Page 95 of Fight For Me

“What was the big hold up?” he asks, ignoring my statement. “That was the part I couldn’t quite figure out. It was so clear you were desperate to keep it under wraps. What, you afraid her parents were gonna get pissed? Older guy, trusted family friend. Perfect position to take advantage of their young daughter—”

“Fuck you.”

“Or was it your family you were worried about?” He sounds smug, knowing, and I don’t like it at all. “Scared the precious Ransomes will turn on you? It’s not like you’re really one of them, right?”

The fingers gripping my phone are starting to ache, I’m squeezing it so hard. I feel exposed and vulnerable as hell, and that’s only making me angrier. I hate that there’s even a sliver of truth in his words. How did such a total dick get any kind of insight into my feelings?

Maybe that’s what happens when you have access to hours and hours of footage of a person. God, this show was such a mistake.

“What the hell do you want, Scott? I’m not really interested in listening to you spout a bunch of bullshit.”

He laughs softly. “Bullshit. Sure. If it’s all no big deal, I guess you won’t care about the rest of the footage.”

A day ago, I would have thought he was bluffing, but he’d proved me wrong tonight. Scott is far more dangerous than I ever realized. I hadn’t been nearly as careful as I thought and the idea that he might have more—might have something worse—makes my heart thud. “What footage?”

“Why don’t I send a few clips over,” he says easily. “Let you see for yourself?”

An icy chill sneaks up my spine. “Just tell me what— ”

“I want that contract signed, Warner. You get your girl to agree to another season and none of this ever has to air.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he says, sighing like I’m a small annoying child he doesn’t want to deal with. “This is called negotiation. So take a look at the clips, and you can decide for yourself how you want to proceed.”

The line goes dead. The fucker hung up on me. My phone dings a second later as the messages come through and my heart is pounding out of my chest when I click on the attached video.

It starts in Miami. They didn’t manage to get footage of us rushing back to the villa, or making out like teenagers in the foyer. What I see actually seems worse—a night vision camera recording me carrying a sleeping Alex back to her room later that night. I’m bare chested and she’s wearing my dress shirt. It’s painfully obvious what happened.

After they saw us kissing on the beach and then running off together, they must have had a pretty good idea what was going on. No doubt Scott had one of the camera guys waiting up in the villa for one of us to emerge from my room.

Fuck. This is so much worse than kissing.

And there’s more. Security footage from the night we snuck out. Kissing against the side of the building before climbing into my car at three in the morning. I can only imagine what storyline they’ll be able to spin with a little editing. Then there’s a shot of Alex’s bedroom door. It’s not from the stationary cameras—it seems like I was right about them not reaching down the hallway—so it must have been a camera guy.

The idea of someone waiting outside her room makes me feel sick with anger. And when I hear the muffled sound of her laughter, followed by the softest moan, my rage is so intense I throw my phone without thinking.

“Wyatt, what the hell?”

Alex has followed me downstairs and is staring at me with wide, worried eyes.

“Sorry,” I mutter, running my hand through my hair. Fuck. I can’t tell her about this footage. If she was hurt by the scene of us kissing, this stuff is going to kill her.

She picks up my phone from where it landed after bouncing off the building’s wall. “Screen’s cracked.”

I’m surprised it’s not obliterated, with how hard I threw it. Alex hands it over, her eyes never leaving my face. “You think it’s that bad?” she asks, voice strangely flat. “For people to know about us. You’re freaking out that much?”

I can’t tell her about the rest of it. I refuse. Not until I can figure out what the hell to do about it. Guilt and shame crash into me. I’m the one who did this. I assured her over and over again that we were being careful, that no one could possibly see. The truth is, I’d been blinded by my attraction to this woman. I wanted her too much, even if it meant taking risks. The problem was, I didn’t take those risks just for me. I put her at risk too, and now some asshole has audio of us having sex.

“We should have never started this.”

She sucks in a gasp, taking a step back. “Seriously? You’re going to stand here and tell me you—what? Regret it?”

I don’t regret a single second I spent with her. If I had it all to do over again, I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t have made the same choices, even with how shitty it all turned out.

“I don’t regret you,” I say. “But it was so dumb to start this with cameras around. I allowed these assholes to invade your privacy.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Pretty sure I was an active participant, Wyatt. Why are you putting this all on yourself?”