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The easiest thing for her to do would be to just cut ties and move on with her life. If no one else sees her with us, maybe they’ll assume that Catherine woman made it all up for clout or something.

I don’t even know what we thought was going to happen. We were so caught up in our little bubble that we didn’t realize how doomed this was from the beginning. It was always going to fall apart.

I was worried about my friends, about us turning on each other for a woman, which is why I tried to resist her. Why I held myself back, no matter how attracted to her I was.

The real kicker is that even now there’s a part of me that’s still glad I gave in. I got to experience what it was like to be with her, to be a part of something that felt so amazing. But there’s another part that wishes I’d held firm and kept myself separate like I always do. I’ve always had the rule that if I don’t open my heart, it can’t get broken.

It would have been easier if I stuck to that.

I wander around for a while longer, until my nose is frozen and my boots are soaked with snow. Then I trudge back to the cabin, letting myself in through the back.

The kitchen is quiet, so maybe Tate and Ares have gone to their own rooms to think. Either way, I go into my room and open the bag that has my tattoo supplies in it.

I always travel with them, in case I get inspired to ink something on myself or someone else. Right now my head is so full, and I need something else to focus on.

The process of setting up is meditative at least. I put on gloves, measure out some ink into my little cups, and set everything up on the heavy oak nightstand next to the bed.

There’s not a lot of blank skin on my body now, but I find a small patch on my left arm and set the tattoo gun to it.

I don’t have a specific design in mind, so I just let my hand move, pouring my emotions into it. The tattoo starts to take shape as something asymmetrical and almost formless, just swirling lines and harsh angles, reflecting my current mental state. It’s abstract, a vent piece more than anything, but by the time I declare it done, I do feel a little bit better.

I drag in a breath, feeling the way my arm throbs from the fresh tattoo. It centers me, and I hold on to that feeling while I clean up the tattoo and get a piece of tattoo film to cover it with.

I pack everything back up and grab my sketch book. Maybe drawing something will get the rest of these bad feelings out. I open to the last page I was working on, and I see some of the doodles that were inspired by Brynn. Some of them are things that remind me of her, some are designs for things I would put on her if she let me.

Seeing them there just makes my chest twist all over again, and I turn the page, trying to block it all out.

42

BRYNN

The next morning, I wake up to the sound of my phone buzzing on the nightstand. I pick it up blearily, squinting at the name on the screen. My stomach drops when I see it’s Natasha, my manager.

“Fuck,” I hiss under my breath. It would be easier to ignore it, but I know that’s not going to make this go away. So I take a deep breath and answer.

“Brynn, what is going on?” she asks as soon as the call connects. “Did you know you’re a trending topic right now?”

“Oh god,” I groan. “Really?”

“It’s local for now, but spreading fast. No one has any pictures, so it all seems to be the rumor mill, but people are saying that someone caught you having sex with two men?”

“We weren’t having sex,” I say firmly. Not when we got caught anyway. The most scandalous thing about it was the fact that there were two of them, but we were just cuddling.

“The point is that people are talking about it everywhere. Regardless of what you were actually doing, what’s being posted is what people are going to believe.”

My stomach churns violently. It’s been doing that since yesterday morning. “I know,” I mutter. “I’m not interested in having my personal life be a part of my music career.”

“I get that,” Natasha says. “But just because you want to keep your private life private doesn’t mean you’ll be allowed to. People are always going to talk about public figures. It’s how they make up for not having anything interesting going on in their own lives.”

I roll over onto my back and drape my arm across my face. “What can we do?”

Natasha sighs. “I can do my best to keep you insulated from the public reaction to things. There have been worse scandals, certainly. It’s not like someone caught you doing anything illegal or saying something problematic. We can hope that this is so minor, it will blow over. There’s always the chance another artist will get caught at an airport with a suitcase full of cocaine over the holidays or something.”

“Fingers crossed,” I say, but there’s no humor in it really.

“My advice to you would be to be more careful in the future. You’re an adult, you can do what you want—within reason—but you have to remember that you don’t exist in a vacuum, right? If you’re going to go around having… extracurricular activities, you have to be discreet about it, if you don’t want it to turn into trending news.”

“Right,” I murmur.