Lilly nods sadly, digesting that heavy truth in silence. She’s already down and I wish we hadn’t talked about this. It feels like it’s making everything worse.
Her phone rings in her hands. She answers it immediately, like she was waiting for it. “Hi, Mom.”
I drive in silence as she listens, but I can feel her tensing. Tightening the air in the car until it’s difficult to breathe.
“What? How many?... Okay. Okay, yeah… No, we’ll turn around. We’ll go home… No, it’s not worth it. We’ll stay away… Tell Dad and Michael I’m sorry… I don’t know… Yeah, I’ll tell him… Love you too. Bye.”
Lilly is shaking her head as she hangs up. “Turn around. Take us back to the bakery.”
“What happened? Is it your dad?”
“It’s the fucking paparazzi,” she spits out angrily. “They’re there. They must have gotten the address somehow. There’s a guy there waiting on the sidewalk with a camera.”
“Just one?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s just one. It’s one too many. Turn the car around.”
“There’s nowhere to turn around right here,” I argue. “Give me a minute.”
Lilly swears again, pressing her hand to her eyes. “This was supposed to stay private. My dad was private. You promised me.”
“It is private,” I insist. “They don’t know shit about your dad, other than you have one.”
“He doesn’t need camera crews hovering around the house.”
“It’s one guy.”
“And tomorrow it’ll be six if you go there. You’re a magnet for them. Turn the car around.”
“Jesus, Lilly, I said I will. Calm down.”
“Why do people tell other people to calm down?” she growls. “It never works.”
“Yeah, I see that,” I mumble under my breath.
She glares out the window, whispering, “I can’t believe this.”
“You’re overreacting. It’s not that bad. We won’t go anywhere near their house and they’ll stop camping outside.”
“So I have to stop seeing my family to keep them safe from this?” she asks bitingly.
I scoff. “Keep them safe from what? Having their picture taken?”
“What if they get a picture of my dad? What then?”
“What do you think he’s gonna do? Wander outside naked?” I demand, my mouth seconds ahead of my brain. I realize my mistake the second I say it.
“You know what I’m afraid will happen again,” she growls low and angry. “His brain is disintegrating. No one knows what he might do and the last thing any of us needs is to have it show up on fucking ET.com!”
I frown. “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because I’m freaking out,” she answers, her voice dropping drastically. She’s instantly deflated, all of her fire burned out in a wild flash, leaving nothing but molten coals behind. “Yesterday they were outside the bakery. Today it’s my parents’ house. What happens tomorrow? They make the connection between Michael and Cassie and that whole nightmare is brought up again? This is too much. It’s gotten too close to my family. My dad… he’s a deal breaker for me.”
My hands sweat against the leather on my steering wheel. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
“Lilly, you’ve gotta give me a chance to figure this all out. I’ve never done a relationship like this before. The fame has never been a problem, but I’m working on it.”
I feel her eyes on me. She looks at me for a long time. Just looking. No words, no expression. She’s watching me and I’m left wondering what she’s thinking. Maybe she’s not thinking anything at all. Maybe she’s waiting, like there’s something else I’m supposed to do to make this right, but fuck me if I know what it is.
“It’s not just today. It’s everything. I’m never going to like that you’re on billboards in your underwear or on TV in an ice cream cone,” she admits reluctantly. “So much of you is out there for everyone to see and do with as they please, I wonder what would be left for me. I’m not saying I want all of you, but really, Colt, you’re so out there all the time, what do you honestly have left for anyone else? What’s left for you to call your own?”
“Everything that I put out there, that’s not me.”
“It sure looks like you.”
I glance at her, my brows pinched tightly. “You’re talking about my body. My face. You know that’s not all of me. You know me, Lilly. You know there’s more to me than that.”
“I know. And I l… I like that part of you so much, but I don’t know if I can deal with everything else.”
I pull up slowly in front of the bakery. The motorcycle pulls in close behind me.
I put the car in park, my hands still on the wheel. My eyes unfocused out the windshield. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t control them. I can’t stop them. All I can tell you is that it might get better after a while.”
Lilly nods slowly. “I know. And I think if it was just me that it affected I could handle it, but I can’t have it around my dad. Him or my mom. She’s going through enough right now. She doesn’t need her life under a microscope.”