Page 31 of Wild Card
But despite all of that, I’ve had a good week thanks to the last man on earth I expected. Now I’m just trapped somewhere between hate and hope. So when I see a text from him, I feel the tension of those two emotions rising in my chest.
TOBIAS:
Can I stop by your place after practice tonight?
Sure. I can make dinner and you bring the rosé?
I grin at my phone. I know I shouldn’t let myself get carried away. This has to end eventually, and it needs to happen in a way we can both still be friends. Which will be difficult if I let any kind of feelings be involved. So it has to be just sex. Us both needing a release and weirdly being a good match for each other in that particular space.
TOBIAS:
Okay. See you in a couple hours.
* * *
When he getsto my place that night, he’s not all smiles and charm like he usually is. He looks tired—exhausted really—like he’s been run ragged.
“Rough practice?”
“Rough day.”
“Well, I’ve made dinner. I wasn’t sure what you’d want or what you eat after practice but—”
“That’s sweet of you. It looks amazing. But… We should talk first.”
The tone of his voice makes a pit form in my stomach, and I set things back down on the counter to look at him.
“Okay,” I say softly, studying his face and realizing it’s more than just tiredness there. I feel like the conversation I’ve been dreading is here. I’d been prepared for it, reminding myself over and over that this is how it ends. Although it’s weird that he’d agreed to dinner when he knew it was coming.
“You should sit down. I have to tell you something, and I don’t know how.” He nods to the dining chair, but I refuse it.
“I’m good.” I shake my head. “And you can just say it.” I urge him on.
I’m not going to fall apart just because he’s not interested in me anymore. A bit ridiculous that his ego is so big he thinks I would.
“Okay. Your choice.” It’s a gruff dismissal, but he scrubs a hand over his face like he’s trying to recenter himself. “I got a call from my publicist today, and then my agent. Word is out that a tabloid has a video of me and a woman.”
“Okay.” I frown, trying to make sense of this and why he’s telling me.
He looks up at my face and he must see the confusion. “A sex tape. They have a sex tape of me.”
“Oh fuck.” I gasp. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”
I’m trying to wrap my head around this discussion when I’d been expecting another one entirely. Now I can understand why the anxiety had been rolling off him ever since he came through the door.
“The implication being that it was a video pulled or hacked off a cloud. You and I used the record feature a few times, remember?”
It suddenly comes back to me. Because in all my confusion I’d forgotten that we’d used his phone to record us. I see flashbacks of the other night. The things we’d done. The things we’d said. I imagine all of that going viral on the internet. Click after click. View after view, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
“Fuck. Sit down. I knew this wasn’t going to go well, but I couldn’t just not tell you. I couldn’t put it off anymore either because they’re going to release it any day now. I don’t know when, but that’s not how I wanted you to find out.”
“Are you sure it’s real? That it’s us?” I start bargaining with the possibility of this kind of fate, hoping that there’s some way out of it. By the look on his face, I’m not the only one.
“I hope they’re lying. Bluffing because they want a comment or to trick me into a bigger story, but I don’t know. It really sounds like they have it. It’s the only thing that was on my phone recently.”
I sink into the chair. The room feels like it’s spinning. I imagine everyone I know seeing that video. Harper. Xander. My family. People I work with.
Oh my god.
