Page 42 of Duke

I paused again. “He accused me of cheating on him at the end of the third season,” I had to stop again, because this was where things got really gnarly. “He’d gone behind my back and convinced the editors to cut footage so it looked like I’d cheated on him. My best friend Holly’s boyfriend had appeared on a few episodes, and they’d been fighting, and I’d had this whispered argument with Paris, Holly’s boyfriend, and Lane had them edit it so it seemed like I’d been hooking up with Paris behind Lane and Holly’s backs. My bikini top was pretty skimpy so it looked like I might have been topless, and with some creative editing, it looked like Paris and I had a thing. I’d actually been telling Paris what a jackass he was for hurting Holly—I’d been sticking up for my friend, and Lane turned it into this cheating scandal. All it took was some footage and some rumors.”

I scratched a patch of drying blood on my skirt. “He managed to make sure Holly saw the edited footage first, so Holly bought it, and she and I had this massive blow-out fight, and Lane was acting all hurt, giving these clips acting all heartbroken, how he loved me and didn’t understand how I could do this to him…blah-blah-blah. I didn’t realize what he’d done at first, and then one of the producers had a conversation with one of the editors, and got the story of what Lane had done, how he’d gotten the footage edited and then leaked it to Holly and the tabloids and everywhere, and the producer told me.” I blinked again, but I wasn’t crying. Nope. “Holly was my best friend. We’d been friends since we were ten. And she believedhim.She believed the footage. Paris told her nothing had happened, I told her nothing had happened, we all tried to tell her there was zero evidence of anything happening between Paris and I except that one piece of footage even the network admitted had been doctored. She didn’t care. I lost my best friend, and the whole thing happened on camera. The network ate it up, the tabloids loved it, the bloggers loved it. And Lane loved it, because it put him in the spotlight more than ever. When he started doing magazine and blog interviews and going onWatch What Happens Livetalking about us and the scandal…that was when I realized what he was doing, really realized it.”

Another deep breath. “So then I hired my own investigators, and they came back with definitive evidence that Lane had sent the sex tape from my phone to his, and then had someone else anonymously leak it to 4Chan, where it went viral…” my voice quavered. “The evidence my team brought me was incontrovertible. So I confronted him in private. He got all pissed and tried to pivot back to the cheating thing…it got ugly. We both screamed a lot, and eventually my dad made Lane leave. The cameras were taping the next day, so they caught the really juicy fall-out, when I confronted him about it again, and told him about having the footage doctored to fake the cheating scandal…it nearly turned into a fistfight. It turns out Lane had been manipulating all of us, and we realized it all at once, on camera.”

“Jesus, what a mess.” Duke’s hand laced into mine.

Solid, comforting presence, his hand warm, his body huge next to mine.

“Yeah, it was a complete disaster.” I blinked again, harder this time. “There aren’t words for how ugly it got. He…he flat-out told me,on camera, that he’d never loved me. That I’d only ever been a cash cow for him, a chance to get famous and even richer than he already was.” I made my voice as gruff as I could, which didn’t sound like Lane at all, but got across the point that I was quoting him. “‘You’re hot, but you’re a typical dumb blonde. And the really sad part is, you’re a lousy fuck.’” I felt a tear trickle down my cheek, and ignored it. “He went on a tirade. Told me I was stupid, told me the only reason he ever even considered fucking me in the first place was because I was kinda famous, and he saw a chance to make something off me. Said I had tight pussy, but that I was a dead fish, and gave shitty BJs. On camera, he said all this. Said the sex tape was the only halfway decent sex we’d ever had.”

“Jesus,” Duke said. “What a bastard.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “he was a bastard, all right.”

We drove in silence for a minute or two, and then Duke pulled off the freeway and into one of those gas stations right near the entrance and exit ramps, told me to stay put, and ran inside. He was only gone a minute or two, and then returned with a bag of snack food and a few bottles of water and a pay-as-you go cell phone. After filling up the gas tank, we got back on the freeway.

Once we were underway, Duke’s gaze went to mine. “So, what I don’t understand is how does everything between you and Lane, as crazy and fucked up and painful as it sounds, explain your rules about sex?”

I laughed. “Of course you bring it back to sex.” I’d laughed, but not with amusement. Was that really all he cared about?

Duke took my hand, squeezed it, and made sure I was looking at him before he spoke. “It’s not about sex, it’s about the rules. I want to know how you decided a bunch of rules was the best way to fix your life.”

