God, I love Vegas. I hate hating on it right now.
“It wasn't him," I say baldly, staring at the busy street without really registering any of it. "Ty wasn't the one who used the steroids."
"You believe him, B?"
I nod. I do. I really do. Not because I want to, but because this is not Ty. He wouldn't take drugs. He's probably done something else, something worse, but drugs? Not his style.
Shane is looking at me with eyes full of misery. It's a should-I-tell-her-or-should-I-not look, and I hate it. Brain is dying to know what else he heard, but Heart wants to punch the idea in the throat. What on earth is wrong with me? The last gossip I heard about Ty from Shane strained our relationship. Why would I put myself through that again?
He was wrong the first time, Heart yells at me, stomping its foot.
Yeah, dumbass, Brain retorts, but Ty has a secret, and Shane's accusation had a seed of truth.
I feel the bile climbing up my throat. Beads of cold sweat are running down my spine.
"Help me out here, B. I don't want to screw things up for you, but I don't want to keep you in the dark either. The only guy I do know that knows Ty well—Josh—has been saying some pretty serious stuff about him that I thought you should know."
I exhale sharply, shaking my head no. I'll be betraying Ty if I'll ask Shane for this information.
But Ty has been keeping me in the dark for weeks now, and I don't know what to think anymore.
Screw this. I need the truth.
"Just say it, dude." I throw my head back in defeat, rubbing my eyes with my fists.
“He’s a male prostitute. And I don’t mean it in a screw-around-for-fun way. He is bribing the assistant to the XWL chairman, Ray Holloway, by giving sex services to women who pay a lot of dough for him. They split the charge, fifty/fifty, but what he really gets from it, according to my source...is great fights. They hook him up with the toughest guys in his division. That's why he managed to climb up to where he is in only four years.”
I turn to the planter behind me and throw up in the middle of the bushes. Shane jumps from where he stands to avoid the stream of vomit, and I rest my hands on my legs to support myself from falling. My head is spinning and my arms are shaking. I look at everything I’ve eaten in the last sixteen hours. Mac ’n cheese. Veggie soup. Diet Coke. They all float underneath my chucks. Shane flattens his palm on my back, his other hand running through his hair.
“Fuck, sorry, B,” he whispers.
I raise my head slowly, smiling weakly through my bloodshot eyes and the rancid taste of bile. “Not your fault. Are you sure this is legit?"
But I know it's legit. The writing was on the wall.
Is that why Ty flinched when my grandmother taunted him about STDs? Because goddammit, he slept with me. We used protection, but yeah, I don't want to take a chance. It all adds up.
This is the dark secret he told me about.
The dark secret Dawson was talking about.
Stupid. I'm just stupid, stupid, stupid.
***
The journey back to the room is the worst. I don’t want to be with Shane, so I'm more than happy to leave him to make a phone call outside the hotel, but I don’t want to be by myself either. I hate to be alone with all the thoughts swirling in my head. People pass me by, drinking, laughing and talking.
“Hey gorgeous, you dropped your smile, want me to pick it up for ya’?” A guy winks as he walks past me. My head is spinning and I feel faint.
Ty’s known for fighting dirty. He always pushes people’s buttons, and he can be an arrogant prick. But a male prostitute? That’s difficult to swallow.
I drag myself to my room and find Izzy still in her lingerie, sitting in front of the mirror, staring at herself thoughtfully.
When she spots me, her mouth opens in shock. “Holy hell, Blaire. You look like you went down on that giant from Harry Potter. What happened to you?”
After an emergency sisterly meeting, Izzy and I decide to give Ty a chance to explain himself. Izzy gives me the brief about how rumors can sometimes be just that—rumors. She knows it first hand, since her name has been linked in the tabloids to half the males on the planet.
I fight my instincts, which tell me that every word that came out of Shane’s mouth this time was true, and call Ty a few times, but he doesn’t pick up. I pace the room, taking big gulps of the water Izzy has handed me.
“He’s probably training at The Heat,” I venture.