She’s telling me I should do the same. She’s telling me I’m free to go out there and do something I love.

But what I love hates me.

Twitter:

Did you read your girlfriend’s article? @malcolmsaint

On his Instagram:

No way @malcolmsaint would give that bitch a second chance!!

And the feminist groups online:

Rachel Livingston, our hero! Revenge on the playboys! Want to play with our hearts? Beware the time you will find your own weakness. Revenge is sweet!

Later that week I find enough energy to get out of bed and go to work, and I’m immediately called into Helen’s office.

There’s tension between us. Helen was not happy when I sent over the article. She said, “It’s not what I asked for.”

“No,” I concurred.

Helen took it and printed it anyway.

Today, I’m surprised that she seems pleased to see me, genuinely pleased. “It’s a circus out there,” Helen tells me, waving me forward from behind her cluttered desk.

“I’m not online. Can you blame me?”

“No. But let me fill you in.” She signs to a chair across from her desk, but I remain standing. “Your boyfriend,” she begins with obvious glee, “pulled Vicky’s piece. It can’t be reposted without legal repercussions now.” She eyes me with a new gleam of respect and admiration, and adds, “In case you lost me when I said ‘your boyfriend’ ”—she laughs happily—“Malcolm Saint canned any print editions of Victoria’s post—and it was removed from the blog.” She nods ever so slowly and somberly.

My eyes widen. “What?” I finally speak.

“Victoria’s article. Your boyfriend owns the rights. It can’t be published anymore—not without his say-so.”

“What? How?”

She shrugs, then leans back in her chair with a little creak of the wheels. “Seems like Saint doesn’t want it out there.”

Ohmigod, he made Victoria’s story go away? “If he canned Victoria’s, why not ours? Why didn’t he can mine?” Why didn’t he read mine?!

My heart is in a fist in my chest and so are my lungs.

“Guess he doesn’t hate you that much.” She shrugs casually, but stops herself when she seems to notice—finally notice—that I’m crushed. That my hair is a mess, my face is a mess, I’m a mess. “Maybe he does like you, Rachel,” she says softly. “I’m impressed, did you know? I’m not the only one who’s impressed. The world is impressed too. He hasn’t been seen . . . consorting with you-know-what types.” She taps a pencil absently on her desk, her eyes narrowed on me. “But he’s been skydiving daily. You’d think he has a death wish or has some serious mojo to get out of his system.”

I hardly hear her. I need to get away. From Edge, from her, from this office. “Is it all right if I work from home today, Helen?”

Though I sense her reluctance, she agrees. I go get my things from my desk, aching to my bones.

Saint skydiving.

Saint buying Victoria’s article.

Saint thinking I betrayed him.

Outside that afternoon, I stop when Edge stares back at me from a newsstand, one copy remaining on this side, a few on the other.

“You read that yet?” The man behind the newsstand whistles and laughs. “That reporter’s got her panties in a twist over the guy.”

I lift my head, prepared to scream at the man. Instead, I scan the picture of Saint that Helen used on the cover—those icy green eyes staring back at me. And yes, this man is right. I do have my panties in a twist over Saint. Not just my panties—my entire body. My entire life.

I miss him like nobody’s business.

I want to kiss him.

I want to squeeze him. With my arms. And my thighs. With my whole body until I BREAK or he breaks me, and that’s just fine, as long as he comes after me.

“Smart woman,” I finally whisper, emotion thickening my voice. “I think I’ll take him home with me.”

I buy the copy just because of Malcolm’s picture. Sharp tie, perfect collar, and that thick-lashed gaze, screaming to be warmed, that gets me. It’s a marvel how those eyes of green ice can so easily melt me.

I sit down on a bench with the magazine on my lap, brushing my fingertips over his eyes, wondering for the thousandth time if he will ever read what I wrote to him.

30

AFTER THE STORM

It’s over.

There wasn’t rain or thunder when we ended. We just ended like we began. There were no flashes of illumination that told me I would fall in love, that I would meet the one man who would challenge me, drive me crazy. Now it’s ended, my project done. Completed.

My mornings have returned to normal. I still have brunch with my friends on the weekends. I still visit Mom on Sundays. My world is back to ordinary, almost the same as it was before I wrote the exposé. I hadn’t realized how bleak it was. I’m afraid I will pick up the paper and there he will be . . . with someone. Or with three.

The crying spells are bad. You go out and accidentally smell wine and oops, snivel. And don’t talk to me about elephants, that takes me to a whole new level of despair. But the fear is gone. You were afraid of going out and suddenly you’re right there, daring the universe to take that from you or pleading with it to give you an excuse to feel like shit today. Gina passes me the Kleenex.

Some of my coworkers . . . some of them envy me.

“I wish I’d been asked to go after Malcolm Saint,” Sandy, my coworker, tells me because of the positions I’m being offered, but most importantly because “being paraded around in a yacht and being pursued like that . . .” she says dreamily.

“Fess up, was the sex phenomenal?” Valentine asks.

I think they’re trying to cheer me up . . . but I’m uncheerable.

I still stalk his Twitter feed. I can’t help stalking him, wanting to know how he is. Though the social media around him has been more active than ever, Saint himself has been . . . quiet.

He’s been asked about me—by reporters on live TV, and online. He says “no comment” or ignores the online jabs. Just like he’s ignoring me.

“It wasn’t going to last,” Gina assures me when she notices I’m mopey. “It was a hookup. He’s a womanizer to the next level.”

But it kills me that I’ll never know. I’ll never know if all the times he said I was his girl, he meant to keep me.