Chapter 77

* Elena *

Dinner was amazing, but everything that came after, not so much. Ryder had gone above and beyond to make me forget our unwanted audience, and it worked to some extent. After a time, I really did forget that they were even there. We didn’t pretend to be two old friends playing catch-up, but neither did we go crazy with the PDA.

It turned out to be just the perfect end to a crappy day, and by the time we left the restaurant, I was beyond happy that we’d got our first outing since getting back together out of the way. We were mobbed by fans on the way out, none of whom had been there when we arrived, so it was obvious that something had been posted about us on social media to get all of them there.

Now, in the past, something like this would’ve soured Ryder’s mood. It was always a toss-up what kind of response he’d have to being bombarded like this out of left field, and I felt myself tense up. Old habits die hard, I guess.

As if guessing my thoughts, he wrapped his arm around me, pulling me closer to his side, which only made those cameras click harder. He didn’t scowl once and seemed genuinely relaxed and not like he was posing for effect or anything. His reaction made me let my own guard down, and it pretty much ended the evening on a good note.

I’ve always loved interacting with my fans and had missed it during the years I was playing hide-and-go-seek with the public, but this bunch was nice and respectful, not too pushy given the circumstances. Their questions were respectful and not too over the top.

We walked away about fifteen minutes later after security got us out of there, and it was in the back of the car on the way back that Sydney called. She’d seen the picture I’d posted earlier, and apparently, there had been lots of comments on the entertainment news, and she was pissed. I’m unsure if she was more upset that Ryder and I were back together or that I hadn’t told her first.

I didn’t get to find out, though, because she hung up on me, and then I found out that her response was just the tip of the iceberg. I’d been so caught up in the positive feedback that I’d completely overlooked and forgotten the haters. Or maybe in the back of my mind, I’d convinced myself that Rachel was the one behind all the negativity, but since she was out of commission, there was no way this was coming from her.

“Let me see it.” Ryder, who had been watching my face as I read the screen, took the phone from me and read the comment that had caught my notice. Then, as though the poster had been waiting for us to have eyes on it, all hell broke loose.

The comments about my weight gain came up, and there were some very unflattering and very obviously doctored images uploaded that pretty much compared me to a whale, followed by knocks against my mental health. Ryder was getting more and more heated by the second, and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

And then, just when I was about to swear off social media again, something miraculous happened. Someone uploaded paragraphs of text, all precise and to the point, outlining the entirety of our breakup and the things that had gone on behind the scenes.

No one else posted anything for a good half an hour, as I imagined they were all reading along with Ryder and me. “What the hell? How does this person know so much?”

“I think that might be the nieces.”

“But that’s not their screen name.”

“It reads like them.” He seemed pretty certain, but I was still left wondering, even so, how they would know the ins and outs of our relationship. It was revealed through those posts that Rachel had worked with the Hudsons to get me out of the country so that Janie could make her move on Ryder. It was also revealed that this whole thing had started way back when, long before I knew anything was going on, even after the fact.

“I remember that night.” The poster mentioned a night when Ryder and I had been together for about three years, it was right after one of our breaks, and we were making noise about getting back together. I had gone to a production party, one of those wild Hollywood things that I was never too fond of.

That night Mary had been especially friendly. I think that was the first time she’d joked about being my manager, something I had just laughed off as a joke because she was no one’s manager as far as I knew, except for her own daughters, and I already had Mom as a manager.

That night I was tired and wanted to leave early, but she kept coming up with excuses for me to stay, even after her own kids had left. I was now learning that that night she’d had Janie waiting in the wings, and that had been Ryder’s first encounter with the other girl.

“Is this true?”

“Yeah, it is.” He, too, seemed in deep contemplation as he thought back to the night while I wondered why Mary had gone to all that trouble. The hits kept coming, exposing the dark plot that had been concocted by Mary and Janie’s dad, along with Scott and Matt.

“I’m a little lost; I just don’t understand why they hate me so much.”

“I don’t think it was personal. I told you they needed you out of the way so they could use me, basically. She was just a tool they used, but if it wasn’t her, it would’ve been someone else, anyone they could use for their means.”

The car came to a stop, and one of the men said, “We’re here.” We were rushed into the building where thankfully, no one was waiting since I’ve been very lucky at keeping this place a secret, and it was then I realized that it had taken longer than it should have for us to get there, which meant they’d done some out maneuvering driving to escape the paparazzi.

