“Nah, park it.”
“Helene.”
“I’m serious. Stay as long as you like. This one might be itching to get back to work, but I’m off the hook for at least another week. You sit here with me and watch awful TV and eat amazing food and figure out how to stop me from driving over to Dru’s house right now so I can throw her off her balcony.”
“She doesn’t have a balcony.”
“Shame.” Helene reached across the table and took her hand. “Let me help you. What do you want? What do you need? Tell us and we’ll see what we can do. What’s the point of friends with connections and more money than the pope if they can’t help you out?”
“I mean, friendship is the point,” Amanda said as Helene immediately rolled her eyes. She knew she wasn’t going to slink back to her hole of sadness and eventual poverty, not right away. Helene wouldn’t let her, not without a fight and what some might consider out-and-out nagging. She looked at her amazing friend and her equally amazing husband.
“Just give me a moment. I’m not programmed to prioritize my needs.”
“Oh girl, that’s my specialty. Come on. Let’s get selfish,” Helene said with a wink.
Amanda smiled back at her as a wave of sadness washed over her. The truth was, she knew exactly what she needed. “I need Sam. I need to talk to him.”
Chapter 21
Sam came back from the bathroom to see his phone screen shining in the dark. He’d changed the Do Not Disturb settings on his phone as soon as he and Jesse had landed in Bali. He knew he’d miss Amanda like crazy, but even with his international cellular plan he couldn’t spend his whole vacation with his brother texting his new girlfriend. But as he crossed the expanse of their private beachside bungalow something told him whoever was blowing up his phone wasn’t reaching out with a calm, friendly hey-how-ya-doing.
He scooped his phone up and saw the text from Walls.
Sorry to bug you, man. But you need to see this.
They are destroying your girl online.
Sam clicked through to the article Walls had sent him, his blood boiling as he saw the headline. He clicked back to his messages and saw similar texts from Corie and Lilah with the same article and more from Bossip and TMZ. There was another text from Zach just saying to call him when he could. He had a feeling what it was about.
He called Walls.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“No clue. I just got off the phone with Corie. They are trying to keep Miss Leona from seeing it for now. What’s the play? What do you want me to do? You want me to call Coffey?”
“No. He won’t care about this. I mean, he will, but he trusts me. He won’t freak out unless I freak out.”
“Are you freaking out?”
“Not sure yet. I need to talk to Amanda.”
“You sure? Looks like her people leaked this.”
“What people? She’s—” He almost let slip that she wasn’t a writer, but a personal assistant, but he knew she still felt embarrassed about her job even though there was nothing to be embarrassed about. “She doesn’t have people. This isn’t her style of bullshit.”
“Well, someone leaked it. What do you want me to do? What’s the next move?” Walls asked just as Sam heard the door to Jesse’s side of the bungalow open. His brother ambled in, half asleep, scrubbing his hand over his face, then sat down on the edge of Sam’s bed. He had his own phone in his hand.
“Nothing. Don’t do anything yet. I need to talk to Amanda. If I know her the way I think I do she had nothing to do with this. She doesn’t want this kind of attention or this kind of heat.”
“Alright. I’m turning off the comments on your Instagram.”
“God, please. Thanks, man.”
“No problem. Call me back.”
Sam ended the call, then turned on the bedside lamp. Jesse looked up at him, squinting. “Lilah and Corie called me and told me to wake you up. You should call your girl.” This vacation had done wonders for Jesse’s temperament, but he knew what his brother wasn’t saying. Talk to Amanda and get to the bottom of this before I start making calls. Jesse didn’t play when it came to anyone in their family. If he thought for one second that Amanda was trying to hurt or use Sam, he’d do his best to make sure she never came near him again. Sam appreciated it, but he knew there was no way she did this.
He switched over to her contact, smashing his thumb on the little phone icon. The line rang twice before she picked up.
“Sam,” she said, her voice breaking into a sob. “I’m so sorry.”
He hated that she was upset, but the sound of her voice took some of the pressure off his chest. “Cha-Cha, don’t cry. Tell me what happened.”
“You saw everything?”
“I saw the TMZ post. I’m guessing there’s more.” He glanced over at Jesse, who seemed to be going through Twitter.
“Same stuff on different sites. Dru did this.”
“Dru who?”
“Anastasia. I work, well, I worked for Dru Anastasia. She’s—”
“A huge asshole!” he heard someone say in the background.
“I’m with Helene and Ignacio.”
“Oh, good. I—okay. Tell me what’s going on.” Sam listened as Amanda filled him in. She told him everything. How Dru had spotted her in the CelebGossipCentral photos and then tried to force her to hand Sam and his grandmother up to Dru on a silver platter. She showed him the texts that made it pretty obvious that Dru had been the one to contact TMZ and connect all the dots between the truth and the little information on the other gossip site.
“Then I fucked up and told her you and I were together. I know I shouldn’t have said anything. And I definitely shouldn’t have quit. I just—”
“Wait, wait, wait. Dru Anastasia. She’s been trying to get at me for weeks.”
“Ugh. She mentioned
