Page 108 of Love Puck
Her eyes stayed glued to mine. “How did you know where I was?”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds as I remembered the hours-long panic of trying to find where Jillian had run off to.
Fuck.
She’d scared the shit out of me.
Out of all of us.
After I sighed, I opened my eyes. “Gigi and Lexi showed up at my door shortly after you’d left my place. We all figured you’d gotten a hotel room for the night or something. But then an hour later, Clara from the show knocked on my door. And she had—”
Fuck.
My head nearly exploded all over again. Just thinking about what Clara shared with me made me want to—
“She showed me a collection of video and audio files. Many, many conversations between you and—” I sighed again and shook my head. “Stuart. And you and Phillip. Clara has been sharing everything with the RCMP for months. Since she started with the show.”
Jillian’s eyes grew wide, and she bit her bottom lip. “I thought I was careful about those conversations,” she whispered, and from the look on her face, I could tell she’d tried. But not enough. Because it couldn’t be enough.
“You’re gonna be pissed at what I say next.” She frowned a bit, but I continued with my story. “Clara said they often kept the cameras on—” I cleared my throat, “after hours.”
Her mouth opened and those perfect lips formed a round “o.” “What?”
I nodded and gave her lips a quick peck. “Yeah. That will be a fight for another day. And the show knows it. Beau and Trey were not happy about that shit.” I touched the side of her face with the back of my fingers. “But there were a few instances where you must’ve forgotten what time it was.”
She shut her eyes briefly. “I believe you.” Her eyes opened and she said, “It didn’t take much for them to rile me up.”
I really had to work on keeping my mouth shut. Because that was putting it mildly. The language—and the yelling I heard on the audio and the video was—
Fuck.
It was something that would haunt me until my dying day. Every time I thought about what I’d seen and heard, I also thought about how I wasn’t there to protect Jillian.
How I should have known.
I should have fucking known what was going on.
Instead, I acted all butthurt and slunk away to my corner.
Fuck.
“I called my mom, and she jumped all over this with her people. And in less than an hour, she found out the RCMP had been involved for months. Collecting shit on Phillip and Stuart. And searching for more shit.”
Jillian’s hand slid up my chest. I set my hand on hers and squeezed. “And you know my mom. She hurried them up. Threatened to go to the media if they didn’t move faster.”
Her eyes grew wet, and she blinked a few times. “She didn’t have to do all that.”
It was my turn to frown. “Yeah, she did. Mom called their bluff. They had enough crap on those two to bury them for years. She just pushed them along a little.”
Jillian’s head shook from side to side. “It turned into such a—”
“Clusterfuck?” I finished for her and lifted her hand to my lips. I kissed the back of it. “Because that’s exactly what this was. They even had you under investigation for a while.”
The expression on her face dropped. “What?” The shocked sound of her voice told me she had no idea about that.
“It didn’t take them long to figure out you weren’t involved. Mom was pretty pissed that no one brought you into the loop. And when none of us could find you, she hired a P.I. to do it. And after that—you know the rest.”
And she did.