Page 98 of Fashionista's Playbook

I opened the door. The lobby was mostly empty, but through the glass walls that separated it from the bar, I could see a phony children’s birthday party had been set up. Only instead of the team’s name and colors everything was pink and the sign read…

Pigmo.

Kari Tatum and her friends were there, wearing pig noses.

Ward pushed the door all the way open and nudged me through and into the lobby. When he reached for my arm, I jerked it away.

“Come join the party, we’re your biggest fans!” He leaned down, so that I could smell alcohol on his breath and see the powdery crystals on his nose. “I didn't get offered a contract for next season, because of you, bitch, and that shit you pulled at Clutch’s party.”

For the first time, real fear settled in my chest and left my fingers cold.

“Get off of her!” Elise flew through the door, pushing and slapping at Ward like a whirling dervish.

I glanced toward the party, to look away from Ward, and not even Kari was smiling now. Ward was so big, so close, that when he shifted, I couldn’t see Elise wailing on him from behind. I scrambled to get away, bumping into a chair and wrenched my arm from his grasp.

He reached again as I steadied myself. Only instead of grabbing me he was flung against the wall.

I hadn’t seen Vincent until that moment.

Ward officially wasn’t the biggest man in the room.

Or the meanest.

Everything happened fast. Unlike Ward, Vincent Madera didn’t waste time talking about anything. Elise dashed out of the way as he swung. Ward crashed into the wall and Vin’s fist connected with his jaw again. By the time he hit a stunned Ward a second time, security had rushed in, pulling him off.

Ward was spitting blood and cussing, saying something about me and Travis. I couldn’t hear it, could only see his red stained lips moving.

Elise was crying, reaching for me, a very different reaction from the last time something like this had happened.

Vincent wasn’t a hero. He didn’t do it for me, he did it for Travis.

Travis could see all of this.

Watching what his brother and my sister had done. I turned to her. “You told him, and he did this.” I gestured to where Tatum and her friends were huddled near the glass watching the ruckus looking like wide eyed, farm animal Muppets in Louboutins.

The scene was comical enough that a shrill laugh bubbled up in my throat.

“I never thought he would. I was desperate for someone to understand, but I swear to you I had no idea he was going to do this.”

I wanted to hate her, to rage at her, to make a scene and tell her how awful she was. But she wasn’t. She was a shell of the person I remembered, broken and afraid, and had brought it all upon herself.

Travis came into focus, reaching for me. The gorgeous charcoal Hugo Boss suit that I’d altered for him moved like a second skin. “The fuck?”

He looked toward the bar first, where the sign emblazoned with my teenage trauma still hung, past the pig-nose wearing models, to where security had cuffed Vin and were escorting him out.

“Your brother is a fucking loser convict that shouldn’t be—” Ward stood wiping his mouth.

He shut up immediately with one hard, cold look from Travis.

“What happened?” He crushed me against his chest relenting as soon as I wiggled to get free. “Are you okay?”

Elise clutched my arm now, trembling with tears still streaming down her face. “Please, let me explain.”

I quieted her with a slow shake of my head.

“Your brother happened.”

Travis balked, tugged at his collar in a fashion so much like the bystanders that day so long ago. Uncomfortable, unsure of how to proceed.

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