Page 1 of Fool's Gold

ONE

Marcus Ortega is a fucking liar.

The thought plays on repeat in my head with the crash and boom of a marching band. My cell drops to the floor, my fingers numb and the screen already cracked in the corner.

A terrible, monstrous liar, and this time, he’s gone too far.

Spirit laughter from down the beach is in another universe from where I stand, existing. Tugged along by a huge hook of grief and rage and who the hell knows what else.

I slam the car door shut, the noise drowned out by the crashing waves of the beach beyond.

Somehow, by the grace of a god determined to spit on me, I made it to the beach bungalow in Malibu without running into King Liar.

The place is shuttered tightly against the elements. The key works, though, and a simple twist has me coughing. The air inside is peppered with dust. Even so, it still smells like my parents.

I slap my hand against the doorframe, and tears prick the corners of my eyes. “Oh, god.” The familiar scent of fabric softener, a tropical candle, the lemon cleaner mix…

I stumble forward, the white-sheet-draped furniture witnesses my trek. Once inside the kitchen, I grip the counter to hold steady. My cracked phone dings again to let me know I’ve got a thousand internet alerts. A thousand headlines about how Marcus, my manager and guardian, took advantage of me.

There are pictures to prove it. My heart leaps into my throat and strangles me. In the next beat, I’ve gone from barely making it to practically choking on my own spit. How did they get pictures of us?

Doctored, for sure.

Fake news, definitely.

The reports and the social media posts, the news, all of it—they’re all saying Marcus is a predator, painting him as an older male captivated by my youth and beauty, like I’m not the one who jumped his bones first.

They all say the same thing, and none of them give a shit about me beyond casting me in the light of an innocent angel.

The stories are false, but Marcus is definitely a liar. He’s worse than the news outlets because he knows me, and he must have known how it would hurt me when I was served those fucking papers dissolving his guardianship.

He didn’t even have the decency to give them to me himself. He had his assistant do it for him!

My knees are practically jelly, and I sink to the floor with tears blurring the rest of the room in a watery wall. The media doesn’t care about dragging me through my grief and my pain with their pictures and videos.

I fumble with the phone again, sniffling and ticked off. But being pissed is so much better than feeling victimized. There’s nothing worse than living your life feeling like you’ve got a target painted on your skin.

The first few articles used stills and videos from the movie premiere Marcus took me to. One of the rags even goes so far as to show pictures of me as a kid, with my parents and Marcus, at some kind of pool party.

“Fuck.”

My throat is raw, and the word comes out as a croak.

My stomach rolls dangerously, and I scramble off my hands and knees. My gorge rises, goose bumps peppering my skin and my throat too tight. I make it to the sink before my stomach erupts. The puke burns my throat, and I close my eyes against the uncontrollable swells. My body empties every last bit of food I’ve eaten.

I grip the side of the sink until the waves of nausea pass, then turn on the faucet and wait for the water to run clear. The cool stream helps bring me back to my body. I grab a sip, swirling it in my mouth to get rid of the foul taste of vomit.

Christ, the day of never-ending shit has got to stop.

Instead, it followed me here, to this place where my dad used to carry me on his shoulders and make jokes about the creatures in the sand coming out to nibble my toes.

The place where Marcus used to toss me into the waves before I was old enough to think about what those hands might feel like if they slipped off my waist.

Fuck everything, and everyone, especially Marcus.

He’s nothing but a rat bastard in addition to being a liar.

I suck in a breath through my nostrils and straighten, pushing long golden hair out of my face. The windowsill in front of the sink is littered with dust like the rest of the house, and the cactus that was left to its own finally succumbed to neglect and shriveled up in death. Beside it sits a cracked cup with a handle shaped like a frog leg, the rest of the mug painted to be the body of the frog.

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