Page 70 of The Payback Plan
It was so quick, it was almost comical and Oliver barely had time to process it before his phone was tossed on the end of the bed. It was quite the reaction and reminded him of how she’d dodged Doris’s attempts to get her in a photograph.
And how she didn’t have her picture on her website or any of her social media.
‘Are you in witness protection or something?’ he asked with a laugh.
But Paige wasn’t laughing. ‘I know you’ve been pretty much photographed your entire life but is itsohard to believe that someone wouldn’t need to get a photo with you?’
He thought about it for a beat. ‘Frankly yes.’
Everywoman he’d ever been with had been keen to be in pics with him, Bella included. Unfortunately, some of those – not Bella’s – had ended up in the tabloids which had been irritating but something he’d come to accept. He didn’t blame anyone for wanting their fifteen seconds of fame. Thanks to his father, Oliver understood the lure of it. He just hoped they got the going rate for a candid snap of the son of a famous actor.
‘Well I guess there’s a first time for everything, right?’
Oliver thought back to that day at the WI. What had she said? That she took a hideous picture. That even her baby photos were awful. And she was the most unphotogenic person anyone could meet. Something like that.
Turning on his side, his arm and shoulder pressing into the soft padding of the bedhead, he inspected her profile. ‘This isn’t about some fucked-up body image thing is it, because that just breaks my heart.’
‘It’s not that.’
Her denial was so swift, Oliver thought that maybe it actuallywasthat. Growing up in celebrity circles where image was everything, he understood how much that could skew people’s sense of self. ‘Okay.’ He watched as she smoothed the duvet. ‘But if it is I just want you to know’ – he reached out and gently tugged her nearest curl – ‘you are the most?—’
‘It’snotthat,’ she said as she jerked her head away, forcing him to drop the curl.
‘Okay.’
She shot him an irritated look. ‘It’snot,’ she insisted.
‘Well…’ Oliver frowned. ‘What then?’ When she didn’t reply, he leaned in a little and whispered. ‘We’re in the bubble, remember?’
Glancing away she went back to smoothing the duvet and for a moment, Oliver thought she wasn’t going to open up about whatever the hell deeper was going on here. But then her hands suddenly stilled and she drew in an unsteady breath.
‘My ex…’ She cleared her throat before she continued. ‘Harvey.’
So, the asshole had a name.Harvey. That cold, oily slick from earlier roiled through his gut again. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this one little bit.
‘We were together for a few months. It all happened kinda fast and he was… good looking and charismatic and I was… swept along. For a bit. But I had exams to study for and grades to make, things I took very seriously. But… he didn’t. Mine or his. And I realised we… didn’t have very much in common and so I… called it off.’
Her palms had resumed their duvet ironing as she talked slowly, haltingly, like she was trying to pluck the right words from the air as she felt her way forward. Oliver shut up and let her even though he had a dozen questions about what she’d been studying and where.
‘The break-up was reasonably amicable. Or so I thought, anyway. He didn’t seem that cut up about it. Then a few days later he…’ She took a shuddery breath. ‘Sent nude photos and a video of me to every email address in the law faculty and posted them to online sites.’
Every atom of oxygen in Oliver’s lungs vaporised in an instant. His heart banged like a gun going off. A red mist clouded his vision.
What. The. Fuck.
‘He’d taken them without my consent or knowledge and it was…’ She shook her head. ‘Awful.’
‘Jesus… Paige.’
He reached for her without thinking that maybe he shouldn’t in this moment but it was just tooheinousnot to offer comfort as his blood boiled and his brain conjured all the ways he could make Harveythe fuckhead, suffer.
She didn’t object as his arm scooped around her shoulder, her head settling on his chest, her hand flattening on his sternum. ‘I dropped out. I went home. I…’ She whispered the next bit. ‘Made myself small.’ Her fingers curled into a ball briefly before relaxing again. ‘But only for a while. Then I picked myself up, I started my business. I charted a new way forward.’
Oliver’s gutburned.He couldn’t believe she’d been hiding all this behind a veneer of quirky bravado. He was incensed and enraged on her behalf at such an intimate betrayal even if she had managed to resurrect herself in the aftermath. So many pictures had been taken of him without his knowledge and posted without his consent that he’d become kinda numb to it. But thiswasn’tthat.
This was private and personal. It wasreprehensible. And vindictive. It was the lowest act. And Harvey the fuckhead had better watch his goddamn back because Oliver had money and time and a shitload of patience.
Also, very fancy lawyers.
