Page 17 of Heart Break Her

“It was supposed to be fun, you said it yourself.” I wave my hand in the air. “What girl wouldn’t want to screw around with their celebrity crush?”

“And was it?” Merry smirks. “Fun?”

“Have you seen the video?” I hitch an eyebrow at her.

“Gross, no.” Merry shakes her head. “As curious as I’d be about Sebastian, you’re my best friend. I don’t need that image burned behind my eyelids.”

I laugh for the first time since waking up and looking at my phone this morning.

“Understood,” I say. “And yes, I mean, he’s a rock star. The guy’s clearly had practice. But what the fuck? He filmed it?”

Merry shakes her head. “No, he didn’t.”

“Well, someone did. And we were in his hotel room. So you can understand why I find it hard to believe.”

Her lips pucker, and she nods her head. “They’re trying to figure that out.”

“They?”

“Sebastian, Adrian, the band. Honestly, I’m not sure what happened, but he wasn’t thrilled about it either.”

I roll my eyes.He’s not thrilled?He’s a rock star. People expect this kind of thing from him. If anything, it’ll probably make him even more desirable to his fans. As if that’s possible.

Me, on the other hand. I’m a nobody. A girl barely getting her career off the ground. And now I’m facing a sex-tape scandal? When Sebastian and I never even technically ended up having sex?

Figures.

Did I want him to have sex with me? Yes. But even though we spent the entire night together—naked—it never quite got there. We kissed, we touched, we explored each other’s bodies over and over. I’ve never had so many orgasms.

But there was this invisible line neither of us crossed for one reason or another. Like every feeling, every touch, was enough to tear us apart from the inside out, and if we crossed that final barrier, we might have lost ourselves beyond it.

It was the most intense experience of my life.

Not that the media gives a crap. All they know is that I’m the girl who took a ride on Sebastian’s mouth. It doesn’t matter to them what penetrated what, and what didn’t. The camera still caught everything. And nothing in my life has ever felt more invasive.

“So, you’re saying Sebastian didn’t know?” I murmur, not believing it out of my own mouth any more than I believed it out of Merry’s.

“About the camera? No, he didn’t know.”

My stomach sinks. “If that’s true, and if I choose to believe it, that’s fucked up on so many levels. Doesn’t he have lawyers on retainer who can deal with this kind of shit?”

“From what I understand, he’s working on it.” Merry takes my hand. “But it’s an uphill battle when the video was filmed in his own room. Not to mention—"

“Once it’s out there, it’s out there,” I finish her thought, and she nods.

The internet: the world’s greatest invention, and my biggest enemy right now. I might be locked away in my room at the moment, but I feel it in the air. The video spreading. Views piling up. Whispers turning that night dirty.

It wasn’t.

I’m not sure what happened inside me when I was in that room with Sebastian, but it made me raw and desperate. And even if we were naked and having fun, nothing in my life has ever felt purer or more intimate. The way he looked at me with those honey-brown eyes like I was gravity holding him in place. The way the air shifted. The way his kiss drained my life force.

Who knows, maybe in his mind it was like any other night with any other woman. But to me—I was dumb enough to feel much more.

It’s that thought that makes me push the memories down deeper. Because it’s stupid to think a one-time fling with a rock star could be anything more than sex. Much less, a good idea.

One night as a rebel, does not a rebel make. As evidenced by me going home and falling back into the pattern of my normal, boring life the next day.

“So why did they send you here?”