Love, Chloe - Alessandra Torre Page 0,82

Carter fell asleep, I crawled out of bed. Borrowed his cell and called Cammie from the bathroom. She was awake and cut me off mid-sentence, as soon as she understood the dilemma.

“Wipe your phone.” She spat out the directive as if it was simple.

“What?”

“He knows your passcode, right?”

My passcode. The four-digit code I’d used since high school. “Yeah,” I said glumly.

“Remotely wipe it. Now. You can do it through iCloud.”

iCloud. The thing I’d cursed so many times before… could it actually be my savior? I winced at the thought of the last time I’d backed up my phone. At what I’d lose in the wipe.

“Now, Chloe. Before he gets every naked selfie off it.” Cammie’s voice broke through. Naked photos. My mind tripped and fell over every sexy pic I’d taken in the two years I’d had that phone. I should have known my vanity would have come back to bite me.

I cracked the bathroom door and eyed Carter’s laptop, one I didn’t have a password for. “Can you do it? I’m at Carter’s.”

She jumped into action and a few minutes later, my phone, wherever it was, had been completely erased. I would have the headache of paying for a new phone. But the satisfaction of not having to call Vic? To not go crawling back to him, hand out, asking for it back? That was worth it. That felt better than anything else.

That night, for the first time all week, I slept soundly.

A woman in New York City couldn’t survive without a cell phone. It was a fact. Especially not a woman working for Nicole Brantley. My old self would have marched into the closest Verizon and walked out with a shiny new phone. My new self had to wait three days for my phone insurance to ship out a refurbished replacement. My new self agonized over the two-hundred-dollar fee. I hated Vic a little more with every inconvenience caused.

My job probably wouldn’t have survived the three-day period if not for the set walkies—a giant radio that hung on my hip, a cord running from it up to an equally sexy headpiece that Nicole insisted I wear. I looked ridiculous but could hear Nicole’s voice loud and clear when she barked. And she barked constantly. It turned out pregnancy was hell on a bitch’s hormones. Her taste buds had gone crazy too. She’d been demanding the weirdest food. Olives, coffee-flavored ice cream, feta cheese, and banana popsicles. Try and track down banana popsicles. It was impossible. I called seventeen stores before she decided she’d rather have cherry.

There was one benefit of the constantly affixed headgear. I could tune into the general set chatter, which was usually snooze-worthy except for today, when a PA mentioned that Victor Worth was on set. I immediately ducked into Wardrobe and hid, my butt settled down behind racks of clothes, my fingers picking absentmindedly through the fabrics. I was stuck there for the forty-five minutes it took for word to finally circulate that he’d left.

When I returned to Nicole’s trailer, there was a box for me, too big to hold just a phone, and I growled a little under my breath. I ripped at the ribbon with angry hands, the white lid yanked off to reveal the purse—a Balenciaga City Bag—black, with a card hanging off one strap. I flipped open the card, steeling myself for the message, ready for something sexual and inappropriate, as was Vic’s style.

This one zips shut. Better for not losing things.

I had to roll my eyes at that. Peeking in the bag, I spied my phone.

So he had returned it. No face-to-face meeting required, no lording the phone over me in exchange for contact.

Call me paranoid, but I didn’t necessarily want it back. Not when it had been in his hands. Not when he could have gotten his geek squad to do God-knows-what to it. Tracking software? Keylogger programs? Remote access? Probably all of the above. I opened up the lid to the trash and ditched the phone, hearing the thud of it hit the bottom. One problem solved.

The bag … I ran my hand slowly over the supple leather, its clean and beautiful lines. Then I opened an upper cabinet and pushed the bag inside, hiding it behind all of Nicole’s junk. There was a limit to pride, and it stopped at insanity.

77. The Thing I Didn’t Want to Talk About

Parents. The one word no relationship needs. Carter said it and I took my time chewing my bite