Page 17 of Catch Me (Townsend Legacy #4)

A ndreas

“Earth to Andreas,” Crystal Wynters calls out from behind me.

I’m standing in front of my floor-to-ceiling windows with a perfect view of the Hollywood Hills, but I don’t take in the view.

My attention is on my phone as I read over the list Ivy sent over.

Before she cut our conversation short, I was two seconds away from asking if she wanted to get dinner.

“Leave him alone, Crys. He’s probably talking to the woman he had me hiking up a damn mountain to talk to yesterday,” Scott tells Crystal.

I scowl at Scott.

“Oh, do tell,” Crystal, another actress in our age group, encourages.

Tonight is my night hosting our monthly bookclub, which is probably why it’s a good thing Ivy had to go so abruptly.

I was too fucking tempted to cancel on all of them to take her out to dinner. Even after flying back in from Vegas this afternoon after some business meetings and a short brand photoshoot.

I move away from the window and stuff my phone in the pocket of my jeans.

Crystal eyes me up and down with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Mystery woman, huh? Who is it?”

I get face-to-face with her. “Don’t you wish you knew?”

She sucks her teeth when I move around her to take a seat on my extra long couch in front of the glass coffee table that’s now covered with bowls of chips, popcorn, licorice, and cans of sparkling water.

“And who chose the snacks for this month’s meeting?” I call out, frowning at the selection.

“That would be me,” Antoine Bennett calls out as he returns from the bathroom.

Antoine is a British-Nigerian model-turned-actor. We met a few years ago when doing a brand commercial shoot together. Turns out he also loves reading, so he eventually became part of our bookclub.

While there are more members of the club, we four tend to be the ones who show up without fail each month. Even when one of us is away filming or working, we Zoom in.

“You couldn’t have added something with some fiber?” I gripe.

“No, Mr. HealthNut,” Antoine quips. “After the carrot and celery sticks you showed up with last month, I decided to bring actual snacks everybody would enjoy.”

I glare at him. “I also brought sweets.”

“He’s right,” Crystal chimes in. “Those strawberries were delicious, too. I go to the farmers’ market to get them once a week now.”

“You have your personal assistant go, you mean,” Scott corrects.

Crystal pops him on the shoulder.

“Now back to Andreas’ mystery woman,” Crystal teases.

“We’re not talking about her,” I say sternly. I want to keep Ivy to myself for now. Something about her makes me feel greedy and possessive enough that I don’t want to share her with my friends. Not yet. That’ll come eventually because I know she’s destined to become a bigger part in my life.

“Whoa, testy already, are we?” Antoine teases in his London accent.

“You know when he gets like that, he’s like a steel trap.” Crystal shakes her head. “He’s not going to open up until he’s good and ready.”

Damn straight . These are some of my closest friends in this industry, but even they don’t know everything about me. I keep a lot of my life private.

“Besides,” I offer, “I knew you all would somehow bitch about me caring about your health and well-being, so I had my assistant order pizza. It’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

They actually cheer.

“Is it from Johnny’s?” Antoine asks.

I nod, confirming that I ordered from one of the best pizzerias around. All four of us live, at least part-time, in this building, due to its private professional security staff.

Truthfully, I live here because the building is owned by my family’s real estate company, making me partial owner.

“Cool. Now let’s get into this month’s book. I’ve been dying to talk about it.” Scott pulls out a paperback copy of Yellowface by RF Kuang.

“Man, the audiobook of this was great. From the beginning I could hear the jealousy in the narrator’s voice,” Crystal adds, nodding. She often prefers to listen to the audiobook version of the books we choose.

We fall into a lively conversation about the book, not stopping until about thirty minutes later when I get an alert from the front desk that the pizza has arrived. Antoine offers to go down to retrieve it.

While I’m in the kitchen, plating the slices of pizza, Scott comes up to me. He positions his body so that his back is against the counter while he focuses on the entryway.

I watch him out of the corner of my eyes with a raised eyebrow.

“Didn’t want to say anything in there since you want to keep what’s going on between you and Ivy under wraps for now.”

A muscle in my jaw ticks at the sound of her name coming from his mouth. Irrational jealousy flashes through me. I do my best to tamp it down to hear what he has to say.

“I thought she looked familiar,” he tells me. “I couldn’t place her face, but knew I’d seen it before.”

“Where?” My voice comes out darker than intended.

Scott notices as well, his eyes bulging.

“Just look.”

He pushes his cell phone in front of me. “It’s a podcast and YouTube channel I used to watch a couple of years ago. Dennis James is the host. I stopped watching, but there’s an episode from two years ago that went semi-viral and …” He trails off.

“Here. Watch it.”

He turns the volume down but then hits play on the video. The host is one of those loudmouth, know-it-all types who gives advice on women and relationships.

“Women swear their degrees matter,” James says, looking directly into the camera. “No real man cares about that bullshit. You got your degree. So what?” he yells, and the two other co-hosts crack up like that was the funniest shit in the world.

“Don’t give a fuck about your degree. Do you know how to roast a chicken?!”

More ridiculous laughter.

“Look, speaking of bitches with degrees, someone sent me this clip from a college graduation last week.”

