Page 97 of Shine For Me

His face hardens. “Yeah. That’s what I realized.”

“Is there a reason we’re talking about this?”

Grey reaches behind him, pulling something from his back pocket. A moment later, a magazine is slapped against my chest. “What is this?”

“That’s what it was like to grow up in our family,” he says, his voice as cold as I’ve ever heard it. “That’s what it was like to be June.” He takes a step closer, his dark eyes, so like his twin’s, narrowing into slits. “I want you to think about that, Ransome, when you’re cozied up here with your big, perfect fucking family. I want you to think about how different it was for her.”

Then he turns on his heel and walks away, leaving me clutching a magazine. I pull it away from my chest and realize that it’s old. The cover is creased in several places and a bottom corner is ripped off the back. The picture on the front is somewhat faded and it takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at.

It’s a picture of two little kids, a boy and a girl, both of them with thick chestnut hair. The girl is laughing, her arms wrapped around the neck of a smiling man, while the little boy looks up at the two of them with a toothy grin. At first glance, the three of them appear to be a happy family, but my stomach still sinks in realization.

The man is easily recognizable—he is, after all, one of the most famous actors in the world—but it’s the little girl my attention is drawn to. Even much younger, her laughing face is still familiar to me.

It’s June.

June and Grey posing with their dad. A quick glance at the cover’s date tells me they’re probably eleven or twelve. This is no candid shot—it’s definitely posed. The headline next to their faces advertises an exclusive story.Leading Man to Family Man: JJ Cain’s Biggest Role Yet.

I swallow hard, a sick feeling growing in my gut. I almost don’t want to turn to the article—I have a feeling I won’t like what I see.

It’s eight pages long. An entire spread. There’s an interview with JJ, which I only skim. He talks about moving on after his divorce. About his kids being his reason to keep going even when times are tough. How they’re his whole life, and it was so worth it to take some time off to be there for them—with lots of mentions of how excited he is to come back to work on his next project, a huge budget action flick I remember seeing years ago. There are a few quotes about his regrets, how his behavior in the past doesn’t reflect who he wants to be. How his kids were the reason for him to change for the better.

I don’t pay a ton of attention to the article, though. I’m too busy looking at the pictures. So, so many pictures. JJ and the twins at the park. Playing in their pool. At home. JJ makes them pancakes in the kitchen while the kids gaze at him adoringly. JJ and Grey play a board game stretched out on a rug in a perfectly decorated living room.

The one I stare at the longest is a shot of JJ reading to June in her bedroom. She’s leaning against him, a fluffy pink quilt pulled up over her legs. Her bed is filled with stuffed animals, each one seeming to be perfectly placed in the shot. There’s a framed picture of her grandparents on the nightstand.

The quote splashed across the glossy picture says, “Fatherhood is really all about the little things. Reading to my daughter at bedtime is honestly more fulfilling than any role I’ve ever played.”

He let them take pictures in her bedroom. That’s all I can think as I stare down at the shot, bile filling my throat. He didn’t just let photographers into his kids’ home—he let them into June’sbedroom. A place where a twelve-year-old should have felt completely safe. A place where the public has absolutely no business visiting.

The kids are nothing but props in this piece. An opportunity for JJ Cain to show off what a family man he is. The poor single father, doing his best for his kids. It has image rehabilitation written all over it. The interview was done six months after the divorce, probably at a time when JJ’s reputation was suffering from Bethany leaving him—and from the scandal of his infidelity.

The film he’s promoting here did spectacularly well, starting a franchise of action movies that continued for years, and this cover story likely helped to turn things around for him. Who wouldn’t melt at these shots of beautiful, happy children? Beautiful, happy children who obviously adore their dad. The same dad who thought nothing of using them to get his career back on track.

“That’s what it was like to be June,” Grey had said. And for the first time, I think I finally understand that.

* * *

I never makeit out to lunch. Instead I leave Reed’s house and walk the few blocks to my parents’ place. I end up in my old bedroom where I go straight to the desktop computer and open a search engine. A few seconds later, I’m looking at a string of results, every one of them leading to an article about June’s parents’ divorce. There are so many. Apparently, this was the most popular story in Hollywood for months. Article after article detailing the cheating accusations against JJ Cain. Pictures of her mom absolutely surrounded by photographers. Bethany and JJ Cain were the It couple for decades and if there’s anything Hollywood likes more than a romance, it’s a break-up.

The longer I look, the sicker I feel. There are accusations about Bethany having a breakdown, using drugs. Stories about the viciousness of the custody dispute. Pictures of JJ with the twins after he was granted primary custody. Unlike the magazine cover story Grey gave me, these shots aren’t staged. JJ leads the twins out of the courthouse, his smile looking incongruous next to their pale, drawn, unhappy little faces.

“You okay?”

I jump, startled by the voice, and look up to see my parents standing in my doorway. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Everly told us you were upset,” my mom says. “When you didn’t show up for lunch, we got worried.”

“You don’t look great, kid,” my dad says.

I let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, I’m not feeling so hot.”

“Why don’t we go downstairs,” Mom says.

“I guess I could use a drink,” I mutter.

My mom raises an eyebrow. “I was thinking more along the lines of a sandwich or something.”

I follow them down to the kitchen and collapse into a chair at the table. “I don’t think I can eat right now, Mom.” I rub my hands over my face, the sick feeling in my gut not abating in the slightest. “I think I really fucked up.”