Page 139 of He's The Reason Why

“She kicked his ass,” someone in the crowd said with a laugh.

“Come on.” Marshall grabbed his arm and led him toward the side exit. “We need to get you out of here.”

He didn’t want to go. He wanted to set things right. He resisted Marshall’s determined pull and scanned the crowd of faces through the haze of blood and pain.

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone, man,” Marshall said.

“Gone?” He closed his eyes and tried to get his rattled thoughts to focus.

“Yeah. She took off in a limo with her sisters.”

“Blake.” Rachel’s syrupy fake voice rose above the camera clicks and shouts from reporters. “It looks like you might need a new lead actress. Call me.”

“Screw you.” Blake strode past and into the hallway that led to the back of the building. The pain in his head pulsed with every step, and his nose continued to drip blood down his face. He swiped angrily at it. “Fucking psycho.”

“I’d still do her,” Marshall said as they moved quickly away from the jostling onlookers. “But then I’d run. I’d run like hell.”

Blake should have done that at seventeen when he’d first met Rachel, but it didn’t matter now.

What mattered was fixing things with Piper. She was his first, last, and only choice. This couldn’t be the end for them. He wouldn’t let it be.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Piper slid onto the back seat of the limo and collapsed into the corner, wishing like hell that the past half hour had been a bad, bad dream.

Lizzie and Mattie climbed in after her.

Stunned silence filled the car. Outside, the noise got louder.

“Maybe it’s not a good idea to go back on tour.” Mattie sounded shell-shocked, and her hands shook. “They seem so much meaner now.”

“This has nothing to do with asshat paparazzi,” Piper said. “They’ll move on the second they sense blood somewhere else.”

She took a long, deep breath. Her head hurt, and her eyes stung with unshed tears. “Just smile. They hate that.”

“Where’s Della?” Lizzie asked. “I thought she was right behind us.”

“I thought so too,” Mattie said. “Should I go get her?”

Piper peered out the window. A few cameras were pointed at the car, but the angle was bad, so they couldn’t be getting good shots through the tinted glass. She couldn’t see anything else but people’s backsides.

“What are they shouting about?” Lizzie asked.

“I don’t know.” Mattie stretched up for a better angle. “There’s Della.”

Della launched herself into the limo, and the door slammed shut behind her.

“Where’s the boys?” Mattie asked.

“They have the next car.” Della turned her face away from the window and spoke to the driver. “Let’s get moving.”

The car pulled away from the curb and rolled slowly down the street, followed by people with cameras shouting at them.

They didn’t matter, their stupid questions didn’t matter, and the ridiculous “news” story didn’t matter.

She wasn’t naked for the world to see like Mattie had been, and even if she was, she wouldn’t care.

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