Page 108 of Worth Every Game

“Kevin’s guitar,” she says, tapping the instrument.

“Okay,” I say, not understanding, my mind still whirring with everything that happened last night. Kate stayed for an hour or so before leaving me to go back to Nico’s party. She tried not to talk about Jack, but inevitably he came up, and Kate staunchly defended his position, claiming he would never have shared the pictures. It still doesn’t answer the question of how it happened, but Kate had no explanation for that one.

“Yours until you get your stuff from Jack,” Marie continues, still tapping the guitar. “You might as well make the most of all this heartache.” She waves at my face, which I didn’t even wash last night. There must be mascara all over me. “Get the creative juices flowing.”

A lump rises up my throat and I swallow around it. “I can’t…”

“Course you can. It’s what any self-respecting musician would do. Use the pain. Plus, I’m not going to sit around comforting you. I don’t have time, for one. And for two… it makes me uncomfortable. I’m not Kate. And three, I agree with Jack so I don’t have any sympathy. You have to let this shit slide right off. If it were up to me, I’d send you right back to him.”

The mention of Jack’s name crushes me.Will I ever be able to hear it without that happening?“You don’t get it.”

“Oh, I do. I get that having naked photos leaked really,reallysucks. But you look smoking hot in those pictures.” I cringe, and Marie raises her eyebrows. “Sorry. But I couldn’t not check them out, could I? And maybe Jack’s right, they might actually work in your favour. You don’t know that this is all bad. I also don’t believe he did it deliberately. Accidentally, maybe.”

“He lied. He said he’d deleted them.” I sigh, more to stifle the onset of tears than for any other reason. “If it weren’t for him, none of this would ever have happened.”

Marie has the decency not to deny this, and we sit in silence, letting the comment hang in the air.

“He’s done good stuff too, though, hasn’t he?” Marie argues. “I watched the video of you singing with Amy. I mean, fuck, you sang with one of the world’s biggest music stars. Without Jack, would you have done that?”

The inside of my nose begins to sting. “Yes. I was going to sing at Nico’s anyway. I was always going to do that.”

Marie arches a brow that’s been dipped in scepticism, and I slump under its weight. I only agreed to sing at Nico’s because of Jack. Because I’d overheard him insulting me.

“But you wouldn’t have put it online, would you?” Marie asks. “There would be no way for anyone to identify the singer as you if not for Jack setting up all your social media crap. Now you can be tagged whenever someone films you.”

I grunt in acceptance. That much is true, but it doesn’t feel like a good thing. I’d rather be unknown, unavailable, unsearchable. No hashtags here, thank you very much.

Marie nods like she thinks she’s made a very valid point. “I get that you’re pissed he pushed you outside your comfort zone, but you should be thanking him. There’s no growth in the comfort zone. You could spend your whole life there and convince yourself you’re okay because it doesn’t feel too bad. It’s ‘comfy’.” She twitches her fingers in air quotes. “But really… part of you is dying in the comfort zone. It’s where dreams go to die.”

“I thought that was the Marchmont,” I grumble.

“That’s where they bury the bodies,” she says with a chuckle.

But I can’t share her amusement. I press a hand to my heart, attempting to soothe the ache of all thesefuckingpeopletelling me how to run my life. “I preferred you last night when you said nothing.” I groan. “This isn’t growth. This is painful. It feels like part of me is dying right now. Maybe you should burymein the Marchmont.”

Marie lets out an extended breath. “I’m not trying to say this isn’t horrible… being exposed that way sucks, and people slut-shaming you is shitty. It’s always shitty, but publicly, on that scale…” She shakes her body as though she’s trying to rid herself of the contamination. “If we find out how the pictures got leaked, I’ll kill the perpetrator, but I do not believe it was Jack. And there is no way he made videos sharing them all over the internet, did he? He didn’t make slideshows of your photos or videos calling you a slut and whore and all the rest. That was someone else. User 5498, whoever the hell they are. That was the initial video that got over a million hits, wasn’t it? And that had nothing to do with Jack. We can establish that?”

“Can we?”

Marie’s expression morphs into one of disbelief. “Yes! Even I know Jack wouldn’t have done that.”

I rub the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, wishing Marie would fuck off and give up her attempts to make me see reason. Now is not the moment for reason. Now is the moment for tears and rage and excruciating, heartrending pain. “Okay,” I concede. “It’s unlikely he did it.”

“Good. And on the plus side, no one would have bothered making videos with your photos if things weren’t changing for you. You wouldn’t be interesting. No one would care. But you are and they do, and you’ve worked for that. People are paying attention, and you deserve it. This is a good thing.”

I press my fingers into my scalp and groan. “I wanted attention for my music, not for getting indecently naked.”

“How is it different from the stripping?”

My head jerks up. I can’t believe she’s gone there. “Seriously? That was in a tiny club in the backstreets of Newcastle. No one knew who I was. It was completely separate fromme, Elly Carter. Whereas the music… that isme. That’s who I am. That’s mysoul. It’s personal, and to have these pictures associated with my music… it’s unbearable.”

A muscle contorts along Marie’s jaw. “It sucks. I get it. But you can’t blame Jack—”

Of course I fucking can. “Stop talking about him.”

Marie leans away from me, her lips pressed tightly together, and we sit in silence for a few moments before she speaks again. “I called Kate. She and Nico can have you to stay. I’d let you crash here, but the place is too small. And Kevin—”

“You’re throwing me out?” I sit up, uncurling from my foetal position on the sofa, an intrusive memory shunting to the forefront of my mind of me asking Jack the same thing about my old flat, right before he asked me to move in with him. His gorgeous smile appears in my mind’s eye, bringing with it a pain that feels like Wolverine just raked his talons across my internal organs.Fuck this shit.

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