Page 34 of Play Hard
If I don’t hear from you in the next hour I’m hopping on a plane and coming to you
5:03 AM
Call Zora. Call me!
4:47 AM
I know you think this is bad. Call me before you do anything.
4:31 AM
Shit! Just saw the posts. Call me!
Everything was shaking now—my fingers, my head. Something had happened and it wasn’t good. Freddie was an early riser, so I wasn’t at all surprised to see the time of the messages. No, it was the urgency in them which had a wave of nausea rolling through me.
Zora’s text thread was longer and more persistent with a string of “call me!” messages beginning at 4:17 a.m. up to about five minutes ago. I didn’t bother opening the ones from Michaela or Camy, but, like way too many people did these days, went to social media for the information I needed. My DMs were a catastrophe.
“What the fuck?” I kept scrolling down my timeline trying to figure out what the hell happened, but by now I was shaking so hard I dropped my phone.
“Shit,” Noah cursed, and instead of letting me retrieve my phone, he took both my hands in his. “Look at me.”
“I’ve gotta see what happened.” My voice hitched and I continued to stare down at where my phone rested on the bed.
It was still dim in the room with the blinds closed, but it wasn’t the pitch dark of night, so everything was on a grayscale that did nothing to make me feel better.
Noah’s hands tightened over mine as he yanked me to him. “Look at me, Serra!”
I did because where else was I going to look? He had my hands so I couldn’t reach for my phone to continue scrolling. “What? You told me to get my phone and call my publicist. How can I do that if you’re holding my hands?” I sounded hysterical and I didn’t even know why. But I felt it in every corner of my body, the heaviness of trepidation. Heat seared my cheeks as embarrassment over this entire situation soared to the surface. “What happened?”
“I’ll show you the screenshots Rock sent me,” he said. “But I just need you to breathe for me. Just a couple of deep breaths, baby.”
Pressing my lips together, I tried to square my shoulders and do what he said. By the third breath I didn’t feel totally better, but I was a little steadier when I asked, “Can you turn on the light?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” After releasing my hands, he leaned over to the nightstand to turn on the lamp. The clicking sound of that action seemed as loud as my heartbeat, and I reached for my phone again.
“Here.” He thrust his phone in front of me. “This is what Rock sent.”
My heart sank the moment I glanced at his screen. There was a picture of me and Noah from last night at the bar…when I straddled his lap.
Looks like sports agent Serra Ward isn’t wasting any time moving on, this time with the sexy bad boy stunt legend who left Hollywood for a stint in rehab.
Those were the first few lines of text beneath the picture. The post was on the page of a notorious gossip outlet. Several paragraphs followed the headlines but I never got the chance to read them because Noah’s phone chimed with an incoming call from Rock. I extended the phone to him, and before he could say another word I crawled to the other side of the bed and ran to the bathroom.
I felt sick and exposed and angry as fuck! My head throbbed after I slammed the bathroom door. Dropping my forehead to the wood, I stood there for a few seconds, trying to find the breath that Noah insisted I take. But there were too many emotions going through me at this moment, too many words floating through my mind, questions battering at my brain. I knew I should do something besides this weak ass locking myself in the bathroom shit, but what? For real, what the fuck was I supposed to do now?
All I wanted was my career. Then a good-looking man came along, wining and dining me, giving me good sex and saying all the right things. Was it my fault I fell for that shit? That I believed that for once in my lonely ass life I could really have love and happiness? What was it about me that nobody could ever love me the way I needed to be loved? That they either wanted me to conform to their will or that I was simply expendable. My family hated me because I wasn’t like them, and Adrian…well, I don’t know why the fuck he did what he did. Maybe I didn’t fuck him enough, didn’t suck his dick well enough? So, he went to Lindsey Loren to get the deed done right. Did he think I wasn’t good enough to carry his child? We were supposed to get married, dammit!
And now this! Now, I was being painted as what…some type of trick bouncing from one man’s dick to the other. What the hell did I do to deserve all this fuckin’ trauma in my life?
In the silence of the bathroom no answers came, only the sobs that finally wrenched from my throat. I slid to the floor, pressing my back to the door this time, and dropped my head.
“Open the door, Serra.”
Noah’s deep voice reverberated through the wood to settle in my chest. I knew he was out there, knew he and Rock had probably been talking about me and all my drama but I didn’t care. For the moment this was my safe place. In this bathroom, alone. I was always better off alone.
“Come on, sweetness,” he said. “Open the door so I can see that you’re alright.”
“I’m not,” I replied before the strong part of me that was always forced to take centerstage could appear.
