Three. The same number of texts that he had read but didn’t respond to.

  Being ignored hurt. It hurt so damn bad.

  His mom had started texting me each morning—an update on his mental status, I considered it. It was a hellish text to read—that he remembered nothing—but I’d come to expect it. It was how I started my days now—with the confirmation that I continued to mean nothing to the one person who still meant everything to me.

  I realized how surprised I’d actually feel if his mom eventually texted me otherwise because no amount of wishing, bartering with God, or hoping had altered Ryson’s state of mind thus far. And even though the doctors were convinced that his amnesia wouldn’t last, it sure as hell didn’t feel that way.

  Eventually, I’d gone to my parents’ house to get away. The second I left, I felt incomplete and hollow. I went stir-crazy at my mom and dad’s, desperate to leave the house and bedroom that no longer felt like where I belonged; it hadn’t for years.

  So, I quickly came back home to Malibu. I thought I’d hated being here, in our shared home, but I’d hated being away from it just as much. But once I returned, I was desperate to get away again, the ghosts of my lost love haunting me in every corner. Peace and solace eluded me. I longed for a distraction, but nothing helped. I realized pretty early on that I couldn’t outrun my mind … or my broken heart. Whether I was home, checking my emails, driving in the car, or at the grocery store, my grief was a part of me, and I wore it like a jacket.

  With Ryson’s condition still unchanged, the press grew more invasive and impatient. They wanted answers. They demanded interviews. The more I tried to avoid them, the more lies they printed. Since I gave them nothing to go on, they felt forced to make things up.

  They started reporting that Ryson had dumped me, which was fueled further by the fact that he wasn’t currently recovering in our shared home. It was kind of hard to dispel any breakup rumors when we were no longer being seen together and both of us had stopped posting on our social media accounts.

  I couldn’t win, and I knew it. There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t be misconstrued or taken out of context. If the press caught me smiling—like the one time I’d gotten caught grinning slightly over something Paige had said—they would report on how happy I was and how over Ryson I seemed to be. I apparently had a new man in my life and had cheated on Ryson before the accident even happened.

  If they saw me looking sad, they would print my devastation, splashing my pained expression on every media source they could find. They’d reported that I was suicidal, on a twenty-four-hour psychiatric watch, and couldn’t be left alone. Whatever they deemed fit to print, they printed with no regard for who it hurt or affected.

  All I wanted was the tiniest sense of normalcy. To do one single thing the way I used to when Ryson was by my side.

  I went to the grocery store in hopes that I could grab a few things I needed and not be harassed, but even that was too much to ask. I should have known better. Actually, I did know better, but I went anyway.

  The lies had only grown, the headlines screaming at me from the checkout aisle.

  Quinn & Ryson Over!

  Ryson Dumps Quinn for Cocaine!

  Accident a Cover-Up for Rehab!

  Ryson Using Again. Almost Died This Time!

  Quinn Kicks Ryson Out of Shared Malibu Home

  “It’s me or the drugs.”—Quinn’s Ultimatum

  My anger soared to another level, and I grabbed the hideous papers, throwing every one of them down on the conveyer belt in a crumpled mess. The cashier stared at me, her eyes wide and shocked as I continued pulling them off the racks like a lunatic.

  “Ring them up. I’ll buy them all,” I thought I shouted. I wasn’t sure.

  I noticed the cell phones pointed in my direction, filming my emotion-filled rampage, but I didn’t care. They were calling Ryson a drug addict again, and I refused to stand by and let people read that trash. The cashier actually looked scared of me as she handed me my receipt. And as soon as I stepped outside, I was bombarded by bodies, my arms overflowing with the printed paper lies. Maneuvering around the cameras and doing my best to ignore their shouts, I tossed the stacks into the trunk of my car before getting in and driving home. I had given them exactly what they wanted—a reaction, something to film, something new to sell.

  My stomach turned at the sight of more paparazzi lying in wait to disrupt my privacy. They’d been camped outside my house ever since I came back from the hospital with Paige. They were also stationed out front of Ryson’s mom’s house, my parents’ house, Paige’s place, and Walker’s home. Anything for a story or a sound bite worth twisting for their agenda.

  Sometimes, it felt like the paparazzi were the worst kind of people. I knew that they had a job to do, but why hadn’t anyone ever stopped to think about why this type of around-the-clock harassment was considered a job in the first place? There needed to be laws or at least some kind of restrictions in place.

  If they stopped reporting on celebrities twenty-four/seven, the public would eventually stop wanting to know every single detail about their lives. When people didn’t know that they were missing anything in the first place, they stopped asking for more. But as long as the press posed questions and attention-grabbing headlines that demanded to be read at all hours of the day and night, the public’s need was insatiable.

  It was a vicious cycle.

  One I found that I hated being a part of, especially after my grocery store rampage, which immediately started trending online.

  That was why I didn’t leave the house for the next day and a half. I couldn’t bear to go outside and face the cameras anymore. I stopped putting myself in the position where they could take a picture of me and twist it any way they wanted.

