Page 96 of Hero's Prize

That caught her off guard. “Why did I do what?”

“Yesterday, Ella. Why? I mean, it ended up being fine, but it could’ve gotten out of hand.”

Ella rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He slid forward to the edge of the couch and looked up at her. “Look, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m not mad. But you can’t do stuff like that.”

“Like what?” Now, she was getting frustrated. “What are you talking about?”

“We’ve never been dishonest with each other, Ella. Don’t start now. Caroline showed us your digital scrapbook. So, I know just how much of a fan you are.”

Oh shit. That damn scrapbook that everyone had contributed to for years. Ella rarely thought about it, but taken as a whole and out of context, it would have to seem a little overwhelming to Colton.

She could feel her face burning. This was beyondpatheticity. And it was going to make talking about the social media comments so much harder.

“That thing is a little hard to explain. It’s embarrassing. It’s sort of a joke that all our friends constantly play on me.” She’d stopped adding to it a while ago, but the gang still contributed to the group file all the time. She should’ve deleted it.

“Are you saying that’s not your digital scrapbook? It had your name on it.”

Oh hell. “I mean, yeah, technically, it is mine. I started it years ago, and then it just grew into a sort of community project from there. People in town like to keep your clippings. You’re a celebrity. It’s exciting.”

She wasn’t explaining this well. Couldn’t quite come up with the words that would explain how Lilah and Becky and Bear and even Lincoln had gone out of their way to collect information on Colton for her digital book.

Partially because they knew how much she cared about him, partially their way of gently teasing her about it.

She let out a laugh that she meant to be light but instead came out tinged with hysteria. “I’m not your stalker, I promise.”

He didn’t laugh. And that’s when it occurred to her that he’d already had that thought.

“Jesus, Colton. Is that what you think?”

He ran a hand through his hair again. “No, of course not. I…”

Now, he stood up, but the desire to hug him was long gone. Instead, she wrapped her arms around her own middle.

“I’m just trying to fathom this situation, Ella. Do you want attention? Is that what this is about?”

She shook her head. “No. The opposite, actually. As a matter of fact, I came here to talk to you about what we could do to help mitigate the stuff happening on social media.”

“If you want to mitigate it, then announcing where we’re going to be in order to draw a crowd is not the way to do that.”

“Of course it’s not. What are you talking about?”

He pulled out his phone and showed her a social media post that had been made yesterday announcing he was at the sporting goods store. “Why did you do this?”

“Dowhat?”

“Make this post, Ella!”

She felt like the entire universe was slowing around her. “You thinkIposted that?”

“We found a note next to your computer that had this account’s name on it. I might not have thought anything about that until youremployee came in and showed us the four-million-page scrapbook you had of me.”

And the slowing universe stopped completely.

Lead filled her gut as she realized he truly believed she had announced where they would be on social media. Not only that, but he thought she’d done it because she wanted attention for herself.

The irony that she’d come here wanting help dealing with people’s online cruelty, only to be accused of wanting online attention for herself, was not lost on her.

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