Page 94 of Hot Summer

They put her on a late-night flight back to London on Wednesday, sneaking her back into the country like you might sneak someone your parents disapproved of into your bedroom. Cas only half believed the producers when they told her the flight timing was a move to protect her. The paps, whatever amount of them there would be, were expecting her to fly out the next morning. But privately, Cas also thought they’d scheduled it like this to torture her; there was something exquisitely painful in spending the entire day being anxious about her flight—and what might come after it.

Just in case, though, she still pulled her hair up into a ponytail and tucked it into a baseball cap. That hat, paired with the most enormous sunglasses she owned, and Cas was convinced she was invisible.

The flight back to London was easy enough, in part because the Hot Summer team arranged for her to get picked up at Luton rather than having to sort out the train as a final way to avoid any press.

The driver popped his gum in way of greeting as she settled into the back seat. “Camden, yeah?”

Cas shifted in her seat. The leather was warm and sticking to the backs of her thighs. As much as she appreciated a good full-circle moment, she really could’ve done without this one. “Mm-hmm.”

“Nice. Oh, and...” He held something back over the seats, and Cas realized with a jolt that it was her phone. “Chloe gave me this to give to you. There’s a cord you can use to charge up down there.” He pointed at the floor, and sure enough, there was a bright white cord curled up against the dark gray carpet.

“Cheers.” Cas had barely bent down to grab said cord when the driver jolted the car forward, nearly sending Cas’s forehead into the center console.

She let her phone charge peacefully on her lap for the first few minutes of her journey, debating just leaving it off entirely. But then, apparently now juiced up enough to have a mind of its own, it switched back on.

It was suspiciously, dangerously silent for six and a half minutes until, finally, the notifications started swarming in. Her email notifications were in the hundreds, every single one of her social media accounts exploded, and WhatsApp was just... It’d probably be easier to delete it than try to get a handle on all the messages.

She should have turned off her social media notifications before she’d left for the show, saved herself the trouble, but, truth be told, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. The emails and texts she’d anticipated, and, okay, she knew people were probably going to be on her social media, especially if Aisha and Skye were as successful running it as they’d promised they would be, but nothing had prepared her to leave in a haze of scandal. No amount of muting or blocking would have saved her from the avalanche in her mentions.

The least she could do now was turn off push notifications, but she had to check all her apps once to clear the horrible red circles off her screen.

Twitter—792

Instagram—834

TikTok—904

The numbers themselves were wild—enormously large, especially compared to her usual social media activity—but the comments people had felt the need to tag her in...

@casmorgan is a fucking SNAKE for real

I can’t believe @casmorgan really led actual goddess @adahall on THIS ENTIRE TIME

fuck @casmorgan and @hotsummer for bringing her on this year

Her DMs, too, were an absolute nightmare.

And she was an idiot for clicking into them in the first place, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

There were hundreds of messages.

And if she thought the things that people were saying about her in public were bad... it was nothing compared to what was waiting in her inbox. But, even so, one could only be told they’re a horrible person who doesn’t deserve love, or actively have death wished upon them, so many times before it started to lose all meaning.

Cas was just about to lock her phone when she noticed an exchange at the very bottom of her inbox and she felt her heart stop.

Ada Hall

It wouldn’t have really been Ada—her phone was still locked up somewhere like Cas’s had been—but this was her friends, who had access to her accounts. And they’d been talking to Cas’s friends.

The stupidest thing Cas could do right now would be to click on that thread.

So, naturally, she did so immediately.

There were loads of messages there, usually exchanged as the show was airing, but there was a clear and pretty constant stream of communication. Cas couldn’t sit here and read them all—she wasn’t going to let herself—but she could... skim.

Cas Morgan: I know what they made it seem like in that challenge, but I swear to you, Cas was all in with Ada. I could see it on her face

Ada Hall: I... look, I want to believe you, but Ada is crushed. And Cas didn’t say anything! There were so many opportunities that she could have spoken up

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