  It was exhausting.

  The lies ate away at me.

  My heart broke all over again with each mention of Ryson’s name. Even though people didn’t know exactly what, they all knew that something bad had happened between us. Even I wasn’t a good enough actress to keep that fact hidden.

  Three swift raps on my front door drew my attention before the knob turned, and Madison and Walker stepped through.

  “Hello?” Madison yelled, closing the door behind her, the sound of paparazzi fading into nothing as the door latched shut.

  “In the kitchen,” I shouted back.

  “Hey. How are you?” Madison asked with a hug, and I practically fell into her arms.

  “Hanging in there, I guess.”

  “No more grocery store visits?” Walker asked, lighthearted and only meant to tease, but I wasn’t in the joking mood.

  “I haven’t left the house since.”

  “We know,” Madison said.

  Even though I’d been ignoring her calls and texts, of course she knew. She always seemed to know everything about her clients.

  The front door swung open again, and my eyes grew wide with nerves.

  “Paige?” Madison yelled, and Paige answered back.

  They’d all come by at the same time, unannounced.

  “Is this an intervention?” I asked, feeling suddenly ganged up on instead of whatever this was supposed to be.

  “Of sorts,” Madison answered as Paige and Tatum appeared in the kitchen, both wearing solemn smiles.

  “Don’t treat me like I’m going to break. Tell me why you’re all here,” I said before my heart dropped. “Did something happen to Ryson?”

  “No, no. He’s fine,” Madison quickly said, feeling bad. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I breathed out, leaning against the counter. “Then, what’s going on?”

  “We all came here, so we could come up with a plan of attack,” Paige said, wiggling her eyebrows like the idea excited her.

  “A plan of attack?” I asked, confused. “Who are we attacking?”

  “The press!” Walker grinned.

  “Yeah. We need to do something,” Paige added.

  “Wait.” I held up a hand. “We’re attacking the press? I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you hate all the lies?” Walker asked.

  I immediately thought that I could ask him the same thing. The press used to scandalize him daily and nightly before he and Madison were a couple. If you believed all the things that they’d printed, you would think that Walker was the biggest asshole on the planet.

  “I don’t particularly enjoy them,” I admitted. “They make me want to throw up, especially when they print something about him. My stomach lurches whenever I read it. And I want to scream at the top of my lungs about how it’s total bullshit. How can anyone just believe the things they read?”

  “They don’t know any better, Quinn.” Tatum’s voice sounded smooth as we all focused our attention on him. “The public believes these things because they don’t have any other knowledge to counter it with. Back in my hometown, if I’d read this stuff online, I would have believed it too. I wouldn’t have known otherwise.”

  I realized how easy it was for me to forget that there was a whole other world outside of Los Angeles. A world where people weren’t raised on the entertainment industry and the nuances that being in it involved.

  Paige was nodding her head along with her boyfriend’s assessment. “It’s true. They have these made-up notions of what they think our life is like, so none of these things sound that far-fetched. Plus, you know how obsessed they are with you and Ryson. They’ll read anything they can when it comes to the two of you.”

  “So, we think you should talk to them,” Walker clarified before adding, “Things have gotten out of hand.”

  “I obviously agree,” I said, referring to my grocery store fiasco.

  “You don’t have to do it alone though, if you don’t want. We could schedule an interview with all five of us together, but we need to say something.”

  “Are you my agent now?” I asked a little too sarcastically.

  “No. But my girlfriend is,” Walker responded in kind.

  Madison jumped in. “Remember when they were spreading lies about Paige, and we told her that she needed to stand up for herself and tell her side of the story?”

  I nodded because, of course, I remembered. This felt a little different than what had happened with Paige though. To be honest, maybe it only felt that way because it was happening to me.

  “It’s not going to stop. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.”

  “You’re right.” I closed my eyes for a second. “But the only way to get them to stop is to tell them the truth,” I practically whispered.

  “And?” Madison dragged out the word, understanding that I was hesitating.

  “And once I say it out loud, I can’t take it back. My story stops being just mine. It becomes everyone’s as well.”

  It had been one thing to share Ryson with the public while we were still together and a couple, but sharing this version of him, the version that didn’t remember or even want to be with me, was going to hurt like hell.

  Madison nodded as understanding dawned. “You’re absolutely right. It does.”

  “The fans have always felt like Ryson belonged to them. But he belongs to me, you know? They feel like they own part of him, but he’s always been all mine. Or at least, he used to be.” It pained me to imagine the things people would say.

  Paige started talking, “You need to say something anyway. If you don’t, then all these people who are making claims, spreading lies about Ryson and you”—she sucked in a quick breath, no doubt remembering the personal hell she’d gone through with the tabloids—“well, they’ll win. No one is standing up for him. He can’t do it himself right now. If that was me who had amnesia and everyone on the face of the planet was saying that I was back on drugs, that I beat you and broke up with you, then I’d want you guys to say something. I’d want you to set the record straight. I’d want someone to defend my honor because I couldn’t do it.”

