LOW: A Rockstar Romance (17 page)

Chapter 33

Zoe

Max was digging again, this time over in the back corner of our tiny lot, while I sat on the chaise with a paperback. My Kindle habit used to be legendary back when I was still flush and gainfully employed. But these days I was discovering the joys of my library and their kick-ass interlibrary loan system. At the moment I was a biography kick and was knee-deep in Dolly Parton's tell-all.

Dolly was a freaking hoot.

My phone buzzed in my pocket and I took it out and scowled at the number.

One of the worst things about job-hunting was the need to answer unfamiliar numbers. It always put me on edge.

"Zoe Chandler speaking!" I chirped into the phone. I couldn't keep the flash of hope from igniting in my veins. No matter how many disappointments I'd endured, there was still that bright, hot flare that
this!  this could be it!

A vaguely familiar voice answered. "Miss Chandler, this is Sarah Gibbs. I'm calling from UltraMarine Publishing. We spoke the other day?"

The slightly slurred voice clicked together with the vague deliver and I remembered her instantly. The receptionist. With the tits and the Lycra dress. The one who liked getting presents from her highly inappropriate employer. "How can I help you, Sarah?" I said brightly, hoping to mask my distaste with peppiness.

"Mr. Gaines wanted to apologize for missing your appointment the other day and asked if I could give you a call and set up another interview."

I bit my lip, remembering the downright skeevy vibes I got from the place. I should just hang up right now, but once again, my instincts were butting up against my desperation.

"Oh?" was all I said.

Her voice dropped, and I pictured her leaning conspiratorially over the Formica. "He said that in light of this new information, we needed to look for a new way to fit you into the organization."

I scowled. "What new information?"

There was an abrupt pause, and then the sound of something scraping like she'd dropped the receiver. She picked it back up again and exhaled a loud blast that made me pull the phone back from my ear to protect my hearing. "Are you...do you not...?" She took a breath and then actually sounded sympathetic. "Oh. Oh honey, you don't even know yet."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Great job, Zoe, drop an f-bomb at someone who's offering you an interview.
But still, "I have no idea what you're trying to say to me. What information?"

Her voice dropped. "You didn't hear it from me, okay? Just...I don't know, like...go on the internet. You'll find it."

I hung up feeling abject terror. Then I hit the browser on my smartphone.

"Hacking Scandal!" the headline blared. I scrolled through to see that all of the news sites were blasting the same story. Scores of celebrity nudes had been leaked to the public. But what did this have to do with me?

I read without comprehension, noting all of the noteworthy names. The hackers used blunt force tactics, just trying passwords that corresponded with publicly known info.

My heart sank.

Feeling like I was betraying him, I searched. "Lowell Stowe, nudes."

The search came back in a nanosecond and there they were. The pictures I had taken for him. Of him. My thumb on the side of the frame and then...

Oh.

Oh god.

Me.

His hand on my breast. My lips parted, that moment when he had entered me, the ecstasy that it captured. I was there in some of them. Most of them. The birthmark on my right breast made it clear.

Feeling sick, I slowly tapped out my name. Z-O-E C-H-A-N-D-L-E-R. Then ran a search.

It was the very top listing.

Above my resume and above my Linked-In profile. Above my bylines for
Grip
and the freelance work I had done. Far, far above the half-hearted website I started putting together then abandoned as hopeless.

Above all of the things that were relevant - to the life I was leading and the goals I was chasing - was my naked body, on display.

Chapter 34

Low

The phone rang. I didn't answer. It stopped ringing.

Then it rang again.

Voicemail. Another voicemail.

I stared at the ceiling and I didn't answer. Deleted the voicemails without listening to them. I didn't need to know what they were asking. What they were saying.

Care to comment? Care to comment? Care to fucking make a comment about your privacy being violated? Care to give a statement about how you fucked over the life of a girl you loved just by being fucking you?

Delete. Fucking delete. Again. When it rang in my hand again, "
Fuck you!"
I shouted, slamming it against the wall where it shattered into a million plastic pieces but it just... kept... ringing.

