoidance. She wants to pretend nothing happened. Which just won’t work. She won’t talk about any of our problems. Not the wedding. Not money. Nothing.

  If her father decides to stop paying her tuition—what would we do? I tried talking about how much it worries me, but it’s like her brain can’t comprehend what a lack of money could do to us. Honestly, it pisses me off.

  She moved in with Poppy and Ava, and at first I thought it would be good for her. She would get away from Windfall and her family. But Poppy and Ava don’t understand anything Adair and I are going through. And they see the world like the MacLaines do. Poppy is nice, sure, but her idea of hardship is breaking a nail when there isn’t a nail salon open to fix it. And Ava coils herself in the corner whenever I’m around, like she might strike.

  “I guess I am going back to the dorm, then. It’s not like I can walk to Windfall.”

  “I have one more class, late afternoon. After that, why don’t we go see her at Windfall? We can bring get-well presents.” Cyrus has offered to lend me his car a few times since the wedding, but I’m done with handouts. “I was going to swing by my house, so it’s no trouble.”

  I suspect he’s accounting for my pride. But this time, I need to see Adair. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  I’m trying to decide what kind of get-well present I can scrounge up when my phone rings, flashing Valmont University on the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Sterling Ford?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Heather with the Dean of Students’ office. The Dean would like to speak with you at once. Can you come now?” Her tone is all business, but there’s more than a faint, Francie-like whiff of disapproval.

  “Why?” My heart begins to race. I try telling myself it’s some administrative chore, like correcting an enrollment form or something, but I’m not so sure that would need to be done immediately.

  “All student affairs are confidential, so I couldn’t say. I was just told to get you in here as soon as possible.”

  “I see.” Whatever it is, it’s serious enough to require confidentiality. Definitely not a simple form. Great. “I’ll come right away.”

  “I’ll let the Dean know. Goodbye.”

  I have to check the directory to find out where the Dean of Student Affairs is in the University’s online directory. It’s a few blocks away, and when I arrive I find an almost empty office divided by neat, sparkling-clean cubicles.

  “Sterling Ford?” a woman asks from her perch near the entrance. She’s about forty, but aiming for sixty judging by her bedazzled tunic and pearl necklace. She shoots a look at the only other person in the office, a young man, who immediately picks up a phone and begins dialing.

  What’s going on here?

  “Yes,” I say. “I was told the Dean needed to see me.”

  “Follow me, Mr. Ford.” The woman rises from her desk and leads me through a rabbit warren of collegiate bureaucracy, depositing me in front of carved, French doors set with frosted glass. The name ‘Dean Cheswyk’ is etched in the glass. The secretary opens one door, saying, “Dean? I have Sterling Ford here.”

  I can’t hear a reply, but the secretary pushes open the door and motions me inside. I step into a room that hasn’t been contemporary since the 1930s. Green glass desk lamps, along with floor-to-ceiling picture windows, give the room its light, which is barely adequate. I find myself squinting to take in the man at the desk.

  “Ah, Mr. Ford,” he says, absentmindedly adjusting his tie as he rises to greet me. There’s another man in the room, his face pinched and weasel-like, his neck somehow unable to fill the collar of his shirt. He’s holding a brown briefcase in his lap, so he doesn’t rise.

  “I was told you needed to see me, sir.” I say, taking the Dean’s offered handshake, which is clammy and limp.

  “That’s right,” he says, his plump, affable face at odds with his sad eyes. “Make yourself comfortable.” He motions at the chair set in front of his desk, the one next
to the weasel-face guy, then retakes his own seat.

  Everyone exchanges nervous glances—mine because I don’t know what this is about. The Dean looks guilty as if he’s about to do something unpleasant. And weasel guy? He seems...excited?

  “I’ll come right out and say it,” the Dean says. “You’re here today because we have received a number of complaints about your behavior since you came to Valmont.”

  A number of… I stare at him. “What? From whom?”

  “I’m not sure that matters,” he says. “It’s the nature of the complaints that’s a concern.”

  “Professors?” I guess. “I had some trouble in the first semester, sir. Missed a lot of classes for a couple weeks. I was...depressed.” I’m not sure which of my teachers would have complained about me, but I feel pretty confident I haven’t done anything serious. I mean, Cyrus has only gone to about half his classes this year. “But I have hardly missed a class since then. My grades are good.”

  “I’m sure that’s the case,” he says, waving away my explanation. “The matters we need to discuss today are not academic in nature. They are questions of character.”

  I stop the what the fuck about to burst out of me and translate it to: “Excuse me?”

  “Fighting. Underage drinking. Theft. Misrepresentation.” The Dean lists each one nervously, like it’s the first time he has had to talk about such unpleasantness.

  “I got in a fight off campus, but—”

  “Due to the seriousness of these complaints, the University has reviewed your initial application to attend Valmont. It seems you were less than truthful.” The Dean turns to the other man, who opens the briefcase and hands him a sheaf of papers held together with a large butterfly clip. “It says here you indicated you had never been arrested for a crime.”

  Fuck.

  “Juvenile records are sealed for a reason,” I point out. I’m not sure what a lawyer would say, but it has to count for something. Except it doesn’t. We all know it. But it’s not like those records simply landed in the Dean’s lap. Maybe he can be persuaded to overlook them if I convince him it’s unethical.