I realized we'd been holding hands for several minutes now, and for some reason that made my heart beat harder. I swallowed and stared at our joined hands, mine underneath his big paw, his fingers curled down to enclose my smaller hand. It felt...natural--not at all weird.

  And that was weird.

  "So," Duke prompted. "Your rules."

  "When I was nineteen, I met a guy named Lane."

  "Sounds like a pretentious goof-tard."

  I laughed. "Yeah, he kind of was," I admitted. "But he was...good-looking, in a pretentious, Beverly Hills goof-tard sort of way. And he came from serious, serious money. Like, Bill Gates, Koch Brothers, Warren Buffet sort of money."

  "I know a guy like that," Duke said. "He's actually a really good dude."

  "There aren't that many people out there with that much money," I said. "Who is it? Maybe I know him."

  "Valentine Roth."

  I gaped. "You know Valentine Roth? He's, like, one of the most mysterious people in the world. He lives this wild, mysterious, Phantom of the Opera sort of life. Everyone I know was always going to Manhattan hoping to be seen with him. He's a seriously big deal." I grabbed Duke's arm. "What's he like?"

  Duke shrugged. "He's a good dude. Rich as all fuck, but cool. Not stuck up. Just...he's cool. I don't know him very well personally, but my boss, Harris, he worked for Roth for years and Harris's girlfriend is best friends with Valentine's wife. We get invited out to the Roth's private island down in the Caribbean for Christmas parties every year. Those parties, man...they're nuts."

  Temple made a disgusted noise. "I can't believe you know Valentine freaking Roth. Until he up and left Manhattan with that girl he obviously ended up marrying, he was the most eligible bachelor like, anywhere. I know some girls who managed to score a hook-up with him a long time ago, but they said he was...difficult. Not very nice, but hot and rough and amazing in bed."

  Duke shook his head at me. "Well I don't know about any of that shit, but I can see it being true. Miss Roth...Kyrie, she sort of turned him around. Gave him something in life worth being nice about." He laughed. "Aside from billions of dollars, I guess."

  I tipped my head to one side. "Well, I can say from experience that money really doesn't always make people nice, or happy. I mean, having money is awesome, and I don't mind admitting my worst fear--until all this happened, at least--is being poor. But money doesn't make you happy. If that was true, I should be happier than I am."

  Duke's gaze shot to mine, and I regretted that last admission. "You're not happy?"

  "That's not necessarily what I meant."

  "Sounded like the truth, especially now that you're trying to walk it back."

  I slid down in the seat, put my feet up on the dash, and stretched my skirt over my knees. "I'm not trying to walk it back, I'm just--" I groaned in irritation, and started over. "Look, I'm stupidly lucky, and I know it. I'm spoiled rotten. I've never had to do a day's work in my life, and I could have gone on that way forever. I didn't want to, though, I wanted something of my own. I'm not an actress like Mom, or a musician like Dad, so I had to use what I have, which was instant recognition. Everyone knows the Kennedys. Mom and Dad have been married for twenty years and together for twenty-five, which is absolutely unheard of for people in their stratosphere. We're just...well, we're the Kennedys. And as their oldest and their only daughter, I've always been...sort of...just famous for being me, I guess. So I capitalized on that. I pitched the idea of a show to my agent, and he went bananas, because it meant a shitload of money for him, of course. So, I made my own fortune on the show. Then I started a bunch of product lines, clothes, makeup, perfume, branded accessories, jewelry, girly things like that.

  "I'm not famous for nothing, though, and it bugs the shit out of me when people say that. I work my ass off. I design all the products myself, and I find distributors and do commercials. I'm a multi-million dollar company all by myself, and it's a full-time job running it all, which is something I do myself. That's not to mention the need for a constant social media presence, the sponsored posts and whatever? It's a lot. It takes a shitload of work maintaining a constant level of presence in our society, which, can I just say, is crazy hard because as a society we're pretty much Captain Distracto. We're always looking for the next new thing, the next new fad, the next new Instagram or YouTube celebrity, so remaining relevant is damn hard."

  Duke glanced at me, looking amused. "You're avoiding my question, Fancy. Don't think I didn't notice."

