Page 118 of Whispered Sins

“Everything okay, Armand?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Yes, sir. Everything is fine.”

I nodded, unsurely. He put the car into drive and drove up the dark ramp of the parking garage and into the sunlight. I looked out the window at the city that was so different from the paradise I had just been. The concrete and glass were a major juxtaposition from the white sand and crystal-clear waters. It was too bad I had to cut the trip short.

Armand pulled up to a stoplight and eased the car to a stop next to a newsstand. I did a double-take as I looked at the row of magazines with my face staring back at me.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“Sir?” asked Armand.

“Let me out here,” I said.

“But we are in the middle lane…”

“Fuck it. I’ll get out myself,” I said, opening the car door and almost had it ripped off by a taxi flying by.

I checked for oncoming traffic before running to the sidewalk. I grabbed a magazine from the rack and looked at my picture printed on the glossy page with a bold headline underneath it:

A Pre-Honeymoon for the Lovebirds?

The letters popped out at me as if they were punching me in the face. My eyes scanned the cover and spotted Kiera’s photo printed next to mine. She wore the little white bikini she had been wearing when I ran into her on the beach that day.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I turned the pages quickly and found the full, two-page spread in the middle of the magazine. There were photos of me surfing, of Kiera topless on the beach, of her leaving my hotel room the night she had showed up and surprised me. Worse than that, there were photos of us together on the beach, a bottle of champagne between us. They painted a completely different story than what had happened.

I shook my head, as if trying to shake the images away, but the magazine was there in my hands staring straight at me. The press had done it again. They had taken something and spun it into another completely different story. Now the whole world thought we had gone on that trip together, and they were just feeding into the narrative that we were going to get married.

“Excuse me, sir?” said a voice.

“What?” I barked.

The woman at the newsstand looked taken aback, but then she took a good look at me and I saw the gears in her head begin to spin as she registered who I was. Her eyes grew wide.

“I… uh… are you going to pay for that?” She eyed the magazine in my hands.

The last thing I wanted to do was support the publications that had made my life a living hell for years, and continued to do so.

“No. I’m not,” I said. “And no one should. This is complete bullshit.”

I put the magazine on the rack, the back cover facing out, and walked to the car. Armand had pulled the car to the curb and waited there illegally, the hazard lights on. I opened my door and slipped inside before slamming it behind me.

“Sir?”

“You saw this morning’s tabloids?” I asked, irritated.

“Uh, yes, sir. My wife was reading it this morning.”

“Well, it isn’t true.”

“Of course, sir,” he replied quickly.

“I’m not getting married. I wasn’t even on vacation with that woman. I can’t go anywhere without being hunted like a goddamn animal.” I was more so talking to myself at this point.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Work. Now,” I snapped.

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