Page 95 of Work It Out
November 11
Hollywood Tattler
Together Again?
“…they’re ready to give their love another shot.”
Samuel was a rock star. By the time Rayah landed in Indy, he’d arranged for a car to pick her up, the driver waiting with his tablet sign in baggage claim. He’d even emailed her hotel reservations to her attorney’s office and had a new phone couriered there as well, already activated to her number. If he weren’t such an amazing trainer, he’d make a great PA.
Unfortunately, someone (probably her father) had also leaked her personal phone number. Calls and texts streamed in by the hundreds, until Rayah had been called enough variations of “scheming whore” for one day and shut the damn thing off.
She spent hours and hours at Kingsford’s office, prepping for a hearing in two days. Normally, it would’ve taken longer to find herself in front of a judge, but her case had made national headlines the first time around and was garnering even more attention now that a celebrity was involved.
By the time she’d checked into the hotel—one of those extended-stay places for people who’d be stuck where they were for longer than they wanted—she was too tired, too heartsick, and frankly too scared to turn on her phone and check her messages.
There would be something from Jake. As angry and confused as she’d been that morning, she knew something must’ve happened. He’d never leave her without a word. Angry was better, safer than the other thing she’d felt. But tonight, alone in her rented room, she couldn’t fool herself any longer. She was scared because her heart was breaking. It had been broken so many times over the years, by the death of her mother and her father’s general douchiness, by shattered dreams and a cruel predator. They’d all hurt, but she’d stitched herself back together and pressed on.
Everything with Jake felt different, sharper, deeper. Living in their bubble these past months had been a fantasy. No worry about when he’d go back to his hectic life in a whole other state. No talk about how long-distance never worked or how her past could wreck his future. Unfortunately, real life had snuck up on them with a sharp pin and their bubble was no more.
Rayah stared at her fancy new phone. All she wanted was to see his name on her screen, maybe hear his voice in her ear calling her cupcake in that silly, sexy way of his. But the pit in her stomach was a visceral reminder of what she might have cost him. And yet… A glance at the clock on the nightstand told her it was one in the morning. She shook her head. After the kind of day she’d had, one in the morning was not the time to face another barrage of hatred.
She put her phone and the room phone in the dishwasher (out of sight, out of mind?), stripped out of her airplane clothes, and slid under the covers. Even wrapped in the T-shirt she’d stolen from Jake, sleep didn’t come easily. The queen bed threatened to swallow her without him at her back; her feet were cold without his big, hairy calves to keep them warm; and she almost believed she’d float away without his arm at her waist to anchor her.
I’ll never be able to eat cupcakes again, she thought with a sniffle that was absolutely due to dust or foreign fabric softener. Tears would be too stupid. Useless. Their time together was up early, that was all. He’d only planned on staying through Christmas, if that. What would a few more weeks have meant but more heartache when they were over?
She’d stitch herself together again, learn to be fine without him.
Her tear-soaked pillow was super impressed with her logic.
…
After a second day packed with scads of questions from her attorney and endless hours of berating herself for still not having the guts to sift through the cornucopia of blind hatred on her phone, Rayah walked into her attorney’s office the third morning expecting more of the same before her court date that afternoon. She hadn’t, however, expected to find six women of varying ages gathered in Kingsford’s conference room, obviously waiting for her. She recognized them all, though she’d only met one of them. The women were different in nearly every way possible: different hair color, different eyes, different skin and clothes and expressions. The one thing they all had in common was that each had been an elite gymnast for the United States.
Rayah’s pulse rushed through her ears in a deafening roar. Her vision fuzzed at the edges even as she shoved her shoulders back and straightened her spine. She’d faced down angry mobs of Orman supporters before; she could do it again. But damn it, why should she have to here of all places?
Kingsford, one of those annoying men who only seemed to grow more attractive with age, rushed to his feet and around the conference table, both hands extended toward her. “It’s not what you think.”
She arched one brow in that ridiculously condescending way Blaine taught her. “And what do I think?”
“They aren’t here to attack you. They—”
“We’re here to support you,” Janet interjected.
Janet Dashnell had changed a lot in the years since Rayah had seen her on TV, representing the U.S. at the Olympics. She was older, her body softer, more rounded. Janet had taken the spot the shit disturbers of the media had conjectured would’ve been Rayah’s had she not been injured—then razed every bridge she’d had in that world to ashes. Younger by a year, prettier by a mile, and quite honestly more talented, Janet had always been the shoo-in. But such was the way of the sharks who masqueraded as journalists. What made Janet’s words so surprising was that she’d also been one of Orman’s staunchest supporters, and Rayah’s worst tormentor.
“I don’t understand,” Rayah admitted. Janet’s eyes were hard, but for once that look didn’t seem to be directed at her. Several of the other women had clearly been crying, and one looked pale enough to faint.
“It seems I have new clients.” Kingsford gestured to the former athletes. “Each of them approached me at some point since the story broke about filing a class action suit against the U.S. Gymnastics Association.” Kingsford’s smile shifted from gleeful to predatory. “They’re here because they wanted to meet you. And because the DA will be here in an hour to discuss filing criminal charges against one Dr. Barry Orman. There are six more on the way. They have to travel in. Needless to say, I’ll ask the judge for a continuance on your case this afternoon, but they’re all prepared to testify on your behalf.”
“But you—” Rayah stepped into Janet’s space. Her throat closed tight. Something was breaking free in her chest, something she’d kept chained away for years, an emotion too ugly and feral to name. “You said—”
“I screwed up.”
“Screwed up?” Rayah repeated. “You didn’t fall off the balance beam, Jan.”
“I know, but I was under so much pressure to make the team—”
That something in Rayah snapped free. “We all were! We all had people behind us, demanding everything we had and more. You knew my dad. Don’t you dare pretend you were under more pressure than me. We were supposed to have each other’s backs, and you told the entire world I was a lying whore.”