“Aw shit,” one of the cohosts says while snickering.

“Did you see it?” the main host asks, looking as if he’s trying to hold in his laughter.

“I saw that.”

“Let me play it.” He can barely get the sentence out because he’s cackling like a fucking wild animal.

My body temperature rises as I already sense whatever it is, is going to make me see red.

“Hey, are we ready to get back to the book?” Antoine asks, entering the kitchen. “I’m hungry but also ready to talk about the next chapter. What happened was wild.”

“You three go ahead,” I say, taking Scott’s phone out of his hand. “I need to check something out. I’ll be back in a few.”

I go down the hall to my bedroom while the other three settle back into the living room.

Once the door behind me closes, I press play and a beat later a shaky video of Ivy appears on the screen. She’s standing on a massive stage, wearing a cap and gown. A team of university professors and administrators sit behind her, as she attempts to address the graduating class.

“T-To my f-fellow grad-graduates.” The wobble in her voice is evident from the beginning, and it sends a fissure through my heart.

Ivy pauses and tries to take a sip of water from the glass at the corner of the podium, but her hand’s shaking so much that the glass slips and falls to the ground.

A couple of the administrators behind her encourage her to continue when she tries to pick up the broken glass pieces, but that’s when she goes into more obvious distress.

Powerlessness washes over me because all I can do is watch as she falls apart in front of thousands of people. She starts hyperventilating and crying and pushing people who try to aid her away.

Eventually, she calms enough that two professors are able to help her off of the stage, while a different administrator takes over to give his speech.

The clip cuts out, returning back to the YouTuber, and rage overtakes me to the point that I can barely see. All three of them are cracking up laughing, literally falling out of their seats.

My hand tightens around the phone, squeezing it when the main host fucking intimidates Ivy.

“M-M-My f-f-f-fellow g-g-gr-gr-graduates,” he mimics before knocking a bottle of water onto the floor. The screen is awash in laughter at Ivy’s expense.

I’ll fucking kill them.

The words flash across my mind like a blinking neon sign. Rage pulses through my veins at the complete disregard for Ivy’s humanity. The fact they would use her moment of distress as a vehicle for their obvious hatred of women pisses me off.

I’m tempted to throw the phone across the room, but I remember it isn’t my phone. I need to give it back to Scott before I destroy it and owe him a brand new one.

I return to the living room, but I haven’t done a good job of wiping the emotion that continues to strum through me off of my face. Crystal watches me in concern.

Without a word, I hand Scott his phone before retaking my seat on the couch.

“Where are we?” I grunt out, doing my best to keep calm in front of everyone else. I feel Scott’s gaze on me, but I don’t look at him. I might explode on him in anger.

My first question would be what the fuck is he doing watching a channel like that? The motherfuckers clearly hate women.

But that’s actually the least of my concerns.

What’s more pressing is how I’m going to make the bastards pay for laughing at Ivy’s pain.

I do my best to put a cap on my rage … because it’s well past anger at this point. Rational or not, my need to protect Ivy is all I can think about.

An hour later I’m practically pushing my friends out of my condo. I’ve slightly calmed down but it’s only because I’ve semi formulated a plan of how to handle this.

I wave Crystal and Antoine out as they leave, but stop Scott with a grip around his arm.

“What the hell are you doing watching that shit?” I grit out between clenched teeth.

Sighing, he rubs the back of his neck. “I know, man. They’re assholes. I told you I stopped watching them. I started watching them right after my breakup with Maria.”

My hand falls away from his arm as my anger with Scott decreases. He’d gone through a very public, and very ugly, breakup with Maria Grant, another actress he’d met on the set of a film.

After two years of dating, Scott was talking about marriage, but their relationship became public fodder when it was revealed she’d been cheating on him for months with a powerful Hollywood producer.

The situation nearly completely tanked his career. And he fell into a deep depression that he almost didn’t make it out of.

“It’s been a while since I’ve paid attention to those guys. But it came to me the other day where I’d seen Ivy’s face before. I had to show you.”

I nod. “Thanks for letting me know.”

He narrows his eyes on me. “You have that look.”

My eyebrows raise in question.

“That look you got when you found out the guy playing a minor role in that romantic comedy you were in was doing some vile shit to women,” he reminds me.

There was a D-list actor who earned a role in a film I’d been on. But it got out that he liked taking women home from nightclubs. That would’ve been fine except he bragged about having an agreement with the bartenders at said clubs to put shit in the women’s drinks.

So, yeah, when he bragged to me about it like I was okay with that type of shit, he ended up with a black eye and broken arm. And an eventual ten-year-long prison sentence for assault.

“He had it coming to him.”

Scott holds up his hands. “You don’t have to worry about me, man. I don’t watch that type of bullshit anymore. I was fucked up after everything that happened with Maria. It’s not an excuse, just an explanation.”

I nod, and we high-five one another.

“See you later.”

As soon as the door closes behind him, I pull out my cell phone. It’s not too late back home.

“Who in that godforsaken city has fucked up this time?” my uncle, Brutus, answers on the second ring.

While he’s no longer our family’s official head of security, Uncle Brutus still handles some off-the-record privacy and security matters for the family.

“I need a favor.”