She starts crying and then the paparazzi are upon us. Cameras flash and questions are begin shouted.
“Mr. Asher, what will your pregnant girlfriend think of this new development?”
“Vaughn, over here! Give us a statement about last night!”
They go on and on like that. I grab Grace and pull her through the crowd. “Come on! We can grab a taxi at the front and get out of here.” She fights me all the way, but I hold firm this time. I might bruise her, but if I let go, they will swarm us and who knows how badly she could get hurt if that happens.
“Vaughn!” she screams. “Stop. I have to go to work!”
Fucking work. How the hell does she think she’s just going to go back to work today? Jesus, it’s like she forgot everything that happened last night. I drag her into the main lobby, heading straight for the door, when another barrage of paparazzi ambushes us.
“Grace! Grace!” they start calling, and this is when I know it’s gonna get ugly.
“Don’t stop, Grace. Just keep going. Don’t say a word.”
“What?” she shouts up at me. “What’s going on?”
“Is it true you murdered your parents, Grace?”
She stops dead. She just shuts down. This question is like a slap and all I see in that moment when she realizes her secret is out, not only to me, but the world, is blind panic.
I see my sister Sam, so fragile at age sixteen when the media found out a secret about her too. But Sam has us. Sam has our father, the powerful Adam Asher. Sam had the support of professionals who knew who to handle these things. And Sam’s secret was never told.
But Grace…
I see her life changing before her eyes. Maybe even ruined.
I see humiliation, and fear, and depression.
“Why did you kill them, Grace? Did you kill your brother too? Did they do something?” The media is relentless. They never stop. Once they draw blood, they circle like sharks.
She shuts down, so I swoop her up into my arms and push my way through the crowd, aiming for the valet area. The flashbulbs are going off—so many pictures, that’s all I think about. I don’t even want to imagine the headlines tomorrow. She will be all over the news. Her private life gone, ripped away like it surely must’ve been back when she was a teenager.
History repeats.
“Don’t worry, Grace,” I whisper into her ear. “I’ll handle everything. I have lawyers and a team of PR people who will manage this for us.”
She kicks her feet, twisting wildly in my arms, making me lose my grip and forcing me to set her down before she falls.
“Get off me, Asher!” she screams. “Just leave me the f**k alone. Do you hear me? You ass**le! Ten years I’ve lived a nice quiet life and a few weeks with you unravels my whole world. I f**king hate you!”
“Grace!” a voice yells out from the valet area. “Grace! Over here!”
Grace turns, searching for the voice. And then she bolts off in the direction of a white Mercedes SUV.
The media follow her and suddenly the space around me is empty.
Grace climbs into the car and it speeds away.
She’s gone.
Again.
Chapter Thirteen
“WHAT are you doing?” I ask. Kristi weaves around a camera crew and flips them off in the rearview after barely missing running them over. “We’re gonna kill someone. And you’re supposed to be getting married!”
“No! I can’t do it, Grace. I’m not gonna do it.” She’s wearing a white terrycloth robe and her hair is a bit disheveled from the excitement. “I gotta get out of here, like now.”
I hold on as she takes a corner at a crazy fast speed. “Slow down!” She peels out onto the Strip and we promptly get stuck at a red light.
“Shit!” she says, her little fists slamming against the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Yeah, if you’re trying to get somewhere fast in Vegas, you don’t take the Strip. She honks her horn and then changes lanes, waves her fist at someone behind us, gets over another lane, and then turns right at the first street and then doubles back around behind the Bellagio.
“Where are we going?”
“I know someone here, Grace. We can go stay with him until we figure out what to do.” She reaches over and pats my hand. “We’ll get through this. Don’t worry.”
I settle back in my seat as she gets on the 15 freeway heading south. “I can’t believe that just happened. My life is over.”
And then I realize who I’m saying this to. A pregnant woman who just walked out on her wedding. I reach over and pat her hand and her tears roll freely down her face. “We’ll get through this. Don’t worry.”
She nods at me as she tries to control her sniffles, and then she starts shaking her head no. “What just happened to you back there, with the cameras and stuff…” She looks over at me and I recognize that look on her face. Fear. “That’s gonna happen to me too. As soon as they realize that Johnny and I have been lying about everything.”
I just stare at her.
I don’t ask her anything else.
Secrets aren’t meant to be shared.
Secrets are meant to be buried and ours are perilously close to resurfacing right now.
So we do the only thing we know how to do. The same thing people with secrets the world over do once bits and pieces poke through the surface.
We throw more dirt on top and hope for the best.