Page 76 of Away We Go

“And you,” Frieda adds, breaking eye contact with the screen to glance at me for the briefest of seconds.

I gulp and feel Nicky stiffen next to me.

“Me?” I squeak.

“Can you kill it?” he barks in a tone that has the hairs on my neck standing on edge.

She waves her phone at him, her flushed cheeks and eyes saying, ‘I warned you about this!’

“It’s too late,” she says. “They’ve got too much on you two to hold back.”

My eyes bounce between them like I’m watching a tennis match.They have too much about the what now?

“Send it to me,” Nicky instructs her.

A moment later, he looks down at his phone, his lips thinning at what he sees there.

“See what you can do.”

She nods and starts tapping on her screen, the click-clacking of her fingernails doing little to ease my anxiety.

“What’s going on?” My voice is wavering and I bite down on my lower lip to centre myself.

“You know how Frieda was concerned about all the gossip about us and we agreed to stay away from each other in public?”

I nod. Of course I remember. The online commentary that followed ourdance-gatein Miami was still haunting me.

“Well, those articles we could write off as idle gossip,” he explains. “But now it seemsTMZbelieves they have enough to expose our relationship to the world.”

“But we aren’t in a relationship.”

His lips twist. “I know.”

“But…?”

He hands me his phone. “Here. This is what they are going to print.”

I look down at the press release on the screen in front of me, a wave of uneasiness rippling over me as I read the headline:

RACING TO LOVE

“What the—?”

“Just keep reading.”

My stomach sinks to my feet as I read the article detailing our supposed secret relationship that has moved from casual dating to me living with him.

“They think we’re living together?” I gasp.

His lips twitch. “Well, we kinda are.”

“But they can’t know that for sure. And it’s not like that!”

My cheeks are on fire at the thought of the entire world (or those who pay attention toTMZ), thinking we’re living together. Sleeping together. I close my eyes and say a small thank you that my parents have no desire to spend time on the world wide web.

“They have a ‘source’ who confirms you’re living in Nicky’s house,” Frieda speaks up, her eyes still glued to her phone. “And then there are the photos.”

Photos?

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