MARRYING THE ROCKSTAR (#3 ROCKSTAR SERIES)

♪ twenty-five ♪

I stewed for several days, waiting for the consequences of my actions. At least fifty times I pulled up that text message thread with Cameron and considered taking back what I said. The part about letting the article come out, or...the part about telling him to fuck off.

Of course I needed him to leave me alone, but straight-up saying it like that, no implying, no beating around the bush, felt...weird. Awkward. Like I wasn't supposed to say it and should have continued on without being so strict with him.

He'd give up on me, eventually. Heck, he kind of had; after the event at the cottage, he quit talking to me because I told him to go. And I could have left it at that, I could have moved on after that, and yet...

I'd been urged to text him anyway, and I found out more than I'd planned for. More than I could handle.

No way was I going to let Sapphire go down for my mistakes.

Exactly three days after my text saying "yes", the article came out. It came from one of the worst, most sleazy tabloids out there, that had been maintaining Leo and I's relationship was still fake. And with it came a bullshit headline about me cheating on Leo, with a small segment explaining who this dude in the picture drinking wine with Emmaline was.

"He's Cameron Vasquez, a former employee of Leo's. We've seen him a few times before, lurking in Leo's pictures. After some deeper digging, we found out he and Leo actually dated in the past!! Ooh, is this a love triangle? Is there blood in the water? Stay tuned as we continue to dig to find out more."

I tossed my phone across the living room, boiling. Yes, I'd allowed it to happen, but that didn't mean I was pleased about it. That didn't mean I'd been fully prepared for it.

But the picture would have been released somehow, anyway. The guy who caught us seemed like the type of sniveling snake to find any means to expose us. How had he even found us in the first place? How had he bypassed my security, and ventured where no one else had up until that moment?

The picture he'd taken—pictures, in fact—were a tad blurry, dark due to it being at night, but the faces were clear enough. I saw Cameron and I, leaning against the railing, holding our glasses of wine, staring at one another in a way that could only be described as longingly.

The sight roiled my stomach, upset my heart. The reality was, that look wasn't longing, it was...lost. Lingering, yes, and possibly too intense for two people who were supposed to only be friends, but...we had history. The world would learn that, at some point. They'd figured out Leo and Cameron dated; it was a matter of time before they found out I dated Cameron, too.

And who knew what the headlines would be then.

My phone buzzed from the floor where I'd tossed it. I picked it up to find a text from Sapphire.

Sapphire: I was handling it. Why did you tell Cameron to go forward with this?

Why she waited to address this until after the article came out, I wasn't sure. Maybe she needed time to formulate her words. Maybe she was disappointed in me, in the fact that I didn't trust her to take care of the situation. Or maybe she was waiting to see exactly what would happen.

The problem? It wasn't her problem. It was mine. It was Cameron's, and yes, he was employed by her, but this was his responsibility. Our lack of attention, the lowering of our guards as we stood out there thinking no one would see us. Even the security guard had some blame in this—he was nowhere to be found when the camera flashes occurred, and he didn't help Cameron run the intruder down.