I have no idea how long I stared at the ceiling. After a while, the sound of my shattered, unusable phone ringing slid into the background. Just a constant noise that I ignored.

Just the way I ignored the sound of trucks and cars outside of my building, the sound of voices and the shouts of the paparazzi yelling for me to come out, come out and let them take a fucking picture, just one goddamned picture...

As if taking a picture wasn't the cause of all this fucking mess in the first place.

That noise sank into the background. I didn't need to answer them. I could just hide here forever.

Staying in the background where I should have stayed in the fucking first place.

Then suddenly the noises outside changed. Whoops and shouts and the sound of shutters clacking like an angry group of starlings and I sat up wondering what the fuck was happening when my buzzer suddenly sounded.

Then a rusty yet feminine shout. "Open the fucking door, Woe!"

I hit the call button and then ran to the window, where the flashes momentarily blinded me. Then I ran back to the elevator and pulled her in, then checked the lock twice once I slammed the door behind me.

"What the hell are you doing here, Pep, are you fucking crazy?" I panted.

My sister looked pissed, but oddly no more than normal. "You don't answer your goddamned phone."

"For good fucking reason, don't you think?" I shouted.

"Yeah well maybe, but one of those calls was from me. I knew you were fucking hiding, I would too. But Low, what about Zoe?"

I licked my lips. "Zoe probably has no idea."

"Bullshit."

"What, Pep? She's not going to want to hear from me! I fucking ruined her life with this."

"Did you? So you're just going to hide from her too?"

"How do you know we haven't talked already?"

She just cocked her head and gave me the most withering of stares.

My shoulders slumped. "No. I haven't called her yet. I should, shouldn't I?"

"Yes, you fucking should."

I looked down on the floor at the wreckage of my phone. She glanced down and sighed, then reached into her purse. "You're fucking hopeless. Here. Use mine."

I stared at her phone balefully. "What the fuck do I say to her?" I asked my sister. "This is exactly -
fucking exactly -
what I was afraid of. Like, it could not be more of a sign from above that I
cannot
do this to this girl. Me loving her is only going to hurt her. Fuck, it already has!"

My sister's eyes went soft, then hard. She stepped into my face and I could see it. The trembling rage that vibrated under her skin. And I knew, I knew she was reliving the moment that she had to tell. Her own violation and how it had to be spelled out for others to understand. She was angry at me because she thought that I - of all people - would know what to say, to a girl who had had her body violated like this.

Hell, I
should
know.

But I was too caught up in my own fucking guilt at letting this happen to Zoe.

"You want me to tell you what to say?" Pepper seethed. "Fine. This is what you say. You say, hi. I'm here. What do you need?" She thumped me in the chest with her finger. "You say, I love you, and I'll help in any way I can. Can you do that, Low?"

This was the first time my sister called me by my new name and the importance was not lost on me. "I can do that, sis," I exhaled. "You know I can."

She shoved her phone into my hand. "Call."

Chapter 35

Zoe

The little triangle of light where I had propped up my blanket to let the air underneath was the only thing that mattered to me right now. It seemed to me that if I focused on that triangle, that everything else in my life might just fade away.

The phone hadn't stopped ringing, and when I refused to answer my cell, the bastards had moved on to the landline. When Max picked up with his sunny little "Hello?" his poor little face screwed up at the voice on the other end. "No. No Zo-weee. You yellin'!" he bellowed. "You don't yell at Zo-weee." Then he stabbed the off button and let the phone drop at his feet.

I was ready to hire him to take all of my calls.

"Zoe?" The door to my bedroom creaked open. At any other point in time, my mother's gentle voice would be the perfect soothing balm that I needed. But instead of relief, all I felt was hot shame.

She had come home early from work, just like she had when I was a kid and got sick at school. The angle of the late afternoon sun through the gap in my window shade piercing the full dark of my room was giving me a profound sense of deja vu. I felt queasy and ill and filled with self-pity. "Mom," I croaked. "I'm so sorry."

"For what, baby?"

I rolled over and swallowed. "For being a naive idiot."

She sat down at the end of my bed. "I'm going to need a little more than that," she said mildly, patting my hip.

