Page 85 of A Crazy Kind of Love
“Are you still sleeping with him? How would you characterize your relationship?”
What had Andy published? I turned away from the reporter and walked down the sidewalk back toward the building. “No comment.”
“What do you know about the other women?”
“Leave me alone.” I tripped over my own shoes, but caught myself. My hands started to shake.
He kept pace with me. “Where is Micah now?” He turned and started walking backward as his camera clicked in bursts. “Were you working undercover? Did Andy Dickson send you in on assignment? Pretty choice assignment.”
I put my hand up to block the shot, and nearly walked into a woman holding a small boy by the hand. When I stopped to let her by, he asked. “What’s it like working for Andy?”
I turned to face him. “Off the record?”
He dropped his camera to his shoulder. “Yeah. The guy’s a genius.”
“It sucks. It really sucks.”
“Are you thinking of leaving? Could I give you my card in case they need to replace you? I’d be willing to sleep with celebrities to get the story.”
I finally made it to the lobby doors and ditched the pest. I hid in the stairwell and pulled up our website on my phone. Right on the front page, the headline read: “I Slept with Micah Sinclair.”
I’d never said that. I’d never given Andy any details about my relationship with Micah, and my name accompanied a single statement, which I’d also never exactly said:“I’m dating Micah,” saysDaily Feed’sown Jo Wilder.At the top of the page an image was slowly loading, knocking that one sentence farther down. The reception was terrible in the stairwell, so I stepped into the lobby.
Midmorning and midafternoon were the best times to publish a click-bait story. The traffic on the site would hammer our servers. Andy had posted this the minute I’d left his office. He’d only been waiting for me to take the bait.
The image finally finished loading, and I stared at a picture of Micah, asleep, half-naked on his own sofa, draped in a crimson throw. My blood ran cold.
As I waited for the elevator, my phone rang, incoming number unknown. I answered it anyway. “Is this Jo Wilder? Hi, I’m a reporter from the—” I hung up, cursing the vultures. How’d he get my cell phone number?
The minute the elevator doors opened on our floor, I rushed into the newsroom and burst into Andy’s office. “Andy, how did you get that picture? I took that on my personal camera. You have to take it down!”
He smirked. “Oh, did you? Then why’d you upload it to the server here?”
I combed through my memory. Had I used my personal camera? It had been early. I’d been so hungry. I’d reached into my bag and . . . I couldn’t remember. Maybe I’d taken out the wrong camera. And then Zion had uploaded everything. Everything.
I had to sit down. Dizzy. “You can’t publish that, Andy.”
“It was that or we run the story on Eden. You chose that story.”
I balled my hands into trembling fists. “You have to pull it”
He sat down. “No. I don’t.”
He didn’t understand. How could he? I hadn’t explained it right. “Andy, I’m not just sleeping with Micah. I’m not one of those girls. We have something really special, and this is going to ruin everything. He’s going to think—” My hand flew to my mouth as I realized how this story would distort my intentions with Micah all along
Andy closed his eyes and shook his head. When he looked at me again, I thought I saw pity. “Go read the article, Jo. Tell me if you really believe all that when you’re done.”
Zion waited for me outside Andy’s office. “Josie? Are you okay?”
“Zion, what did Andy write?”
He laid a hand on my arm and looked into my eyes. “Remember what Andy does, okay? It might not be so bad.”
I pushed past him to my workstation and powered up my laptop. The story loaded, and I started reading. Under the giant picture I’d taken, the statement I’d allegedly made was followed by:Has Ms. Wilder gone “undercover”? The photo she submitted (above) gives us a fly-on-the-wall view of a morning-after with Micah Sinclair—although as documented below, this is hardly a unique perspective.
Several smaller images scattered down the page. It was a collection of tales. A collection of cautionary tales. Each had a small paragraph to the left or right.
Micah used me for sex when he toured in France. Yeah, the sex was amazing. But he left me behind when the tour ended.