  “They’re saying he beat me?” I asked, feeling horrified. That was one headline that I’d clearly missed.

  “It’s been online in a couple of places, yeah,” Walker said solemnly.

  “I think we should schedule a few print interviews and at least one on camera,” Madison said, bringing us back on point. “We can choose who we want to work with. Someone we trust to not sensationalize it.”

  I hopped up on the counter and exhaled. “Don’t you think I should talk to Ryson about all this first?”

  “Are you talking to him now?” everyone basically asked, their words overlapping each other.

  “No. I talk to his mom. He doesn’t answer any of my texts, so I’ve stopped sending them.”

  “Does he at least read them?” Paige asked, realizing that I hadn’t share this information with her.

  I nodded. “Yeah. But there’s never any dancing dots, so he doesn’t even consider responding back. It’s like the ultimate rejection every time.”

  “He probably doesn’t know what to say to you,” Madison offered.

  I realized in that moment that she had either talked to or seen him. I could sense it.

  “You’ve seen him,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  Shaking her head quickly, she countered, “No. No. But I talked to him on the phone yesterday.”

  Must be nice, I thought to myself as bitterness and jealousy raced through me.

  “What did he say?” I hated this. Absolutely fucking hated having to ask someone else about my boyfriend. The fact that Madison knew things about him that I didn’t stung like a thousand bee stings.

  “He just seems really lost. He wavers between being sad about it all and then being really pissed off about it all,” she said, and I found myself laughing a little because it sounded just like him. “It’s hard to talk to him from a business standpoint because he has absolutely zero recognition of who he used to be. And that frustrates him. He’s hung up on me. Twice.”

  “I want to see him,” I said, hopping down from the counter. “Someone take me to see him.”

  “Right now?” Paige asked.

  “Yes, right now. We need to talk to him about all of this. Give him a chance to have an opinion,” I said, still wanting to include my teammate in our decision-making process. “Now, which one of you is driving?”

  THE GANG’S ALL HERE

  Ryson

  My phone never stopped ringing, so I turned it off. My agent was going to be pissed, but I couldn’t care less. What the hell did I need an agent for anyway? I had no plans on acting again, not as long as I was this version of myself.

  The voice mail on my phone was full, and it was a good thing that I didn’t have to enter a password anymore to hear them; otherwise, all those voice mails would have stayed unheard. My Mom had unlocked my phone one night when I couldn’t get into it. I had been sitting in my room, trying to think of what the hell my password might even be, but nothing came to mind. Nothing ever fucking came to mind. The emptiest of slates, the blankest of canvases—that was what my mind currently consisted of. I listened to the sheer amount of interview requests, knowing I wouldn’t call any of them back. What the hell was I supposed to say? They all wanted to talk to someone I couldn’t remember anything about.

  My mom informed me that no one had publicly confirmed my amnesia yet, so it was still this ridiculous secret everyone was keeping. She also let me know that once it did come out, I could expect the requests to triple. It made me want to throw away my phone. Or at least get a new one.

  My head ached. My head always seemed to ache these days. Doctors said it was a side effect of the trauma and should go away with time. But they also said that I’d get my memories back too. And so far, both were lies.

  “Your head still hurting?” my mom asked as she entered the living room, which had become my new favorite place to be. I lived on this couch, remote in hand, baseball on the TV.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to go through any pictures today?” She encouraged me with a smile.

  I wasn’t sure if it was the psychiatrist in her or just her nature in general, but she’d been asking me this every day since we came back.

  So far, I’d agreed to it once, but it’d ended in such disaster that I refused to put her through that again. I had a breakdown as we looked at old family photos and got to pictures that included my dad. I couldn’t remember when he’d left or why, but I could tell that it affected my mom in a painful way even though she tried to act like it didn’t. She kept her composure as we scrolled through the photos, but I didn’t. I’d completely fucking lost it, breaking down into tears before once again getting angry.

  “No,” I said, hating how disappointed she looked whenever I gave her that answer.

  The problem was that I couldn’t explain to anyone just how lost I truly felt and how the pictures didn’t help. It was either remembering people that were no longer relevant or having no recollection of them at all. Everything proved as a reminder that I no longer knew who I was, who I had been, or what my life had been like.

  The doorbell rang, and it caused me to jump.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get it,” my mom offered, knowing full well that I had zero intention of answering it.

  Whoever it was could stand out there forever for all I cared.

  A chorus of voices reached me, and I stood up from the couch to see the people who were apparently my closest friends walking through the door. All five of them, looking like a walking billboard ad.

  “Ryson, your friends are here,” my mom announced, as if she couldn’t see me standing there, eyeballing everyone.

  “Hey,” I said with a smile because it was really hard not to smile around this group of people.

  My eyes scanned them all, stopping on Quinn for only a heartbeat longer than the rest but it was enough. I saw her expression shift, the hope that inflated inside her before I looked away. I hated giving her hope when I felt so hopeless.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked as I moved back toward my spot on the couch and glanced at the TV.