I curled more tightly into a ball and flung the cover back over my head. Somehow it was easier to hate myself without her kind eyes looking down at me with nothing but love inside of them. "Well, for starters I should have known better than to let a guy have nudes. Fuck, that's like girl-101."

"Do you think he let them out there on purpose?"

I blinked. "No. I think he was just...careless." I swallowed. His unsecured Wi-Fi was a testament to that. "And that's almost worse."

"I don't think you need to be sorry about sending someone you love some pictures to remember you by," my mother said thoughtfully.

"It wasn't just any old someone that I loved, though," I protested. "It was
Lowell Stowe
. He's a drummer. In a rock band! Do you know how many people are dying for a slice of him right now? Why the hell did I think I could be on his same level. I was like...playing out this fantasy world, where I was someone different and he was part of that fantasy and I just...I just went too goddamned far. From the moment I met him, I was just in way the fuck over my head. " I pulled the blanket off my head. "Sorry for swearing, " I said automatically.

My mother chuckled. "I think times like this, I'll waive the no-swearing rule." She leaned over and kissed my forehead. "Seems appropriate in this context."

"Mom, what do I do?"

"About Low?"

"About the pictures."

"Oh, those? Well if it were me, I'd just wait until people lost interest. Let it blow over. Do my damnedest to do something interesting enough to get my name associated with something else." She smiled, a little glint of mischief in her eye. "And I would talk to Low too. See his take on this whole thing."

"Why do you know everything?"

She shook her head. "Experience." Then she held up a finger to ward off my next question. "And I am not telling you what the experience was. I need to preserve at least some of my mystery."

I laughed for the first time today. It felt good.

The landline rang again and this time, I actually got out of bed and made for it. I had no plans on answering, but I did plan on ripping the line out of the wall.

"Phone!" screamed Max, tearing across the living room floor. Before I could intercept him, he picked up with a chirpy little, "Hello?"

Fuck.

"Hey, Max? Maximus? Maximillian? Maximum Overdrive?" My brother did not respond to any of his nicknames. His little nose was scrunched up in concentration.

"Max, give me the phone."

He ignored me and listened to whoever was on the line.

At least he wasn't berating them for yelling. I chewed on my thumbnail.

All at once, he smiled. "Mr. Low," he announced. "You brought Zoe back before Froot Loops."

The sound I made was so alarming that my mother came rushing in from the kitchen. I tried to wave her off, while at the same time I tried to snatch the phone from my brother. "Max...Max! Give me the phone!"

"Max that's a one!" my mother barked. Instantly my brother snapped up straighter and handed me the phone.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered.

I could hear soft laughter from the other end of the line. Then his faint voice, calling "Zoe? Zoe, are you there? Shit, I think the little booger dropped me on the floor and left. Zoe? Are you listening right now and just not saying anything?"

I didn't reply, but I did exhale more forcefully than normal.

"Okay good enough," Low said. At the sound of his smooth voice, my whole body broke out into goosebumps. I wanted to cry and I didn't know why, and I didn't want him to think that it was him that was making me want to cry so I just kept my mouth shut.

"Zoe, if you just want to be quiet and listen right now, I get it," he said. "But you should know that I am right outside if you want to be silent to me in person."

I took a deep breath.

"You can either come out to me," Low said, "Or I can come in to you. Or, you know what? We can just stay right here on the phone. It's up to you."

"Here's good," I said in a small voice. I felt like my feet had been nailed to the floor.

"Then we'll do it your way," Low said. "As long as you're listening, I don't care."

"I am."

"Then I want you to hear this. I'm sorry."

The tears that had been threatening started to fall. I squeezed my eyes shut. "It's not your fault."

"It is."

"Not totally."

"But mostly?"

I smiled through my tears. "Okay. Mostly."
I could hear the relieved grin in his voice. "I was careless. I never wanted to be in the fucking spotlight like this. I got all pissed off and resentful when I should have been dealing with it like a grown-up. All I ever wanted was to make sure I never hurt you, but I did. By being careless."

