Page 64 of The Southern Submission

Humiliated. Furious. Condemned. Miserable. Regretful. Hating myself.

My brain vacillates through so many emotions, my head spinning as I take a rideshare back to Payton’s loft, knowing this will be the last time I come here. The look on his face when he read Archer’s post is seared onto my brain and flashes every time I close my eyes. I hunch forward, holding my stomach as pain lances through me from the knowledge that I caused it. I made him—the man who makes my coffee perfectly, who just wanted to take care of me, who took the time to slowly peel back my layers and take down my walls, the man I’ve fallen in love with—look like I sucker punched him and destroyed his favorite electronics while tellinghim he was nothing but the dirt under my shoes. But it was actually so much worse than that.

Through The Atlanta Haute List, I’ve written and shared some of his family’s most intimate, embarrassing, and silliest information for the world to read. I’ve posted photos of him, his brothers, and their families for all to see. I removed their privacy and encouraged readers to view them as entertainment.

I knew the Atlanta Haute List had an expiration date, that no matter how careful I was, or how much I masked my identity by writing in a plural voice, or kept my personal feelings out of the reporting, there would come a time when I’d either have to shut the site down or own up to it. I foolishly believed that I’d shut it down before someone ever caught wind of the anonymous writer behind the blog, but I should have known life wouldn’t be that fair to me.

The Haute List was my way to hold the Haves of the world—the billionaires, celebrities, businessmen, nepo babies, and the like—accountable for their actions knowing someone was watching them and reporting on their misdeeds. It was done under the guise of gossip to keep a light tone, but the heart of the site was about accountability, and I saw it in action. Once a spotlight was shown on the behavior of some nefarious person or business, they’d magically straighten up, at least publicly, wanting to maintain a good image. There’s a thread of good to the Haute List, despite all of the harm it caused. I can see that so vividly now.

The car pulls up at Payton’s and I hop out, moving as fast as I can in these tall heels through the dark front yard and up the path. I step on gravel, my foot sliding, turning my ankle in my haste and pain explodes up my leg.

“Shit!” I swear, coming to a stop and reaching for my foot.

I think I just sprained my ankle on top of the rest of the crap that’s happened tonight. Hot tears fill my eyes, this time from pain and embarrassment instead of heartache and regret. I unstrap my heels with shaking hands and hobble barefoot into the loft. I’ve only been staying here for a few weeks and it’s already started to feel like home, but tonight, it’s a reminder that I fuck up everything good that comes into my life.

I don’t have much to pack. Payton bought me a new wardrobe, but I won't take everything with me. I stuff my duffle bag with clothes for work and my necessities and find my work bag with my two laptops—the hand-me-down Gazette-issued dinosaur, and the sleek black laptop with extra encryption and a robust VPN that I use for the Haute list, not that I’ll need it with Archer locking me out. I change out of the pretty pink dress Payton brought me into shorts and my cropped I Heart Gossip t-shirt, which feels so fucking stupid now. I catch sight of myself in the big mirror over the dresser in our room and notice the hint of gold at my neck. My hands come up to the collar and I want to cry. I need to take it off and leave it after only having it for hours. I don’t deserve the reminder of his commitment and care. Of his willingness to do anything for me while I was lying to him and living a double life that hurt him, even when I never intended to. A sob escapes as my shaking fingers unclasp the chain and I set the dainty necklace that means so much to me on the dresser. I turn and head for the door, ready to leave Payton’s life for good so he never has to deal with my duplicity and damage again.

The door flies open as I hit the first floor, and I skid to a stop. Payton stands in the doorway, his chest heaving like he’s been running for blocks, his face a tangle of emotions that are so different from the relaxed smile and air ofcontrol he normally wears.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asks, slamming the door behind him and taking slow steps toward me, scaring the shit out of me. He has a wildness about him, feeling unhinged and dangerous.Feral. He’s a savage man, wind-ravaged and storm-tossed, a vessel lost at sea without direction. It breaks my heart to know I did that to him.

“I’m leaving. I’ve done enough damage, there’s no reason for me to stay.” I palm my phone to order a car from a rideshare app because my car decided today was the time to die and wouldn’t start. Payton stalks toward me and rips it out of my hand when he sees what I’m doing. “Hey!” I grab for the phone but he pockets it before I can wrestle it back from him.

“You’re right, you’ve done enough damage. I’m still not letting you leave until I say you can.”

I look at him, angry and confused. “I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have. I need to go and I need my phone for a ride. I’m so sorry.” My voice breaks on my apology, tears pooling in my eyes as my skin crawls with the urgency to be out of his condemning presence.

“You need to make this better. What are you doing to do to fix us?” he asks, arms crossed.

I look up into his stony face, anxiety racing through me thinking of anything I can do to make him let me go. Wait…I may have what he needs. “I can’t change what I’ve done, but I might be able to help you take down Archer. If I can’t win against him, you deserve to.”

Payton takes my hands as I fight to pull away, not worthy of his touch now. It’s too intimate when I deserve to be blocked from everything good that he’s given me.

“What do you mean, take him down?”

Thirty-seven

Payton

Ainsley’s eyes are brimming with tears when they meet mine again. “You need proof that Archer was the hacker that attacked Olympus. I may be able to help…” She looks down and shakes her head sadly, pulling her hand away from mine.

“How can you help?” I ask, hating her warring emotions and pain and knowing she’s struggling because she wants to help me. I love this woman and I don’t want to see her hurting in any way, despite everything I’ve learned tonight.

She sets her duffle bag down on the coffee table and pulls out a sleek black laptop that clearly isn't her work-issued equipment, and must be her personal computer. She sits on the couch and I follow, staying close to heras she opens the computer and powers it on. The home screen is simple, and the operating system is Linux, which is unusual for anyone not in the tech world. She looks over at me, but won’t meet my eyes.

“I need my phone, please,” she says quietly, shoulders slumped and her whole countenance defeated.

I pull her phone out of my pocket and hand it over to her. She activates a hot spot, connects her computer, then clicks on an icon on her laptop screen and pulls up a VPN, clearly comfortable with this process and knowing her way around her own tech and how to hide her movements online. She pulls up a web browser and types in an IP address.

She's surprising me left and right. This is a vastly different woman from the one I met at the Unicorn Café who lost her shit over a temperamental laptop with a screen of code on it. Between this and learning about her secret identity behind the Atlanta Haute List, I don’t even know her, it seems. The address loads a white password-protected screen and she quickly types in her credentials, which are both hidden. It opens a storage site that she navigates through with ease, pulling up a folder and opening a backup copy of a website with a resource library on the left, a navigation screen across the top, and a blog feature in the middle where the meat of the website obviously lives. It’s a copy of The Atlanta Haute List.

My knee-jerk reaction is to delete it and remove the code so it’ll never be created again, but I refrain and let her show me what she wants to. In the end, it’s something that could change everything.

Thirty-eight

Ainsley

Payton stares at the backup of my website and I shake silently, blinking back tears as I wait for him to throw my laptop at the wall. It was one thing to see a post that Archer had clearly written calling me names and outing me as the woman behind the site, and another for me to admit it and show him proof. I expect him to turn on me in his rage. I know he’s capable of violence after his encounter with Archer. He can be cold and brutal when he wants to be.

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