I’m with you now. And we’ll deal with the pictures together.
Just like always, he’d stood by his words, not only by working to break her out of her panicked state by taking her into the shower and loving her brainless—but also by barely taking the time to stack his canvases in the back of his car before he checked her out of the motel and set off for his father’s house in the Adirondacks. And, just like always, he knew she needed some time to process the most recent twists to her scandalous week. Not only that there were new pictures...but also that he loved her and was clearly planning to stand by her, no matter what. Even if it meant changing her hiding place to a different forest six hours away.
At the same time, this road trip wasn’t merely about finding a new refuge so that the paparazzi wouldn’t swoop in before she was ready for them. It was also about Drake going to see his father.
He was so close to his siblings, his cousins. Only with his father was there a fracture. One she would give anything to help patch up.
It seemed telling—in a positive way—that the first safe place he’d thought to go had been his father’s house. No matter what else happened—and even if her own relationship with her mother remained a mess—she vowed to help him.
Thankfully, with every mile they covered, she felt more of that strength she’d started to build coming back. Panic had been her first instinct outside the cabin when she’d heard about the new pictures, but with Drake as steady as ever beside her, she was able to remember that panic wasn’t her only option.
No, she was game for plenty of other emotions now, including fury that the creep who had taken the pictures of her had held some back so that he could get even more money for the second round.
“I’m going to take him down.”
Drake didn’t seem surprised that this was the first thing she’d said to him in hours. He simply smiled and said, “I know you are.”
Rosa leaned over to give him a kiss, then bent to give Oscar one too. “Can I have your cell phone again?”
Though Drake immediately handed it to her, he said, “You don’t need to see the new pictures, Rosa.”
“I do.” She willed her hands not to shake as she pulled up a browser and typed her name into the search box. “I need to know exactly what I’m up against instead of continuing to bury my head in the sand.”
But, strangely, none of the sites that had run the first set of pictures had anything new up. In fact, as far as she could see, none of the previous pictures were still running either.
“What are you seeing?” A muscle jumped in his jaw, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel as he waited for her answer.
“They’re not here. I mean, there’s a story that says there are new pictures, but—” She couldn’t believe what she was reading. “But no one is running them.”
Drake turned from the road to look into her eyes for a split second. “Smith.”
Thinking the same thing, she scrolled back to the search box and typed in Smith Sullivan’s name alongside hers, then read aloud from the first story that popped up.
Smith Sullivan has taken a major stand this morning against cyber-attacks and the exploitation of women as he weighed in on the Rosalind Bouchard nude photo scandal. “If this happened to your sister or girlfriend or daughter, would you run the pictures and call it news? No, you’d do everything in your power to get them taken down and convict the person who took and sold them.” Sullivan has made it clear that he will no longer work with any media outlets that continue to run the photos.
Rosa clicked on a follow-up link and told Drake, “Evidently, the pictures were pulled from every major site within the hour. No one dares defy him, even for click bait like these pictures.”
“He always was a good guy. Fame and Academy Awards haven’t changed him one bit.”
She’d swung in so many emotional directions today. Waking up joyful, then slamming into deep, dark panic. And now, utter gratitude.
But as she read on, some of the panic rose again. “It also says they’ve been trying to reach me and my family for comment with no luck so far, but that they’ve heard a rumor that I’m vacationing in the Hamptons.” The trees had been getting thicker and thicker since they’d crossed into Adirondack Park, thick enough now that before she could read too much more, the phone lost its signal entirely. Relieved to be able to turn it off, she had to tell him the final thing she’d read before the phone had gone dead. “My connection to the Sullivan family also seems to be a big question right now. It doesn’t look like Mona’s granddaughter named you in any of her tweets, but they’re not going to have to look far to realize you’ve got a place in the Hamptons.”