Page 94 of Shine For Me

He swears. “Damn it.”

“Jude.” I grab his arm. “I’m fine. You need to go. We need to take care of Mom now, okay?”

I can tell he’s fighting with himself. He knows as well as I do how much it will upset her to have photographers around here. She moved four hundred miles away just so she wouldn’t have to deal with that shit anymore. She had to rebuild her entire life after what they did to her.

Jude looks over my shoulder at Fox. “Take care of her.” Then he spins on his heel and jogs out of the room.

I feel the first stirring of relief since I picked up my phone. Jude might not be able to stop press from gathering around the front gate to the vineyard, but he’ll make sure no one gets on the property. No one will get to Mom.

Then I turn to Fox and any trace of relief melts away. He’s staring at me like he’s never seen me before.

“You’re actually going to do this, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit! You always have a choice.”

I shake my head. “I can’t let photographers come here, Fox. My mother—”

“Is a grown adult who can take care of herself,” he snaps. “Your mother loves you, June. You can’t honestly believe she’d want you to let Jimmy manipulate you.”

“You don’t know what it was like for her,” I say. The way they hounded her for weeks and weeks. In the custody dispute, my dad’s lawyers had no qualms about climbing right into the mud. They took a few small truths and turned them into something awful. My mother was having panic attacks when paparazzi would follow her. She took anti-anxiety drugs. Eventually, she stopped leaving the house all together. And that was enough for the lawyers to paint a picture of her as a mentally unstable drug addict. She had to see those lies published in magazines for months.

“Then we’ll hire security for the vineyard,” Fox says. “We’ll arrange for your mother to go somewhere else to wait it out. We’ll get my family’s publicist involved.” He takes my shoulders again, and there’s desperation in his voice this time. “You have options, June. You have resources. You’re not alone.” He gives me a little shake. “Just please, please don’t do what Jimmy says.”

I so badly want to believe him. I want to go down to the villa and surround myself with his family, these people that have finally started to feel like friends. I let myself believe that maybe, eventually, they could be my family, too. But that will never happen now. It turns out Alex was right—Fox should have never come near me.

No matter what Fox says about my options, I know the truth now. My grandfather just told me he’s willing to use my mother to keep me in line. He knows I would do anything to protect her. This won’t end with a single photo opportunity with Adam.

I think I might actually throw up.

“I have to go,” I tell Fox. His hands tighten on my shoulders. “You should go, too. You need to get the others out of here in case the paparazzi find us.” Even if I keep Jimmy happy and he doesn’t go through with his threats, that doesn’t make this place safe. It wouldn’t be impossible for some enterprising reporter to figure out where I am.

“June!” Fox sounds distraught now as he pulls me closer, his wild eyes searching my face. “Don’t do this. Let me help you.”

It might just be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I don’t have a choice. So I force myself to step out of his arms. “I have to go.”

And then I do exactly that.