Chapter 44

I turned to face the young woman I had accidentally hit. She was holding her cheek and eye, part of which I could see had started to turn pink.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!”

I reached out to touch the woman’s arm, but she shrunk away from me.

“Please, let me help you,” I continued. “Let me get you inside. We can get you some ice—”

“No!” the woman said, shaking her head. Her hand never left the side of her face. “No.”

“Please, I insist…”

I reached out for her again, but she stepped away from me.

The woman kept shaking her head and muttering “no” as she back away through the crowd. I thought I saw tears on the uncovered side of her face. My heart broke.

All eyes were suddenly on me. I had no clue what to do. Too overwhelmed to do anything else, I turned and ran toward Stand Up.

The sea of fans parted for me.

•* *

I was shaken by the incident, but I tried to not let it affect me too badly. When I recorded my vlog, I requested that people please grant me some privacy when I visited Stand Up, but I did not mention the accidental slap. It didn’t seem worth talking about.

Once I posted the video, I noticed that I had an oddly high number of notifications, even higher than after my most popular vlogs. I scrolled through them and frowned at the number of negative comments, most of them calling me violent.

Finally, I found a comment asking what the Hell people were talking about. In response, there was a link to a website called Celebrity Brawlers. I followed the link.

At the top of the webpage was a headline that read:

FITNESS VLOGGER ANNA LEONARD SWINGS ON A FAN

My eyes widened. Beneath the headline was a video of when I accidentally hit the young woman, taken from an angle that made it appear as though I had slapped her on purpose. That combined with the woman running off seemed like damning evidence.

You couldn’t hear a thing I said to the woman in the video, so it seemed as though whatever I had said had further upset her. If I had seen the video on its own, I would have thought that I was another celebrity gone wild.

The article itself didn’t make things any better. It didn’t mention how the crowd had surrounded me or how people had pulled on my stuff and me, knocking me off-balance. It only said that I had turned on a peaceful gathering of loving fans and lashed out.

As soon as I finished reading the article, I received a text from Lily.

OMG! What happened, girl?!

Attached to the message was a link to the same article.

I sighed and replied, Some fans were pulling on my duffel bag. I lost my balance and ACCIDENTALLY hit her. Tried to offer her help, but she acted weird and left. shrugs

After a minute, her response came.

That sucks. Whatever really happened, we need to do damage control QUICK. Call me?

I shook my head. Fame was really starting to become a pain in the ass.

Tomorrow. I just want to decompress.

OK, tomorrow. You do you.

Furious at the article and overall exhausted, I raced home as quickly as I could and hoped to put the matter behind me.

•* *

The next day, I went to Arthur’s office as I always did on Monday mornings. People whispered as I walked by, looking in my direction or flat out pointing at me. I was used to this kind of attention by now—and it was almost never good.

I approached Arthur, who was having a low conversation with his assistant/cousin, Gina. They immediately stopped talking when they saw me coming. Arthur shooed Gina away, and as we crossed paths, Gina glared at me.

I was quite taken aback by Gina’s attitude. We had always gotten along, as far as I knew. I had no idea why she would be mad at me now.

“What was that?” I asked Arthur.

Arthur shrugged but looked at the ground.

“Oh, Gina, she…uh…she woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, that’s all.”

I set my bags down and placed my hands firmly on my hips.

“Arthur.”

He cringed.

“All right. Just don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”

He handed me his tablet. On the screen was the headline:

FITNESS VLOGGER ANNA LEONARD’S DARK PAST: REVEALED

My jaw dropped. I looked up at Arthur, and he waved his hand toward the tablet.

“Just read it.”

I skimmed the article. It focused on the deaths of my brothers, claiming that it was too coincidental that both of them had died and that I must have had a hand in them (even though I was too young to even remember Charlie’s death). It also pointed out how much Arthur looked like my brothers, and some commenters were creeped out by this:

Ew! Anyone else getting the heebie-jeebies?

Is she trying to replace her brothers or fuck them through her boss?

If they end up together, I’m gonna puke.

Of course, they also discovered that Barnett used to be my hockey coach in high school, which people found equally as creepy:

How many complexes does this woman have?

Serious daddy issues here.

He’s hot, but God, how did we not notice the age gap before?

Color rose into my cheeks. I didn’t know which part of the article upset me most. They had taken so many things—some innocent, some out of my control—and turned them into character flaws for me.

As I scrolled through the comments, I noticed more and more people comparing me to Julia, and not in a good light. That’s when it hit me. Of course Julia’s fans were behind this smear campaign.

They saw a kink in my armor the previous day with the “slap”—which the article also mentioned—and decided to take advantage of it. My blood boiled.

How dare they take advantage of the tragedies in my life for their gain! How dare they dredge up something so painful from years ago—

Then I saw it, in black and white, beneath Michael’s last-ever yearbook photo: the date of Michael’s death. It jarred in me something I didn’t want to remember, something that I had buried deep in my subconscious until that moment.

The tenth anniversary of his death was days away.

That year, I would be dealing with it alone. I had Lily, but it wasn’t the same as having family there with me. Now, everyone in the world knew about my grief and would bother me in all ways except for any ways that would help…

“Just know that I don’t believe anything that these monsters say,” I heard Arthur say.

I realized that he must have been speaking to me for quite some time.

“No matter what people say, you will always have a place here with me…Anna, are you okay?”

The concern in his voice would’ve been endearing, had I not felt like the entire world were slipping out from under me.

“I…I need to sit down.”