  I huffed. "I am not. I'm setting it up." I glared at him. "Plus, you distracted me."

  "You mentioned some asshat named Lane?"

  I lean my head back against the seat and sighed. "Yeah. When I was nineteen, I met an asshat named Lane. Only, I was young and naive and thinking with my hoo-ha, so I didn't realize he was an asshat. He was hot, and he came from money. I thought that was a good thing, because I'd hoped it would mean he wouldn't be interested in me for my parents' money seeing as his were worth billions to my parents' hundred and twenty mil or whatever it is."

  I thought back, warily letting my mind delve into the memories, and even more warily letting my frozen, walled-up heart feel some of the old pain. "He was hot, he was filthy rich, he was just...cool. He had a business degree from Stanford, and he was on track to inherit not just his father's fortune, but also the reins of the company. He wasn't just some lazy playboy, he was making tracks as a businessman in his own right, and he was only twenty...twenty-one, I think? Maybe twenty-two. It seemed like love. He wasn't my first, but he was my first real boyfriend. I'd had enough friends lose their V-cards before me to know the first time wouldn't be amazing, so I gave mine the year before, to a sexy asshole nobody at a party when I was half-drunk. It was...okay. A little ouchy, at first, but the asshole--James, I think his name was--he knew what he was doing. I don't think I was his first virgin which, looking back, makes him even more of a dick, but whatever. It worked for me. Lost my virginity to some jackass I'd never see again and didn't really care about. I cried a little the next day, felt a little buyer's remorse or whatever you want to call it, but I don't regret it now.

  "I could claim honestly I wasn't a virgin, but I was inexperienced enough that Lane could teach me. He liked that, I think. That I wasn't a virgin, that he didn't have to worry about that, but that I was so inexperienced he could show me how he liked things."

  "He sounds like a real winner," Duke put in.

  I shook my head. "Oh, just wait. It gets better." I let out another breath, and kept going. "So things were fairly normal for the first year. We dated, we had a lot of sex, whatever. He'd take me to his family's estates in Italy and Greece, we'd go to A-list parties in Manhattan or LA, it was classic rich assholes of Instagram bullshit. Lavish parties on mega-yachts, rolling up the PCH in his drop-top Rolls Royce-- which, by the way, had crushed-diamond white paint, like several million dollars worth of actual diamonds crushed and mixed into the paint job. We'd fly to Antigua in his G6 on a whim."

  "Seems like you guys had it made."

  I nodded. "Everyone thought we did. Hell, I thought we did. The tabloids followed us everywhere, called us the it-couple of the decade. That was when I really started to get media and social media attention on my own right, and not just for being my parents' oldest kid. It seemed like everything was gorgeous and perfect. I was in love, and he loved me. We talked about it, said it to each other, and he'd even dropped hints about a wedding."

  "Hmmm, I wonder what could have possibly gone wrong?" Duke deadpanned.

  "If you're assuming he cheated on me, that'd be a smart assumption, but wrong." Now came the hard part. "The first sign I should have broken up with him was when a sex tape of us got leaked."

  Duke glanced at me. "The motherfucker leaked a sex tape?" He sounded...pissed. "And you stayed with him?"

  I shrugged. "It wasn't immediately obvious it was him that leaked it. We'd taken the video with my phone, so the initial assumption was that I'd been hacked. I was devastated, of course. I mean, that was private, right? I was livid, and mortified. My parents' press team did spin and damage control, and I mean, it's not like I'm the first celeb to have a tape leaked, but it still messed me up. And Lane played the understanding, supportive boyfriend to a T, in private and to the press. And that was kind of the second thing that should have been a warning sign. You have to understand that Lane's dad isn't high profile. Most people haven't even heard of him, honestly, even though he's one of the richest people in the country. And Lane, he was even less high profile. He was a young businessman, working his ass off to take over his dad's company the hard way, earning it rather than just inheriting it. But he wasn't famous. Unless you were part of the elite business world, you wouldn't have heard of Lane Behr.

