Page 59 of To Love Jason Thorn

“What is this? Someone took Olive’s pictureyesterday?”

“Keep scrolling down,” Megan said.

I scrolled down as she’d instructed, andall I could see were pictures of Olive and me from the day before. Before weheaded into the building as I was jogging to her side, me kissing her temple, azoomed in photo of her closed eyes—in a damn red circle—as I was kissing hertemple. It didn’t end there. There were the pictures of her after she hadchanged into my shirt. As my anger started to rise, I was thankful that theyhadn’t managed to get any shots of her while she was half-naked in her bra, butthey did have shots of me caressing her stomach as we clearly stood a littletoo close to each other. I hadn’t noticed that I was standing inches away fromher lips.

They weren’t the best quality, some wereeven blurry, but every shot looked intimate.

And blurry or not, we were beaming at eachother.

“What the hell is this? Who took these?” Iasked, only then noticing that Alvin was looking at the photos over myshoulder.

“They were either taken by someone whoworks in the building or just someone who was visiting. No one knew you weregoing to be there, and the shots are not high enough quality to be from a pap,”said Megan. “There is an article attached to it. Read it.”

Agreeing with her assessment about the imageshaving been captured a bystander, I scrolled farther down and got to thearticle.

My anger reached a whole other level. Irose up from my seat and tossed the tablet on the couch between Tom and Megan.

Everyone was silent.

“I have to call Dylan and their parents. Ifsomeone tells them about this, they’ll misunderstand.”

“Dylan?” Alvin asked from where he stood,his arms crossed against his chest.

“Olive’s brother. My friend,” I clarified,glancing at Tom. That bastard knew I was friends with Olive’s brother.

“We can use her,” Megan interrupted beforeI could even think of where I’d left my phone the night before.

“What did you just say?” I asked softly.Surely I hadn’t heard her right.

Tom silenced Megan with a sharp look. “Comeon, let’s just sit down for a minute, Jason. Like you said, it’s pretty early.I’m sure neither her nor her family has seen anything yet. You’ll call them assoon as we are gone.”

Even though I didn’t want to admit it, hewas right. I wouldn’t want to alarm Olive’s mom and dad by calling at anungodly hour, especially when there was a definite chance that they knewnothing about the photos.

I sat my ass back down and reached for mycoffee. After I swallowed almost all of it down, I got up and tossed the cupinto the garbage can in the kitchen.

“Ok, who has this?” I asked when I was backand my temper was slightly more under control.

“It dropped online after midnight. I triedcalling you, but you weren’t answering, which is why I thought I should comehere in the morning instead of waiting for our meeting. We need to get ahead ofthis and make a decision.”

“You were right, thank you for not waitinguntil our meeting. I don’t want them to learn about it from someone else. I doubtOlive has seen it either. At least not yet, not after her night out.”

Alvin coughed behind me and walked towardthe kitchen. “Since you are having this meeting early, I’ll go and rearrangeyour schedule.”

“What night?” Megan asked, looking atAlvin’s retreating back.

I waved my hand. “Just in case I missedsomeone taking pictures of me, I was in a college bar with Olive. She wascelebrating her movie deal with her friends and I was in and out of there withher in ten minutes tops. Other than her friends, nobody recognized me, so thereis nothing to worry about.”

“Jason, was that a smart thing to do?” Tomasked. “Especially when you are trying to lay low? They could’ve written you upwith a college girl if they had gotten a whiff of your scent in there.”

“If they had pictures, trust me, theywould’ve released them with the rest of this. I was okay.”

Megan’s sharp eyes were still on me. “So,what is your decision?”

“Decision? About what?”

“We have an opportunity here, Jason. It’sup to you if we use it or not, at this point. If you accept, all I’m going todo is release who she is to the media and give a short back story of how she isyour childhood friend—”

“She is my childhood friend’s sister,”I growled.