“With you?”
“Are you seriously going to repeat everything I say to you?” he asks, obviously exasperated.
“It’s just—” My voice breaks and fuck. Just fuck. This whole thing is turning me into a total wimp, one who cries over everything.
“Tori?”
“I’m here. Thanks.”
He snorts. “For what? I couldn’t talk Dad out of being a total jerk, though God knows I tried. We had a huge fight when he told me what he’d done. And I’ve been looking for you ever since—I don’t know why I didn’t think about Chloe. I guess because I thought she was going to school near San Francisco.”
“She is. But she’s letting me stay at her place.”
“Thank God. I’ve been so fucking worried, trying to figure out where you might be. I’ve talked to everyone in town I could think of and no one had heard from you.”
“Well, it’s not like I could call anyone. Dad took my phone.”
“I figured that out after the hundredth or so time I called and didn’t get an answer. Look, give me Ethan’s address. I’ll come pick you up.”
I think about Miles, about the fight we just had. I don’t want to go, don’t want to just walk out when things are so up in the air between us. There’s a part of me that wants to stick around and see where this thing between us goes, but I don’t want to overstay my welcome, either. I did just show up here, unannounced, and demand to stay.
“Tori?” Jason prompts.
“Can I think about it?”
“What’s there to think about? You can’t stay at Ethan Frost’s house indefinitely—”
“Two days isn’t indefinitely. But I need to figure some things out before I do anything else.”
“What’s there to figure out?” he demands. “You’re in the middle of a sex scandal, you have no job, no money, no place to live. It’s not like you have a lot of options—”
“Maybe I don’t. But I’ve spent the last two days just reacting to what’s happening to me and I can’t keep doing that. I need to stop reacting and start acting. This is my life and I need to take control of it.”
“I get that. I do,” he insists when I don’t say anything more. “But let me help you. Let me call in some favors. I can get you a job, get you an apartment—”
“I don’t want you to do that for me.” The words are out before I even know I’m going to say them. But once they’re out, I know I mean them. Because if I let Jason help me like that, if I let him do that for me, then I’ll be right back where I was two days ago. Depending on him for what I have instead of my father, but still. If everything I have is given to me by him, then he can take it away whenever he wants.
There’s no way in hell I’m doing that again. No way in hell I’m putting myself in the position to be dependent on a man again. Not my father. Not Jason. And not Miles.
That’s when it hits me, when it registers why I’m really so upset about all those packages in there. Not just because I’m afraid Miles doesn’t think I can stand on my own, but because I’m afraid not to stand on my own. Every man I’ve ever known has let me down, and there’s no way I’m going to give Chloe’s too-often-self-absorbed brother the chance to be the next one to hurt me.
“What do you mean?” Jason sounds totally confused. “Tor, you need help.”
“I know. But I’m still so shaken up I’m not sure what help I need right now. Give me a couple of days to figure it out and then I’ll call you, okay?”
“A couple of days? You don’t even have a phone!”
“I’m cal
ling from the landline at Ethan and Chloe’s. You can reach me here anytime you want—God knows, it’s not like I have the money or the desire to leave the house.”
“What about food? What about—”
“I’m not starving to death, I promise. I’ve got everything I need to survive. I just need some time to figure out what my next step is going to be.”
“Your next step should be coming up to LA and moving in with me for a while.”
The last thing I want is to move to LA—I hate the place with a passion. The idea of not only moving there, but also moving in with my brother when I get there, makes me all itchy. I don’t say that to him, though. I can’t, not when he’s being so helpful and supportive.