I’d read every single one of those articles. Dissected every word like they would give me a hint as to who wrote them. But the only thing I got was the certain feeling that shit was going to get way worse before it got better. If it got better at all.

Holding Huey, I wondered if our time with him, and with Nova, wasn’t running out.

Chapter Thirty-Six

RIVER

I’d walked up to Nova, scooped her up and taken her to my bed for the rest of the day. I held her to my chest for hours, neither of us saying much. I kissed her, trying to convey the swirling emotions that were happening in my head and in my chest. I couldn’t even face the idea of losing her over something as dumb as this. She seemed better than I thought, but there was a distance between us that hadn’t been there when I’d climbed out of bed this morning.

We could get past this. There would be no other option.

We lost ourselves in mindless television, and eventually moved back downstairs for lunch. We all sat around, talking about anything but the obvious elephant in the room. The neighbors messaged to say that the photographers had swelled around the middle of the afternoon, but were starting to slowly dissipate when they realized we weren’t going to leave the house and that no one was going to have an epic public meltdown. We were one-day news, there and gone, so it was hardly worth camping in front of our gates.

We went to bed that night, pretending the day hadn’t happened. But if my childhood had taught me anything, it was that pretending only helped for so long. The bad shit still happened, even if you hid under your blankets and plugged your ears.

But sometime overnight, Nova’s identity was discovered. And with that, someone who knew her father, who knew the whole story about Huey and Alana, decided to profit off her pain. If I ever found out who this “source close to Ms. Stone” was, I was going to tear them limb from limb.

All the progress we’d made yesterday disappeared as soon as the phones started ringing again, until I locked them all in a drawer and refused to answer them. Close-ups of Huey appeared, zoomed from photos of Nova and us, next to headlines of “Like Father, Like Daughter?” and “Heart of Stone.”

I wanted to smash shit. I couldn’t hide with her in my arms today, either. It was a fucking game day. PR had told us to leave Nova at home because they didn’t want that bullshit in the stadium, and while I agreed, I hated that she might feel like a dirty little secret.

My agent was blowing up my phone, and Rigby’s, but I was ignoring it. I wasn’t interested in whatever bullshit he had to say.