"What happened?" I asked, in a strangled, whispered sob.

"I got hacked and they stole all the pictures off my phone. Apparently, I made it super easy by not locking down my Wi-Fi, though my manager said even that might not have really stopped them."

"Shit, did they steal anything else?"

"You mean like bank shit and my social security number?" he laughed. "No, they only got what was important to me. Those pictures of you."

"Oh," I said. I looked down at my toes. "So what happens now?"

"Well, I have an idea about that, actually, but, um, there are a couple of kids playing across the street and I feel a bit like a giant pervert just sitting in the car here."

I laughed. "You can come in."

I heard his door slam both through the receiver and outside my front window and the sound of his rushing footsteps running up my walk made my heart squeeze tightly in my chest.

I threw open the door just as he was raising his fist to pound on it. "Oh," he said, startled.

The sight of him like this, all undone, his hair messy and falling in his face, his eyes deeply shadowed with worry, tugged at my heart even more. I opened the door and resisted the urge to cup his face in my hands and kiss those worry lines until his forehead was smooth.

"Are you going to let me in?" he wondered. He sounded unsure.

I smiled and stepped aside. He grinned his thanks and then shoved his hands into his pockets. I hated that he didn't feel like he was allowed to kiss me hello.

"You said you had an idea of how to fix this," I reminded him. "What is that?"

He took a deep breath. "It's a good idea," he began.

"The fact that you're trying to convince me at the outset isn't doing much for my confidence."

"Fair enough. I just want you to keep an open mind. I mean...it's nothing you haven't, um, done before. It's just...doing it differently."

"You're being deliberately mysterious."

"I'm sorry." He stood up straighter. "Zoe, I want you to be in the next campaign with me."

My mind sputtered out like a stalled car. "Campaign?" I said dully, like the word was completely foreign to me.

"The fucking perfume is so damn popular that they want to expand the line. That was what was in that paperwork I told you I was signing. They want to do an expanded campaign, men's line and women's line. And I told them I wouldn't sign unless you were the face of the women's line."

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Shock met excitement and exploded into disbelief. "Are you kidding me?"

Low shook his head and even before he said it I knew he was telling the truth. "I'm absolutely not. And you'll get paid a buttload of money, let me assure you."

The disbelief was solidifying. "But I'm not a model."

He shrugged. "Neither am I! But here we are."

"Why they heck would you even think I wanted this?"

"Because you like it when people look at you?"

"When you look at me, Low. Not people."

He closed his eyes for a moment as if to center himself, and then opened them again, and fuck that amber color was going to be my undoing. "I know. But that ship has sailed. Everyone is looking at you right now." His voice trembled slightly as he begged me with his eyes. "Zoe, this is your chance to take what just happened and turn it into an opportunity. Don't lie back and let the bastards on the Internet define who you are
for
you. Fucking show them what a smart, fierce, savvy girl you actually are. Take it from me, I fucked up my moment by refusing to take it. I was too caught up in what I thought I was to realize what I'd actually become."

He spread his hands. "Okay, sure, fine then. I'm a fucking model now, as well as a drummer and a brother and a friend." Then he lunged forward, grabbing me by the hand and squeezing. "You keep telling me this isn't real, but baby what else is it? This is your life, no matter how unbelievable it's gotten. I love you and I'm not going to let you make the same mistake I did," he said.  "You need to take this."

"Wait, what did you say?"

He grinned. "You need to take this?"

I smacked him in the arm. He felt so damn good under my hands. "No, before that, asshole."

His grin widened. "I love you. Didn't you know that?"

I blinked and realized that I did.

But then his easy grin fell away. "There's no escaping it. You are in the public eye now. It's time to seize it. These pictures are exactly the kind of free press we need to grab ahold of, Zoe. Your face is recognizable now, so you're the perfect spokesperson for the fragrance. We're in this together now. I'm even naming the fragrances for us, one for you, one for me."

I looked up at him, feeling myself yielding. "What's yours called?"

He grinned. "Careless."

I burst out laughing. "And what about mine?"

He kissed me for a long, long time before he told  me. "Fearless."