  "So when the tape got leaked, I went into hiding. Natural enough, right? I didn't have the show yet, didn't have the brand to worry about, so I just kind of went into seclusion. Stopped going out, declined party invitations, refused to go on vacations, wouldn't even leave my room for the most part., stayed off social media. Lane sort of took over for my parents, in terms of dealing with the press on my behalf. He'd spin things into positive stories, talk about how I was rebuilding myself, and reassessing my future in light of the leak, bullshit like that. He was good at it. I appreciated it, my parents appreciated it--"

  "And Lane appreciated it, because it was the spark that set his star to rising?" Duke ventured.

  I nodded. "Exactly. The media realized Lane was magnetic and photogenic and charming, and that he was this up-and-coming young businessman from an elite family--everything the press loves to shove down our throats. He played it cool, though. Didn't immediately start grabbing all the attention he could. No, Lane is way more devious than that, thinks more long-term than that. He set himself up as my spokesperson, sort of, coaxed me into posting selfies now and then with pithy captions that made it seem like everything was great."

  I paused for a moment, wishing I could skip this part. "He was the reason I decided to pitch the show. It was his idea. I had to use the attention caused by the tape to my benefit. Turn it into something good for myself. People loved the little hints they'd been getting of my life--me and Lane at home, Lane with my parents on the deck at sunset, opening a bottle of wine, all that stuff. He was so fucking good at it. These cute, intriguing hints at our beautiful, perfect life. It was a great contrast to what we'd been posting before that, the extravagance, the lavishness, the drama and excitement. These were just little hints, and people wanted more. So he convinced me to put the embarrassment of the tape behind me, to embrace the attention. 'Kim had a tape, and look how successful she is,' right? So I pitched the show.

  "We got it approved, the crews showed up and started filming, and then the first episode aired, and...Lane was a star. He was funny, he was in every scene, he was hot and rich and just...perfect, and everyone loved him. That whole first season was all about Lane. It solidified his status as a celebrity. Lane was the star of Temple even though it was my name on the title card, even though it was supposed to be about me."

  I paused again. "He accused me of cheating on him at the end of the third season," I had to stop again, because this was where things got really gnarly. "He'd gone behind my back and convinced the editors to cut footage so it looked like I'd cheated on him. My best friend Holly's boyfriend had appeared on a few episodes, and they'd been fighting, and I'd had this whispered argument with Paris, Holly's boyfriend, and Lane had them edit it so it seemed like I'd been hooking up with Paris behind Lane and Holly's backs. My bikini top was pretty skimpy so it looked like I might have been topless, and with some creative editing, it looked like Paris and I had a thing. I'd actually been telling Paris what a jackass he was for hurting Holly--I'd been sticking up for my friend, and Lane turned it into this cheating scandal. All it took was some footage and some rumors."

  I scratched a patch of drying blood on my skirt. "He managed to make sure Holly saw the edited footage first, so Holly bought it, and she and I had this massive blow-out fight, and Lane was acting all hurt, giving these clips acting all heartbroken, how he loved me and didn't understand how I could do this to him...blah-blah-blah. I didn't realize what he'd done at first, and then one of the producers had a conversation with one of the editors, and got the story of what Lane had done, how he'd gotten the footage edited and then leaked it to Holly and the tabloids and everywhere, and the producer told me." I blinked again, but I wasn't crying. Nope. "Holly was my best friend. We'd been friends since we were ten. And she believed him. She believed the footage. Paris told her nothing had happened, I told her nothing had happened, we all tried to tell her there was zero evidence of anything happening between Paris and I except that one piece of footage even the network admitted had been doctored. She didn't care. I lost my best friend, and the whole thing happened on camera. The network ate it up, the tabloids loved it, the bloggers loved it. And Lane loved it, because it put him in the spotlight more than ever. When he started doing magazine and blog interviews and going on Watch What Happens Live talking about us and the scandal...that was when I realized what he was doing, really realized it."

  Another deep breath. "So then I hired my own investigators, and they came back with definitive evidence that Lane had sent the sex tape from my phone to his, and then had someone else anonymously leak it to 4Chan, where it went viral..." my voice quavered. "The evidence my team brought me was incontrovertible. So I confronted him in private. He got all pissed and tried to pivot back to the cheating thing...it got ugly. We both screamed a lot, and eventually my dad made Lane leave. The cameras were taping the next day, so they caught the really juicy fall-out, when I confronted him about it again, and told him about having the footage doctored to fake the cheating scandal...it nearly turned into a fistfight. It turns out Lane had been manipulating all of us, and we realized it all at once, on camera."

