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