The Wrong Name, The Wrong Love novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Leak

For a few seconds, nobody in the arena knew who to shout at.

Brianna's phone was still glowing on the big screen with my name across it.

Eli stood up from his stool and walked to the front of the stage.

I had made him swear he would say nothing about me, so he didn't.

"Everything on that page is true," he said into the microphone. "I did it. It was mine to answer for, and nobody else's."

Then he stepped back.

Brianna had already gone.

Two crew members were walking her off the side with her tote hugged to her chest, and the blue notebook was inside it.

I stood at the microphone with my phone still lit in my hand, and fourteen thousand people looked at me.

Some of them clapped.

Some of them booed.

Most of them filmed.

By seven the next morning the feeds had a headline.

*MCCARTHY INVESTIGATED FAN FOR THREE WEEKS.*

Under it was the photograph of me in the yard with Biscuit.

My name was spelled right in every one of them.

I read them on the edge of a hotel bed in Madrid, with the gray folder in my lap, thinking of every person who had called me crazy.

There were so many.

At nine, a woman from the label came to my door.

She wore a gray suit and carried two phones, and she did not sit down.

"You've been through a terrible night," she said. "We'd like to make it simple."

"Simple how?"

"A short statement. You knew about the report, you agreed to it, and you and Eli are friends. We say it was a misunderstanding about a fan-club safety check."

"I didn't agree to it."

"Nobody will check."

"I'll check," I said. "I was there."

She smiled with her mouth only.

"Then you'd better let us handle it," she said.

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