of airport security guards. And then he came back, holding his hand out for me.
He smiled. “Hey, Tate. I’m Marco.”
He was in his late twenties: fine, carved features, jet-black hair, penetrating blue eyes—and yet somehow he managed to exude calm rather than panic, like he’d navigated this sort of thing a thousand times before. I took his hand; it was warm. His skin was soft, but I could feel the strength of the tendons and bone beneath when he tugged me forward, out of the backseat.
To my surprise, Marco didn’t pass me off to a crew of security guards. He ushered me in under the blinding hail of flashes, hiding me beneath his own coat. The airport wanted even less to do with this madness than we did, so they let us through a private security line and into a secure room while we waited to board our flight.
Nana stepped out, telling me she needed to call Mom, needed to get water. To me, it felt like she needed to get away from me and my terrible decisions for a few minutes. My eyes were puffy; so puffy I felt like I could see my own eyelids. My nose was sore from being wiped on tissue after tissue, my lips were chapped. I hadn’t brushed my hair.
I looked up at this polished, composed stranger, and his expression was exactly the same as it was when there were a hundred photographers on our trail: mouth a faint upward curve, eyes steady.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” I ran a shaking hand over my hair. “I’m great. You?”
He burst out laughing, but I couldn’t keep up the surreal joke. I felt the tears swell in the back of my throat.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I told him, voice thick.
“Of course not.” He waved like my intention was the least of his concerns, and a smile lit up his entire face. He was too pretty to be very masculine. Elfish. I remember seeing Lord of the Rings with Charlie and laughing for hours when she quipped that Legolas was the prettiest woman in the movie. Marco was like that.
“Ian has been on four major magazine covers this month,” he said. “So finding you is the biggest story anyone has on either side of the ocean. There’s no way around this circus.”
Whether we were past it or not, I needed to know. “Not to be rude . . . but who are you?”
He pressed an apologetic hand to his chest. “I’m sorry. Of course. My name is Marco Offredi. I’m a PR manager. I was hired by your trust to handle all of your publicity-related concerns for as long as you should need.”
“My . . . trust? Hired you?”
He laughed. “Technically. The trust pays my salary, but your father called me.”
I squeezed one eye closed, squinting the other at him. My thoughts were windmilling around my head. “I’m so confused. I haven’t spoken to my dad in ten years. I didn’t know I had a trust.”
If this surprised Marco, he hid it. “From my very basic understanding, all the money your father owed in child support was set aside.” He spread his hands, and the gesture opened my entire world. “The trust covers anything you might need after you leave home.”
Slowly, my head started to spin. I was a carousel, gathering speed. “Who’s in charge of the trust?”
“You are, as of your eighteenth birthday.”
“But,” I spluttered, forcing the right questions to form in my mouth, “who was in charge of it before me?”
“Your parents.”
Blackness threatened at the edges of my vision, and Marco became blurrily framed. “Both of them?”
“Ian and Emmeline.” He leaned in, his light eyes steadying me. “When the news broke, Emmeline called Ian, and Ian called me.”
“I didn’t even know they spoke anymore.”
“They hadn’t been,” he said. “Not outside of the occasional legal correspondence, anyway.”
But they were now.
“There is nothing sinister happening,” Marco assured me, maybe sensing my panic. “Your parents don’t get along, but the priority here is you. I am not here for Ian, or for Emmeline. I am here for Tate Jones, Tate Butler—whichever Tate you want to be. I work for you.”
This entire situation was a chaotic mix of titillating and alarming. Beneath the guilt and devastation I felt, there was a curiosity lurking, an odd sense of power.
Marco seemed to see this reaction pass over me. He reached into a leather laptop case near his feet, and produced a bag of trail