Page 166 of Ever With Me

What a perfect asshole pair.

“Josh sold information to the paparazzi about your whereabouts. . .”

Well, that explained the way the press had just descended on her. And Josh’s “stunning” rescue at the same time.

Piece of shit.

Josh must have seen it as one more opportunity to make some money from a well that would soon go dry. He must be desperate for more if he’d pulled that stunt.

Maddie pulled out her phone, knots forming in her shoulders.

Hadn’t Brooks said he’d gotten a text from her the day Mike had extorted him?

A text fromher.

What if he hadn’t been hacked?

What if he’dactuallyreceived a text from her account? Josh could have sent it, then deleted it. She’d deleted texts off her laptop app before—it would delete it from all connected devices, including her phone. She would have never seen it as having been sent.

But those deleted messages usually disappeared after thirty days.

Heart pounding, Maddie swiped to her recently deleted texts, her thumb shaking. After recovering all her deleted texts, she went to her thread with Brooks and scrolled back to the morning of the fair.

Maddie:Trailer. Right now.

Maddie:P.S. leave the guard outside ;)

Brooks:Yes, ma’am.

Oh my God.

She covered her mouth, horrified.

Joshhadworked with Mike to extort Brooks.

And this was the evidence.

Maddie’s head spun. “Thank you for telling me all this, Gina.”

Thick tears trailed down Gina’s face. “You see, you don’t owe me an apology at all. I owe you one. I felt horrible about Josh spying on your texts the whole time, but mostly, I was just jealous because I was sure it meant he was in love with you. I convinced him we should get engaged instead. I should have said something to you. I didn’t want Josh to get in trouble, but I should have anyway. It was wrong of me not to. I never should have looked the other way. You didn’t deserve it.”

Maddie turned to Gina, scanning her face. Forgiveness was a moot point. The amount of processing that she would have to do to figure out how to move past this was . . . ridiculous. Brooks’s desperation for privacy no longer felt extreme. “Gina, would you be willing to go on record with any of this?”

Gina sucked in a deep breath, then gave one curt nod.

Brooks had said he’d made a deal with Mike to make him go away forever, but that wasn’t good enough. The man needed to pay for what he’d done to Brooks and see the inside of a prison for a long time.

“I have an idea.”

46

BROOKS

“News from small-town America tonight,where rock star Brooks Kent has once again been spotted with his former flame, Madison Yardley?—”

Brooks jerked his head up from where he sat at the small beachfront bar. The place was quiet and clean, a great spot to stop after his run and to grab tacos for lunch when he didn’t feel like eating another bite of quinoa salad, and, most importantly, not open until dinnertime.

Fortunately, the owner, Jose, who was currently working behind the bar, always accommodated Brooks.

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