I woke up to the sound of my cell phone pinging with text after text. Too many to count. A few seconds later my ringtone blared.
Guess I was getting up.
Rolling over, I noted Rome’s absence from our bed. Which wasn’t that unusual. Most mornings he got up at stupid o’clock to be tortured by Kevin. Better him than me.
My ringtone stopped, then started up again. After scrambling across the ginormous bed, I grabbed my cell phone off the nightstand and blinked blearily at the display.
Unknown number
Yeah, I wasn’t answering that.
I let it go to voicemail like the—I paused to check—ten other calls I’d gotten so far this morning. Weird.
But when I saw my text notification, my heart plummeted into my stomach.
348 unread texts and climbing.
What the hell was going on?
I opened my texts and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Unknown number: How much is he paying you to play whore? I would’ve done it for free! Bitch.
Unknown number: There’s a special place in hell for a money grubbing skank like you. Satan’s gonna love raping your ass!
Unknown number: You should kill yourself. This world doesn’t need any more fake ass sluts
And on and on they went. None were nice. All were nasty and gross. Oh my god. Tears pricked my eyes as a sense of impending doom swept over me. I felt like I needed a shower to get the taint of their ugly words off of me.
My pulse thundered. What the hell was going on? What had I missed in the seven hours I’d been asleep? How did all these people have my phone number?
The muffled sounds of an argument leaked in the room.
“…care. We gotta fix this before it blows up in our faces.” I think that was Rome.
“What the hell was he thinking?” And a woman?
Rolling out of bed, I pulled on some yoga pants and a loose shirt—no bra. At this point I was so used to seeing three or four people in the kitchen before breakfast. It was my new normal. But whatever was going on out there definitely wasn’t.
I stumbled into the kitchen to find Rome, Jeff, the publicist whose name I think was Hope, and Rome’s agent, Daniel, all huddled around the island tapping on their cellphones and arguing.
I sidled up to Rome’s side, but he didn’t notice until I coughed lightly and asked, “What’s going on?”
Rome glanced over at me then put his cell down with a groan. “I think Phoenix sold me out about the ring I bought.”
“Ring?” I blinked. It was too early to piece all these crazy puzzle pieces together.
“The one I bought a few weeks back but didn’t give you.”
“Right.” I remembered that vividly.
Rome rubbed the back of his neck in agitation. “I found the ring box on the table by the front door. Remember Phoenix set something down there before he left? Very convenient that ’an anonymous source’ told a scandal rag last night that I bought you a ring. Then they asked Victoria Jay about my getting married and she told them the truth about our fake relationship.”
“Our relationship? How does she know anything about us?” I was having a hard time following Rome’s tangled explanation.
“No. Mine and Victoria,” Rome snapped. “She told the paps that me and her never really dated, it was all fake, and that the only thing I’ve ever loved is my career.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. That definitely wasn’t good.