Page 88 of Total Obsession

"I have nowhere to go," I admitted to her.

She shrugged. "That's not really my problem."

I let out a sniffle and then forced myself to stand. I wasn't going to let these people or this city break me. "Fine," I said to her, brushing past her and out onto the street.

Thankfully, all of the reporters had dissipated. Given that it was the middle of winter and roughly five o'clock, it was freezing cold and pretty much nighttime at this point.

With so little money to my name, I had nowhere to go. No hotel in New York was going to be a mere fifty dollars. The only credit cards I had were issued by the network. Considering that they had locked me out of my own home without a second thought, I didn't doubt that they'd already canceled the cards, too.

I was starting to freeze just standing there. I also knew that the longer I waited outside of this building, the higher the chances were that a reporter might show up thinking they would try again to see if they could catch me in the morning.

I decided to make my way back to the coffee shop. There were plenty of little nooks and crannies in which someone could hide behind the comfort of the wingback chairs. It was also open fairly late, which would give me some time to plan before I was basically out on the street.

When I'd escaped to the little shop, I took a seat all the way in the back and tried to tuck myself behind some of the decorations. The last thing I needed was people looking at me. I turned one of the oversized chairs so that it faced the corner, too.

Hidden from view as best as I could manage, I picked up my phone and tried calling the one person that I'd once considered a friend.

"Hello?" Miranda's voice came through on the other side of the line.

"Em, it's me," I said.

"Oh," she replied, acting surprised. Had she deleted my number from her phone or something? "What do you want?"

"I guess you've heard," I said.

"Yeah, I've heard."

"They kicked me out of my apartment, Miranda," I explained. "And took all of my money. I have nowhere to go."

"I'm not really sure how that's my problem," she said, her voice stiff.

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, but I tried to keep my composure.

"Could I please come stay with you?"

"Absolutely not," she said immediately.

"Miranda, if you don't agree, I'll literally be on the street tonight."

"Look at it from my perspective, Zoey," she said, taking an incredibly condescending tone. "You're a literal bitch to me at Thanksgiving dinner, then you get caught up in a sex tape scandal, and oh, by the way, turns out that your boy toy, who I'd been warning you about all along, is a wanted man, causing the studio to want nothing to do with you, and now you come crying to me asking me for help? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to put my reputation and career on the line for someone like you."

"Someone like me?"

"Good luck, Zoey," Miranda said. "Please don't call me again."

Miranda was the second person that hung up on me that day. I stared at the phone. I hated myself for doing it, but I had no other option. I dialed a number that I still knew by heart and put the device up to my ear.

The phone rang and rang and rang, but of course, my mother didn't answer. I tried my father's number and got an out-of-service response.

It was foolish to think that after all these years, either of them would be around to help me. I was truly on my own at this point and completely out of options.

twenty-eight

ZOEY

I forced myself to put my phone down, because I knew looking at it and reading the comments that were going viral on the internet was not going to help me right now. At the same time, my brain was spiraling, trying to make sense of why Axe would have released our video together.

At first, I didn't want to believe it. I remembered him filming it, but I thought that there had to be some explanation for why it had leaked onto the internet.

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