Ryder and I went up in the elevator with our eyes still glued to the phone as the drama unfolded. Some of what was said I already knew, but there was so much that I didn’t, and I couldn’t look away. The poster that Ryder was convinced was the nieces didn’t interact with any of the naysayers but kept up a steady stream of information that painted Janie as an unhinged fan and Mary as a puppet master of sorts.

Then they got dirty. They exposed Mary’s tryst with Ryder when he was way too young. “O.M.G. Ryder, what is going on? I thought you said no one knew about that.”

“I thought so. This is….” It was clear that the person, even though they did not engage was there solely to defend Ryder and me.

The picture they painted was one of two young lovers torn apart by the greed and obsession of others. They didn’t stop there either because, by the time we made it into the apartment, they had gone after Nicole, Noel, and all of Mary’s kids. And then it became a shit show.

Things I could only have speculated about before were laid out for all the world to see. It was like a roadmap leading from one point to the next, showing all the ways Mary had manipulated the whole situation, and they did not show Janie in a good light.

She came off as desperate and pathetic to the point that I almost felt sorry for her. No one reading this would ignore it as just gossip, it read like facts, and that’s what made it so profound. I imagined news teams fact-checking every word as it unfolded.

They talked about Rachel and how she tampered with my medication, and it was then I learned that Rachel had been in federal custody for the last few days because, apparently, it’s a felony to tamper with someone’s medication.

“Oh no, what is she doing?” Even I knew that this was a bad move. Janie had just entered the fray.

***

* Janie *

I was sitting there staring at the empty walls trying to hold onto a thought, any thought, but my mind kept flitting from one scenario to the next. The highs and lows of emotion were tiring and vexing, to be sure. Now that I was in a rather stable situation, I wanted to get some sort of plan together, but I didn’t know where to start.

Ryder wasn’t answering my calls, my dad was missing, and there was no way I was going to call Mary or one of her daughters. Scott might be worth a shot, but I never kidded myself when it came to his real interest. Without Ryder under my thumb, he’d have no use for me.

I’m alone, all alone. Has it always been this way? I used to have friends, didn’t I? Yeah, way back when. I wish I could go back to the days of high school when I reigned supreme. But even then, I knew those friends didn’t really like me either; they just hung around me for the clout.

I felt a cold shiver and rubbed my arms to warm them. How did my life come to this? Where did everything go off the rails? The nagging thought that I was never happy in my life, that all the fake smiles and make-believe for the cameras left me empty and sad.

I wanted to fight it; I wanted to argue even with myself that, yes, I did have a good life, but looking back, none of it was good. Pretending to the world that my life was rosy didn’t make it so, and this was the proof. I was alone in my empty childhood home with no husband, no prospects, and nothing to look forward to.

I had a phone full of contacts and no one to call. They were all Ryder’s friends, all people who only wanted me around as long as he was part of the package. It was glaringly obvious, even to my fractured mind, that I was nothing without him.

It’s not fair. Elena stood tall on her own even after the hell that I had made her life. No matter what I threw at her, she still overcame it all. I thought for sure that I would be the same, that with Ryder by my side, I would get to enjoy the same adulation and adoration she did, so why didn’t it happen?

My family was more worthy than hers; she’s a nobody, a mutt who had luck on her side. It should’ve been me; that should’ve been my life. I’m everyone’s ideal blonde, beautiful and thin. Why didn’t the world like me? I swiped at the tears that fell and felt the rough scarring that was left there from me, tearing at my flesh.

My heart felt as if it would explode in my chest the more I thought of the unfairness of it all. And then I remembered something that Mary and Scott had mentioned before. A conservatorship. Yes, that’s right, I can have Ryder committed; that way, I can take over everything.

It had only been a thought in the beginning, a backup plan in case things didn’t go our way. Yes, now would be the perfect time. Everyone knew Ryder was nothing more than a drugged-up shell of his former self, there was more than enough evidence of that, and we had a doctor ready to sign off.

Yes! I fumbled with my phone in my excitement and looked for Scott’s number in my contacts, my heart racing now for a different reason. Why hadn’t I thought of it before leaving L.A.? I almost laughed as the phone rang, and when he picked up, I almost passed out from relief.

“Scott, I have an idea.” I didn’t even let him answer before I rattled off my thoughts.

