Chapter 12: Before

Vivica snatched the phone off the gravel and pressed it to her chest.

She was too late, and she knew it.

I'd read it.

So had Damon.

So had the man with the big lens, who was already lowering his camera to stare at her.

"J. Hartigan," I said out loud. "Left profile."

My voice came out steady.

I didn't know where the steadiness came from.

"That's my name, Vivica. Why is your surgeon sending you my profile?"

"It's nothing," she said. "It's a mix-up. It's a different patient."

"Named J. Hartigan."

"It's a common name."

"It really isn't," I said.

A reporter in the second row laughed out loud, then covered her mouth.

"Vivica," a man shouted, "did you have surgery to look like Juno Hartigan?"

"I was in a crash!"

"Which hospital, Vivica?"

"Did your doctors use her photos?"

She backed up against a parked car, clutching the phone.

For the first time since the hospital, her face didn't know what to do.

Behind the photographers, a dented green Volvo pulled onto the shoulder with two wheels in the dirt.

Bea jumped out in leggings and a leather jacket, her red curls wild.

"I saw the live stream," she said, shoving through the cameras to me. "Somebody's streaming this. Half of Instagram is watching your legs."

"Bea," I said. "The magazine."

"What magazine?"

"Eight years ago. She sold her breakup with him to a magazine. There were photos."

Bea's eyes went wide.

Then she grinned the worst grin I'd ever seen on her.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Wants Her Back: The Billionaire's Leading Lady from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.