“I was lonely. I just…I was heartbroken and angry and confused. I just…I hated everyone. I argued with my parents and my brother and literally everyone, because I was miserable. I hadn’t just been dumped or cheated on—I’d been made a fool of in front of millions of people. And I didn’t know how to deal.” I closed my eyes. “It wasn’t…it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have Lane, and I felt like…who could I trust? I couldn’t trust anyone.”

“Still not—”

“Oh just shut up and let me talk,” I said. “I’ve never told anyone this before, so I’m gonna tell it my way.”

Duke held up his hands. “Okay, shutting up and listening.”

“Good plan.” I tapped his knuckles with a fingertip, tracing the scars on the knuckles from a lifetime of fighting. “Like I said, I was lonely. But…I needed sex. It came down to that. I was horny and it was making me miserable, because I wasn’t getting any release or satisfaction. Also, I didn’t see how I could possibly trust anyone enough to date them. So I decided not to. I figured if all I really wanted was the sex, then why not just…take what I wanted? It started with one of my younger brother’s friends. We were taping a family vacation to Greece, and Quinn brought a couple friends, and I hooked up with one of them.” I laughed. “Yeah, that didn’t go well.”

Duke was warily silent, lifting an eyebrow in query.

I shook my head, laughing again. “Quinn went apeshit and the guy I hooked up with told everyone all the dirty details…more good TV that was bad for my heart and pride. The next guy was a random, someone off-camera, not part of the show, just some guy I met at a club one night. That was…better. I got what I needed, and it seemed like he’d respect my privacy.”

“Not so much?”

I shook my head. “Not so much, no. He didn’t, like, sell the story, but he told his friends, and the rumor got spread around, picked up, and put the paparazzi on my heels. So then the next time I tried to hook up with a guy I met at a bar, it got photographed. The stories went viral, and the next few hook-ups got made into this big thing—Temple Kennedy is rebounding by hooking up with as many guys as she can, that sort of thing, half-truth, half-fiction. It wasn’t a rebound; it was just me…me finally going after what I wanted. I couldn’t avoid the press, couldn’t avoid the photogs and whatever, so I started trying to be more discreet about it, going to less high-profile Hollywood sort of bars. But even then, I couldn’t win.”

“How so?”

I shrugged. “If the press didn’t find me, the guys would inevitably tell someone, and it would get out, and there’d be another story. And I just…all I wanted was to be able to have sex without it being a major news cycle story. Didn’t seem like much to ask.”

“Wouldn’t think so, no.”

“People say oh, it’s the price of fame, but that’s bullshit. I signed up to havepartsof my life televised, parts Ichoseto have taped…not every last detail. People think they’re entitled to know everything about me, every detail, every little thing I do, everywhere I go, every guy I so much as look at. And the guys, they’re just as bad. They all seem to think that just because we fucked once or twice, that they’re gonna be on the show and that I’m gonna buy them a Ferrari and take them skiing in Switzerland or whatever. Or if they don’t think that, they feel like it’s no big deal to take a picture of us together and sell it. Before I came up with my rules, there’d be stories and photos and whatever, and it always came from the guy. Like…how fucking hard is it to realize I just want things kept private? I didn’t go to a bar in Rancho Palos Verde because I wanted everyone to know who I was hooking up with. Just because I took my clothes off for him doesn’t automatically mean he can take picture of me naked or half naked and fucking sell it to TMZ. Yet they kept doing it.”

I glanced at Duke. “So that’s when I made up my rules. Now every guy signs a non-disclosure agreement. You don’t get so much as a look at my cleavage without signing that NDA. And the NDA covers pretty much all the other rules. No photos. No selling stories. No telling your friends, no telling your family. Not a single word about anything we did to anyone, ever.That’s the first rule, and it’s legally binding. It protects my privacy, and it ensures the guy knows I’m dead serious. Anyone can break a promise not to talk, but they’re a lot more likely to keep that promise if they’ve signed a legally binding document, which also means they can’t tell anyone about the NDA itself, which is a super clever piece of legalese, if I do say so myself.

“The second rule is no contact once you leave. You don’t get my phone number, I won’t be texting you, and you won’t be texting me. No stalking me on Facebook and sending me PMs or Tweeting me, nothing.”

Duke did the eyebrow thing. “That’s pretty clear cut, I’d say.” He hesitated, a moment. “And you tell them this in so many words?”

I nod. “Yup. I have a speech.”

Duke clapped his hands together once. “Let’s hear it.”