  "Jesus, what a mess." Duke's hand laced into mine.

  Solid, comforting presence, his hand warm, his body huge next to mine.

  "Yeah, it was a complete disaster." I blinked again, harder this time. "There aren't words for how ugly it got. He...he flat-out told me, on camera, that he'd never loved me. That I'd only ever been a cash cow for him, a chance to get famous and even richer than he already was." I made my voice as gruff as I could, which didn't sound like Lane at all, but got across the point that I was quoting him. "'You're hot, but you're a typical dumb blonde. And the really sad part is, you're a lousy fuck.'" I felt a tear trickle down my cheek, and ignored it. "He went on a tirade. Told me I was stupid, told me the only reason he ever even considered fucking me in the first place was because I was kinda famous, and he saw a chance to make something off me. Said I had tight pussy, but that I was a dead fish, and gave shitty BJs. On camera, he said all this. Said the sex tape was the only halfway decent sex we'd ever had."

  "Jesus," Duke said. "What a bastard."

  "Yeah," I agreed, "he was a bastard, all right."

  We drove in silence for a minute or two, and then Duke pulled off the freeway and into one of those gas stations right near the entrance and exit ramps, told me to stay put, and ran inside. He was only gone a minute or two, and then returned with a bag of snack food and a few bottles of water and a pay-as-you go cell phone. After filling up the gas tank, we got back on the freeway.

  Once we were underway, Duke's gaze went to mine. "So, what I don't understand is how does everything between you and Lane, as crazy and fucked up and painful as it sounds, explain your rules about sex?"

  I laughed. "Of course you bring it back to sex." I'd laughed, but not with amusement. Was that really all he cared about?

  Duke took my hand, squeezed it, and made sure I was looking at him before he spoke. "It's not about sex, it's about the rules. I want to know how you decided a bunch of rules was the best way to fix your life."

  "I was lonely. I just...I was heartbroken and angry and confused. I just...I hated everyone. I argued with my parents and my brother and literally everyone, because I was miserable. I hadn't just been dumped or cheated on--I'd been made a fool of in front of millions of people. And I didn't know how to deal." I closed my eyes. "It wasn't...it wasn't the same. I didn't have Lane, and I felt like...who could I trust? I couldn't trust anyone."

  "Still not--"

  "Oh just shut up and let me talk," I said. "I've never told anyone this before, so I'm gonna tell it my way."

  Duke held up his hands. "Okay, shutting up and listening."

  "Good plan." I tapped his knuckles with a fingertip, tracing the scars on the knuckles from a lifetime of fighting. "Like I said, I was lonely. But...I needed sex. It came down to that. I was horny and it was making me miserable, because I wasn't getting any release or satisfaction. Also, I didn't see how I could possibly trust anyone enough to date them. So I decided not to. I figured if all I really wanted was the sex, then why not just...take what I wanted? It started with one of my younger brother's friends. We were taping a family vacation to Greece, and Quinn brought a couple friends, and I hooked up with one of them." I laughed. "Yeah, that didn't go well."

  Duke was warily silent, lifting an eyebrow in query.

  I shook my head, laughing again. "Quinn went apeshit and the guy I hooked up with told everyone all the dirty details...more good TV that was bad for my heart and pride. The next guy was a random, someone off-camera, not part of the show, just some guy I met at a club one night. That was...better. I got what I needed, and it seemed like he'd respect my privacy."

  "Not so much?"

  I shook my head. "Not so much, no. He didn't, like, sell the story, but he told his friends, and the rumor got spread around, picked up, and put the paparazzi on my heels. So then the next time I tried to hook up with a guy I met at a bar, it got photographed. The stories went viral, and the next few hook-ups got made into this big thing--Temple Kennedy is rebounding by hooking up with as many guys as she can, that sort of thing, half-truth, half-fiction. It wasn't a rebound; it was just me...me finally going after what I wanted. I couldn't avoid the press, couldn't avoid the photogs and whatever, so I started trying to be more discreet about it, going to less high-profile Hollywood sort of bars. But even then, I couldn't win."