Cameron lifted his arm, making me notice the phone he was gripping in his fist. “What’s this,” he ground out, not even formulating the question.
A nanosecond was all it took me. Just a glimpse.
I had been mentally preparing myself for this, for him finding out, ever since that conversation with Diane and Gabriel. After I learned that Cameron hadn’t known about it and apparently hadn’t been curious enough to google me. But most of all, I’d been dreading this moment for the last few weeks. Days. It had been hanging over my head. I knew that Cameron was eventually going to see it.
But that didn’t mean I’d been ready.
All the warmth in my body left me, and I was sure I wobbled a tiny step to the side, because the storm of emotion in Cameron’s eyes wavered for an instant. He reached for me.
I widened my stance. I shook my head and told myself to stand straight. What was that thing Cameron told the girls? Soldier on.
“I think it’s obvious from the clip,” I told him. “Did you watch the whole thing?”
He let out a rough exhale. “I don’t understand.”
I didn’t, either. I didn’t understand why he was so upset, unless perhaps he hated being left in the dark or caught off guard. Perhaps he felt betrayed by me not telling him that he was walking around with a ticking PR bomb. After all, I was a meme, a viral thirty-second clip, a face used to sell energy drinks. Choose entertainment over dignity. I was every single thing he was running away from.
“There’s nothing to understand,” I said.
“Explain the video to me anyway,” he pleaded, and now I could hear it in his voice. How hurt he was. How frustrated. “Please.”
I averted my eyes. “What clip did you see? The techno remix? Or the one with classical music? Or perhaps you saw one of the choreographed dances or the theatrical reinterpretation of the audio. People are really talented nowadays.” I shrugged. “Or maybe you saw the ad with my face. I’m sure it shows up under my hashtag by now.”
“There is an ad,” Cameron said very slowly. As if he couldn’t even speak. “With your face?”
My stomach twisted. I was pretty sure I was going to be sick, but I managed a nod.
There was a long stretch of silence until Cameron spoke again. “What did he do?”
I felt my brows twisting, my eyes narrowing with doubt. That had been the same question my mother had asked. “He didn’t do anything. It wasn’t Sparkles’s—or Paul’s—fault. I did that.”
Once more, Cameron didn’t utter a single word for what seemed like an eternity. That was probably why my eyes found their way back to him. His face. He looked so utterly lost. Helpless. I hated putting that there. “I wasn’t asking about the mascot. I was talking about your father. He’s the owner of the club. What did he do about this?”
I blinked at him. He already knew that. “My father sent me here.” Cameron’s expression hardened. I fumbled with my hands. “The clip had gone viral in under a day.” I pointed at the phone as it rested there, in his fist. “I was a PR problem for the club. Heck, I was a problem for him, and so I was sent here, on an assignment.”
All that anger dissolved. “Don’t say that.”
“Say what?”
“That you’re a problem.” His voice cracked. “You’re not a fucking problem, Adalyn.”
Those guards I had been neglecting for the last days engaged, coming up at full force. “Don’t pretend that you never saw me as a problem, Cameron.” My words weren’t harsh or accusing. I was simply stating a fact. And I wasn’t mad or angry about that. I understood why he did. But that didn’t mean I was able to stand here and listen to him taking my side when there was no such thing as sides in this. “What would you have done in his place, huh? Wouldn’t you want to protect the team? The franchise? The empire he has built? His own name? Because I would. I was jeopardizing all of those things. I was a running joke—still am, for that matter. So, really, what would you have done instead?”
“Christ, Adalyn,” he said. “I would have protected you. Not anything else. I would have done anything to protect you.”
His words clashed against me with such force that I thought I might stumble backward. I braced a hand on the back of a stool. “And how exactly would you have done that, Cameron? Going door-to-door telling every person watching to stop? Snatching their phones from their hands and smashing them against the floor? Or perhaps shouting at the press not to pay me any attention and focus on the un-shockingly lackluster season the team was having instead? Or—”