Page 157 of Faithful

That memory–the look on Lena’s face and the sound of her applause cutting through the silence of the shocked banquet hall–makes me smile.

After several more minutes of deliberation and waiting for Kai to wake up, I decide to do something very scary–turn on my phone.

To my surprise, there are no death threats.

There are a lot of messages from unknown numbers, however, people introducing themselves and asking about interviews.

Ah. Yeah.

Nope.

I quickly scroll through the rest of my texts, noting a few from Gin, Val, and Winona.

There’s one from my aunt too.

Three from Leigh. Eggplant emojis are now her favorite.

A few from my college acquaintances.

So they remember about me now?

And a panicked one that readstell him to call me ASAP! Willa.

Kai moves lazily against me, stretching and cracking his eyes open.

“Fame junkie,” he mutters, his voice still rough and sleepy and absolutely adorable.

“Your publicist wants me to tell you to call her.” I laugh.

Kai yawns and rolls over to his side facing me, his hair spilling across the pillows. “Screw her.”

“Why would I screw her? She’s not my type.”

He reaches out and touches his index finger to my forehead, then slides it down the arch of my nose and to my lips.

I’m still holding my phone, the screen currently riddled with the latest headlines.

Now We Know Who Kai Delisa Kneels for, reads one of the article previews.

Cheesy.

I click on it.

A photo of us last night outside the hotel comes up. It was taken sometime during those final moments on the red carpet and right before we got saved by the security team and my coworkers.

In the midst of the chaos, a fan pulled on Kai’s sleeve, and it slid up his wrist high enough for the tat he got in Vegas to be visible.

I don’t remember trying to save him, because my brain was on fire, but apparently I attempted to detach the offender from my man and my own tux suffered in the process a little. The result of this small grapple is a photo of Kai and me together in one shot with our identical ink exposed to the world.

I guess I’ve never seen us like this before, so I stare at my phone, the parts of me still in disbelief finally coming to terms with it.

Rain or shine, there’s no going back, no undoing it, no erasing the ink.

There’s just forward.

“I thought you didn’t do social media?” Kai whispers, moving his fingers from my face to my chest.

“I don’t.” I still have my Instagram set to private and I don’t use any other platforms at all unless it’s to see what others are doing. “But I kinda dig that.”

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