Page 68 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part Two
“She took a couple of tests. Both negative. She didn’t want you guys to know and freak out too.”
Otto frowned. “Why are you telling us then?”
“Because we’re family, and protecting Aviva is all of our jobs. Until she gets some form of permanent contraception, and we all get screened for STDs”—everyone looked in my direction, and I gave them the finger—“we need to be extra careful. This was a bit of a wake-up call.”
Hell yeah it was. Evan looked the grayest of us all, and hopefully the flight attendant just assumed he was airsick.
Sampson cleared his throat. “Also, I kind of adopted us a runaway teen. Put her up in a shitty hotel for a couple of months. Remind me to tell the office to set her up a scholarship.”
Say fucking what?
Otto just blinked. “Care to elaborate?”
“No. Moving on.” He dropped his voice low, like a pregnancy scare and a runaway teen were nothing. “Any word from the Feds?”
I shook my head. They’d been quiet, eerily so. When we landed stateside, I’d reached out immediately, of course, but so far they hadn’t got back to me. Whatever. If I didn’t hear from them or my father ever again, so be it.
“We don’t think that's weird?” Sampson whispered, and I shrugged. Maybe. We were powerful, but we weren’t the fucking FBI.
Evan shook his head. “It is what it is. Let’s just keep our heads down, and trust Tobias to send word if shit goes weird.”
The flight from Columbia to San Francisco was a long one. Soon enough, we’d have to fly all the way back to New York, but I wasn’t worried. I’d kind of enjoyed not having the media hounding our doorstep at all hours of the day and night.
We’d go and meet this Mitch Goetz, then maybe we’d stay in San Fran for a little while. I hadn’t been in years, and Viva had said she’d never been to the West Coast at all. Maybe we could travel down the coastline, like a delayed honeymoon.
“Okay, last thing, though Aviva definitely gets a say in this. Someone reached out to Hendrick for an interview, and when she couldn’t track down Hendrick’s phone number, she contacted the office. Do we want to do an interview? Send this whole story wide?”
My first instinct was no. My life wasn’t fodder for magazine articles. Otto was frowning too, because it wasn’t just Aviva and I who would be dragged into it, it would be him too. Hell, all of us.
“Who’s the writer?”
“Calypso Martinez.”
Otto audibly gasped. “No fucking way.”
The name meant less than nothing to me. “Wanna share with the rest of the class?” I leaned over and squeezed his thigh, but he looked excited.
“She used to be the ground interviewer for the WBRP, the bull riding championships, but she did this insane exposé last year about some big bull riding family and got booted. It was a massive scandal. The guy—can’t remember his name, Texas-rich, you know?—got sent to jail and everything.” He whistled low. “She must have branched out. Good for her.”
Sometimes, when you looked at Otto with his soft eyes and immaculate wardrobe, you kind of forgot he liked to do shit like watch bull riding in his spare time.
“You think we should do it?” I asked. “Do you think she’d go for sensationalism or would she tell it true?”
Otto shrugged. “I don’t know, man. This shit is her bread and butter, and we both know people do insane things, throw their morals out the window for money. But I heard that she’s friends with that female bull rider—you know the one I was telling you about?”
I vaguely remembered that there was a chick in the bull riding competition that Otto watched, in contention for the championship buckle for the first time ever. Not gonna lie though, I’d probably tuned most of it out.
“Yes?”
Otto gave me a look of amused disappointment. “Liar. Anyway, she’s allegedly in a relationship with a bunch of other rodeo guys, so maybe Calypso would be more open to the idea of polyamory? Best we’re probably going to get with the media, anyway. So if you want to do it, I say we go with her.”
I looked over at Viva. “It’s up to Viva, but let her know we’re considering it. There’ll be a lot of conditions though.”
Sampson nodded. “I’ll arrange it. Do we bare it all? All four of us?” He looked at Evan, because he was the real sticking point. Like Aviva, he hadn’t really signed on for the high-publicity lifestyle. He’d just accidentally fallen in love with the wrong girl.
Or the right girl, depending on how you looked at it.
“I don’t want to do interviews.” He paused, and looked over at the sleeping beauty who held all our hearts in her soft, nail-bitten hands. “But I don’t want to hide what we have either. If it comes up, I want the world to know she has four partners ready and willing to raze the world for her. But I’d prefer to keep our actual relationship out of the spotlight.”
