Page 66 of Crocodile Tears
Dove
It took a great force of will to unfold myself from Deacon’s arms in the morning. Waking up next to him was a new kind of bliss. I awoke to a beautiful sunrise as I hastily donned my work boots and grabbed an iced coffee from the fridge, leaving Deacon to sleep in as I dashed off to start work for the day. I skipped up the hill toward Mom’s house to grab my radio, humming an old Lucky Role tune as I went.
But when I wandered up the front porch into the kitchen and saw my family anxiously gathered, whispering frantically to each other, I knew ready or not, the blissful bubble had burst.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Whoa!” Finch exclaimed, holding her arms out wide and preventing me from seeing the newspaper behind her.
I tried to peer around her to the kitchen island, and she lifted on her toes, raising her arms like a basketball player guarding me. “What are you doing?”
“Softening the blow,” she replied with a grimace.
“Oh god, what happened?” I skirted around her and shot forward to see a cluster of newspapers and laptops and phones all strewn across the marble . . . all of them with photos of me.
Photos ofus—Deacon and me.
On the beach, the red carpet, the zoo, stolen looks and glances between us that were meant to be used to promote the conservation trust but instead were twisted and morphed to make it look like dates. And the way I looked at him . . . it was so obvious I was completely in love with him, meanwhile every single photo, he was looking away, split-second moments that made it look like a completely different situation than it actually was—as if I were a deranged fangirl and Deacon a cold, detached heartthrob.
The first headline read, “Deacon Harrow Caught Cheating on Girlfriend Ivy Blanc with Zookeeper.”
“What the hell is this?” I screeched, grabbing Mom’s phone and flicking through more images. “Did you Google alert my name? Oh my god, there are hundreds of articles! Why would they print this?”
Horrified, I scrolled through more headlines:
“Bad Boy Deacon Harrow Caught in Another Cheating Scandal.”
“Deacon Says He was Manipulated into an Affair. Is He Being Blackmailed?”
“Hope for the Normal Girls, Even Zookeepers Can Snag Movie Stars. Take this Test to see if your Star Sign is Ready for True Love.”
“Meet the Other Woman: Everything You Need to Know About the Zookeeper Deacon is Keeping on the Down-low from Ivy.”
“Deacon’s Secret Baby with Zookeeper. Ten Baby Names for Deacon and Dove’s Future Brood.”
“It’s not true,” I spluttered, looking between my siblings and Mom. “He and Ivy were never even a thing. Oh my god.” I kept scrolling, seeing all these op-eds about me.
“Who is Deacon Harrow’s New Mistress?”
“Mistress?” I balked. “They didn’t even get my name right! Who the fuck is Duck Loblin?”
“This one says you’re thirty-seven.” Wren showed me her phone. “They’re calling you a cougar.”
“Not helping, Wren,” Finch said, pulling Wren back behind her.
“It’s all lies,” I insisted, searching through the article. “People can’t seriously believe this. It will go away, won’t it?”
“Dove.” Hawk scrubbed a weary hand down his face. “We’ve decided we need to hire a security team for everyone’s safety.”
“What?” I glared at them. “On the island? On the off-season? That’s ridiculous. This is just?—”
“These are only the headlines,” Hawk started. “You’ve been getting a lot of hate from these articles, too, and you’ve seen what fans of Deacon are like. They hired a private yacht to camp out at the zoo in hopes of seeing him for crying out loud!”
“They were only there for a couple days and then they gave up,” I pushed, folding my arms tightly to keep my limbs from shaking. I tried to put on a brave face, but I could feel the entire world crumbling around me.
“It’s not just jealous teens, hon,” Mom added gently, her whole face creased in pity. “It’s?—”
“Death threats,” Wren finished.
