Page 85 of Claim to Fame

“Let’s go home.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Dad!”

The front door slammed and Tessa’s voice rang out through the small house. Ethan rolled away from Hannah in bed, tilting his alarm clock towards him. It was eight o’clock in the morning. What in the world could possibly be so important at eight o’clock in the morning on a Sunday?

“Dad!”

He sat bolt upright and climbed out of bed, fumbling for his boxer briefs. “Just a minute!” he called back as he searched for the jeans Hannah had peeled off of him the night before when they’d gotten back to Aster Bay.

“What’s going on?” Hannah asked sleepily.

“I don’t know yet.”

He tugged on his jeans and pulled a t-shirt over his head as he slipped out of his bedroom, making sure the door closed behind him. “Tessa?” he called back. She appeared around the corner to the kitchen. “What’s wrong? Is Julie alright?”

“Julie’s fine,” she said, shaking off the question. “Are you alright?”

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Where’s Hannah?” Tessa peered around him towards the closed bedroom door.

“She’s sleeping. T, what’s going on?”

“You better wake her up. I think she’s going to want to see this.”

The bedroom door opened. “I’m here.” Hannah stood in the open door in a pair of his sweatpants and one of his old Nuthatch t-shirts, her hair a mess of tangles. If Tessa wasn’t making him so nervous, he’d have paused to appreciate the sight of Hannah in his clothing, or at least, he’d have paused longer.

Tessa led them into the living room, typing on her phone, then thrust the device at him. “It’s all over the internet.”

“What is?” Hannah asked, coming up beside Ethan.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they read together, headline after headline.

Hannah’s new man not so new after all.

Who cheated on who? What we know about the Jackson Hayes / Hannah Matthews timeline.

Infidelity and secret identities.

“The first story came out around midnight on Encores.com.” Tessa crossed her arms over her chest and watched as Ethan and Hannah continued scrolling.

“Johnny Blue,” Hannah said, wincing. “He was probably pissed he didn’t get his eating disorder story so he dug something else up.”

“What is there to dig up?” Ethan asked. “What does this mean?”

“Daemon called this morning. He said Liv and Micah have been trying to call Hannah. You weren’t answering your phone,” Tessa said.

“I left my phone out here on the charger last night,” Hannah said, lurching towards the device on the side table. As she reached it, it lit up with another incoming call, which she immediately declined. “I don’t understand.”

“They have photos of you two. From six months ago,” Tessa said, taking the phone back from Ethan and scrolling to the image. “They’re saying you’ve been together this whole time. That Jackson’s not the one who cheated—Hannah is.”

The photos were poorly lit and grainy, like someone had zoomed in on a low-quality cell phone in the dim bar lighting, but it was undeniably the hotel bar in Boston where Hannah and Ethan had so often met. The first photo showed Ethan and Angie in their usual booth, a stack ofHer Lady’s Knightson the table between them, Ethan signing his name inside the front cover. He remembered that day, how he’d signed a dozen copies of the book as a favor for Angie for her to give away to her newsletter subscribers who pre-ordered the next book in the series. The next was of Ethan and Hannah side by side waiting for the elevator, Hannah’s hair swept up in a ponytail pulled through the back of a baseball cap, Ethan’s hand resting on her lower back. The final photo was just a sliver caught through the elevator door of them kissing.

He wanted to love that photo, this stolen moment between them captured on film when none of their moments before this weekend had been, but how could he love it now? The happiness on her face, the adoration in his eyes had been immortalized on film and turned against them.

“How did they get these?” Ethan asked no one in particular.

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