Free Web NovelChapter 17: How Long
I woke up to my phone already buzzing.
Amara had posted at six in the morning. A carefully lit photograph of herself in her hospital bed, her injured leg wrapped and elevated, her expression arranged into something brave and quietly suffering. The caption read: Trying my best to recover while someone else steps into my place. But I believe in karma. I believe in my fans. Thank you for always standing by me.
That was all she needed to say. Her fans did the rest.
By seven the hashtag was trending. By seven thirty my mentions on Twitter and Instagram had collapsed again under the weight of coordinated attacks. The same accounts that had flooded my inbox with death threats the day before were back, refreshed and reorganized and more targeted this time. They had my contract signing time. They had the hotel name. Someone had posted a countdown.
I sat on the edge of the bed and read through it for exactly two minutes. Then I put my phone face down on the nightstand and went to get dressed.
Caspian was already up. I could hear him in the adjacent room, the low murmur of an early call, the particular quiet efficiency of a man who had been awake and working before the sun finished rising. I stood in front of the wardrobe he had cleared and filled for me and tried to focus on what the morning required.
I was standing in front of the mirror in a creamy low back dress with Lumière Étoile jewelry along my collarbone and I felt, for the first time in five years, like myself. Caspian came in from the other room and stood behind me. He did not say anything for a moment. He wrapped his arms around me and turned me gently to face him and brought his mouth down on mine, slowly and completely.
"Go," he said quietly against my lips. "Do your job." He pulled back just enough to look at me properly. "Make me proud."
I nodded. I could not quite speak.
We walked out of the house together, his hands on my waist. Nicole was waiting in the driveway and went briefly speechless when she saw us. That was what a married couple looked like. She had clearly never seen it up close before.
In the car she ran through the plan without wasting a word. Contract signing at nine, arrive at eight fifty, not a minute earlier. She had chosen the time with surgical precision because arriving too early devalued the moment and arriving too late showed disrespect. Eight fifty was exactly right. "The afternoon flight is at three," she added. "Be ready."
At exactly eight fifty we pulled up to the hotel. I walked the short red carpet in front of the waiting reporters with a small composed smile and answered none of their questions. Liam did not attend. I had not expected him to. In the absence of any company support I sat beside Marcel Fontaine and signed the contract with nothing but Nicole on one side of me and a quiet unshakeable certainty that this moment had always been mine and had simply been delayed.
After the broadcast, I got a text from Caspian "I sent four bodyguards, they will help you with the airport situation."
My heart warmed up immediately. In the short time I had known him, he had made me feel safe, seen and loved. He had simply shown me that someone was looking out for me, I had never felt this way. I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and went to lunch with Marcel. I had a job to do.
After lunch with Marcel we headed for the airport. Nicole grew progressively quieter in the car which meant she was either thinking very hard or getting nervous. Both were reasonable responses to what we both knew was waiting.
We pulled up outside the terminal. Nicole got out first and started managing the luggage. I stepped out behind her and for one moment nobody saw us.
Then they did.
A cluster of people in face masks and sunglasses rushed toward me with books and notepads outstretched, moving fast and organized in the way that told me immediately this had been rehearsed. They pressed in from every direction, shoving the books toward my face, too many hands too close too fast, and before I could get my footing properly one of the books knocked against my arm and the rest scattered across the terminal floor.
The silence lasted about two seconds.
"Valerie! We came all the way here for your autograph and you knock our books out of our hands! Even the most basic celebrity would never disrespect fans like this. Who do you think you are?"
I knew exactly what this was. I knew every single one of those faces was Amara’s people wearing borrowed sympathy.
"I am sorry," I said carefully. "There were too many at once and I lost my footing. It was not intentional." I made my voice as soft as possible.
"We all saw what you did. Do not stand there and lie to our faces."
"She did it on purpose. She thinks she is too good to sign for fans now that she has a contract."
The people who had simply been passing through the terminal stopped and started watching. The anti-fans read the crowd with expert precision and shifted into full performance mode, their voices climbing, their gestures becoming more dramatic, their expressions perfectly calibrated for an audience of strangers who had no idea what they were actually watching.
"Amara stops for every single fan. She signs everything. She takes photos and remembers names. She is lying injured in a hospital bed fighting to recover and you stole her contract and now you stand here disrespecting the people who supported her? What kind of person does that?"
"You do not deserve that deal and you never did."
"Go back to wherever you were hiding for five years. Nobody missed you."
The crowd swelled to well over a hundred people. Someone shoved me from behind. I stumbled. Caspian’s four bodyguards arrived at exactly that moment, splitting through the crowd, reaching my side, steadying me and beginning to push people back from the press of bodies.
I straightened. Replaced my sunglasses. Kept my face completely still.
But inside, somewhere beneath the composure and the bodyguards and the years of practice at holding myself together in public, a thought was forming that I could not stop. Quiet and exhausted and completely genuine.
How long do I have to keep enduring this before I strike?
How long?
