Page 31 of Certified Heartthrob

“You do realize this guy is conning you, right?” he fired back. “Think about it, Cam. A few weeks ago, his whole sad, pathetic little life revolved around scamming our site. He conned women into botched dates because he had an obsession with ruining us. What kind of guy does that!? You don’t think that when you tracked him down, he wasn’t thinking he hit the jackpot? He gets laid while becoming front page tabloid fodder and tearing us down in the process!”

“That’s not what’s going on between us,” I insisted. “You don’t know him. He’d never do any of this on purpose. These gossip columnists were just waiting for one of us to throw them a bone!”

“Because he got them all warmed up for it! He’s the one who sicced them on us all over again!”

Jada interjected. “I thought you said you could never let anything happen with him. You said you wouldn’t even have a drink with him...because he was trying to destroy our company.”

“Well, things happen.” I blushed. I hated having my intelligence and integrity questioned, especially when it put my blundering love life in the spotlight...in front of my siblings, no less.

“Things happen because you let them happen,” Joshua proposed with a daring look in his eyes...one that warned me against trying to turn this back around on him again.

“Mark didn’t do any of this for the tabloids.” I pushed on, despite my tightening throat and the sick feeling growing in my gut. “And neither did I. He was jaded, and that’s why he came after us. But now he’s not anymore.”

“Not jaded anymore?” Lucas asked. “Or not coming after us anymore?”

I shrugged. “Both.”

“Even if what you’re saying is true,” Jada said, “what are we going to do about all of this? You know as well as anyone that what’s really happening isn’t always what matters. It’s about how it looks to everyone else.”

“That certainly didn’t stop Lucas,” I reminded them. “And it’s not going to stop me either. I’m not going to let these gossip vultures run my life.”

“Maybe you aren’t. But who’s to say Mark feels the same?” Lucas suggested.

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

“And you’re putting all your trust into this troll,” he huffed. “You realize you’re effectively asking us to do the same? You want us to accept this guy who has not only called out my own marriage in the press, calling it a sham, but now he’s putting you in the middle of it all, too?”

“Actually, he called out us all for being single,” Jada added, looking embarrassed.

“Enough!” I yelled. “Everyone out of my office. I fixed the trolling problem—”

“I’ll say,” Joshua grumbled.

“I took care of it! And I’ll take care of this, too. If Mark and I have to make a statement, then that’s what we’ll do.”

“I’m sure he’d love that,” Lucas scoffed.

I ushered them out the door, one by one, all but shoving them out. Lucas stormed out first with Jada behind him, but Joshua lingered behind.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked when the others were out of earshot.

The way his doubt burned into my confidence left me feeling less certain than I was before. It wasn’t like me to be the optimistic one. I was usually the skeptic, not the other way around. Could it be that I really was blind to Mark’s true intentions?

“Yes,” I insisted, trying to push down any threatening feelings inside that suggested I might be wrong.

“I hope you’re right,” he offered before walking off towards the others.

Just before closing the door, I noticed my siblings all reconvening in Lucas’s office. I imagined them meeting about me, insisting that I had lost my mind or that I was about to let the whole company go down through my stubbornness.

But they didn’t know Mark like I did. Sure, it looked bad, given his former vendetta against us...but he was done with all that now. And he hadn’t meant to fall for me anymore than I’d meant to fall for him. The man gave all his spare time to soup kitchens and community centers for Christ’s sake! He wasn’t the manipulative monster they all wanted me to believe he was.

At least I hoped not. Because if he was, it’d be even harder for me to forgive myself than it would be for my siblings to get past it. I returned to my desk, even though it was impossible to focus. Soon, I would see Mark again, and all of my doubts would disappear in his arms. I knew that what we had was real, and that was enough to be scared of without all the extra stress of their doubts.

16

Mark

The clock hanging in my office ticked away, taunting me as I stared down at the computer screen. Deleting your dating profiles when you started seeing someone new was an anxious moment for everyone, wasn’t it? You wonder if it will jinx things somehow. Doom the whole relationship to failure, so you have to go crawling back to the apps with your tail between your legs.

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