“You stupid bitch, you screwed up everything. Where the hell are you? I’d like to ring your fucking neck.”

“What? Why? I didn’t say anything about you; I only mentioned Mary.”

“Shut up; you don’t know who’s listening.”

What the hell was he talking about? His outburst had me looking around the room as if expecting someone to be lurking in the dark. “Have you seen what’s going on on the fucking internet? You had one job, and you couldn’t even keep that druggie asshole under control. What a waste you are. Anyone else in your position would’ve had a kid or two to keep him tied down, but you couldn’t even do that because he wouldn’t even fuck you at his worse.”

His words were like darts, each one hitting harder than the last. Only one thing of what he said stood out, or maybe my mind was protecting me from the harsh reality of his accusations by clinging to that one thing. “What do you mean about the internet?”

“Our association is over. Don’t call this number again.” He hung up the phone, and I felt even more alone than I had before I made the call. “What does he mean about the internet?” It didn’t take me long to find it, and when it did, my blood actually boiled. I screamed out loud and only then realized how sore my throat was from all the times I’d screamed in the last twenty-four hours.

Before I could think better of it, or maybe because I had no one there to tell me what moves to make, I jumped right into the middle of the ongoing discussion about my life. I hate people. I hate their fake, weak proclamations of love and friendship.

They seemed to take the most umbrage at the fact that I had tried to drive that bitch crazy. Hypocrites. Which one of them, knowing that their husband was still hung up on some bitch wouldn’t have gone to any lengths to destroy her?

Why is it any different for me? Why can’t they understand? These were the same people who had lauded our relationship. Now they were all bemoaning the fact that they had fallen for my lies, my lies as if I was the only one who had a hand in this.

My fingers were moving faster than my thoughts as I set the record straight. My only crime was wanting Ryder for myself. I fell in love with his image, just like most of them had when I was an impressionable young girl; they were just jealous that I got the brass ring and they didn’t, which is what I told them as I ripped into their deceitful asses.

Elena, Elena, Elena, that’s all they cared about. And then there were new pictures taken just a few hours ago, it seemed. Ryder held her hand as they sat at a table in some restaurant in the city. Ryder looked at her the way he never looked at me, which others seemed to notice as well as they started making comparisons.

I hurt like an open wound as people started posting images of Ryder and me and comparing them to pictures of the two of them from the past and now. It was plain to see the glaring difference, but reading the words and knowing that the world was laughing at me was more than I could take.

Just as I was about to toss the phone away from me, it rang. “Hello!” Please let it be a friend, someone who can help me in my hour of need. I didn’t check the readout, so I had no idea who was on the other end of the line.

“How does it feel? These are real people, not the bots you bought to lie and spread rumors and lies about Elena.”

“You don’t know anything.” What was she implying? That I had to buy public favor? That no one of the millions who had followed me on social media dying for a look into my life with Ryder was on my side?

“She got what she deserved; he’s my husband. He was never hers.”

“He’s always been hers. You were just a speed bump in their lives.” This little bitch is vicious. She’s too young to think and speak like this. Surely this is someone else messing with me.

“What kind of mental gymnastics did you go through to convince yourself that it was morally or ethically right to drive another person crazy? Why, after you had taken everything from her, did you feel the need to destroy her completely? Why was it not enough that you had stolen her love?”

I was breathing too hard to answer, but she wasn’t interested in my answer anyway since she seemed to think she knew everything. I should hang up; in fact, every time I hear her voice, I should hang up because, for some reason, this stranger, who I’ve never met, seems more capable of getting under my skin than anyone else.

But she kept going, tearing into me with her stupid words that only made me feel worse about my situation. Her words, more than the attacks on the internet, brought home the reality of my predicament and made me feel hopeless.

“I think I know the answer. Should I tell you? You’re her fan, aren’t you? It was her all along. You don’t even love him; you were obsessed with him, but you wanted to be her. You will never be her. And now everything is back where it should be.”

“Leave me alone.” This little bitch is just as bad as those two. “One day, I’m going to find you, and when I do, I’ll make you pay for destroying my life.”

“No one destroyed your life. You did that all on your own with help from your washed-up wanna-be father. He used you, and now he’s nowhere to be found.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know a lot. Oh, and by the way, that conservatorship wouldn’t have been of any use to you. Ryder put everything he owned in Elena’s name years ago. Checkmate.”