Page 16 of Bombshell

No.

It’s all wrong. How dare he throw regret into this? How dare he take my worst, most vulnerable moment and use it to remind me of what I need and can never have? How dare he offer that non-apology?

My hand fumbles for the door handle, and when I find it I can only seem to get the door open by throwing my weight against it. It flies open and I fall out, landing me face-first on the pavement.

I hear the driver get out of the Maybach, trying to figure out what’s going on. A gaggle of passing students laugh.

“Adair,” my father’s voice calls behind me, but I don’t want to look at him. Now or ever.

I struggle to my feet, quickly, before anyone can try to help. Even though no one does.

One foot in front of the other, Adair. Just keep doing it.

It feels like every one of the hundred eyes on me has seen my sex tape.

I have a sex tape.

Ignoring is surviving.

I survive the last, soft plea of my father to get in the car.

I survive the laughter, the humiliation.

I even survive the path ahead of me, a dense blanket of fallen magnolia petals, paying the price for their early, reckless bloom, their lovely pink and white turning a rotting yellow on the pavement.

6

Sterling

“See you back at the dorm?” Cyrus says, checking his knobby Hublot watch, or as I like to think of it, a year’s worth of tuition wasted on his wrist.

“I thought I’d walk over to Adair’s,” I reply. I’ve been avoiding going there ever since she accepted my offer to help her move—when she arrived late and didn’t need me after all—and apparently it bugs her enough she’s stopped returning my calls. It’s time to do something about it. “If Poppy’s free, you can come with.”

“You haven’t heard?” Cyrus says with a guilty, sidelong look. “She’s back at Windfall.”

“What?”

“I heard from Poppy. She came back from class yesterday and said she felt sick. So she went home. Poppy said she took half her stuff, though.” Cyrus studies me carefully. “Poppy thought maybe you two…”

“She didn’t tell me.” I don’t know what’s going on, but if Adair was really sick she should have called me. I would have taken care of her. At least it explains why her phone has gone straight to voicemail for twenty-four hours.

Things haven’t been good between us. It's true. After the wedding, she didn’t seem like she wanted to talk about what happened. I didn’t, either. But after a few days, I realized it was just avoidance. She wants to pretend nothing happened. Which just won’t work. She won’t talk about any of our problems. Not the wedding. Not money. Nothing.

If her father decides to stop paying her tuition—what would we do? I tried talking about how much it worries me, but it’s like her brain can’t comprehend what a lack of money could do to us. Honestly, it pisses me off.

She moved in with Poppy and Ava, and at first I thought it would be good for her. She would get away from Windfall and her family. But Poppy and Ava don’t understand anything Adair and I are going through. And they see the world like the MacLaines do. Poppy is nice, sure, but her idea of hardship is breaking a nail when there isn’t a nail salon open to fix it. And Ava coils herself in the corner whenever I’m around, like she might strike.

“I guess I am going back to the dorm, then. It’s not like I can walk to Windfall.”

“I have one more class, late afternoon. After that, why don’t we go see her at Windfall? We can bring get-well presents.” Cyrus has offered to lend me his car a few times since the wedding, but I’m done with handouts. “I was going to swing by my house, so it’s no trouble.”

I suspect he’s accounting for my pride. But this time, I need to see Adair. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

I’m trying to decide what kind of get-well present I can scrounge up when my phone rings, flashing Valmont University on the caller ID. “Hello?”

“Sterling Ford?”

“Speaking.”