Rocked with Passion (A New Adult Rockstar Novel) (15 page)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get any more information than that. But at least I knew something. I knew it was a woman who was calling up in canceling the appointments. I also definitely knew it wasn’t me. Tomorrow I would call up the magazine, and find out exactly why they wrote the scathing article that they did.

Starting the next day, I was a woman on a mission. More than anything, I wanted figure out exactly who is doing this to me. I knew I wasn’t crazy anymore. After all, I knew for a fact that I hadn’t called any of the
magazine’s overseas to cancel any appointments. I was 100% certain of that, and so I knew that there was no miscommunication. Someone was calling them up, and pretending to be me. What I had no idea about, was who was doing it. It had to be someone close, it just absolutely had to be. Nobody else would have access to my laptop, nobody else would have access to my calendar, nobody else would know which magazines I made appointments with.

The problem was, with everything that was happening with the band, they had so much staff that they were literally dozens of women who had access to my computer at some point or another. I was really regretting being pretty lax with my security. After all, if I’d figured out earlier wrote was going on, I could’ve been a lot more careful and a lot of this could’ve been completely avoided.

The first thing I did was change my phone number after password protecting my laptop. When Jonathan asked me why, I made up an excuse about getting a whole bunch of spam messages. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, since I still thought Jonathan would think it was silly. I had to have proof, I had to have absolute definite proof that somebody was doing this to me, and then I could tell Jonathan. But there was in a chance in hell I was going to tell him before.

The other major problem I was running into was that of the dozen or so women who had access to my laptop, at least half of them also had a crush on Jonathan. I mean, it wasn’t hard to see. I was getting used to it by now, but far too often the woman that would work for him would leave his dressing room giggling and blushing, or telling me how lucky of a girl I was.
I had no way to determine which one of them was doing this.

Eventually, I decided I was going to set a trap. It wasn’t a great one of course, but it was the best I could do. I called up the editor for one of the magazines that I had the band scheduled with, and I told her absolutely everything. I laid it all bare. Then, when she knew exactly what was going on, I asked her if she wouldn’t be so kind as to record the phone number of the person who called her up to cancel the appointment, and then relate back to me. Of course, I also told her not to cancel the appointment. She agreed that if the person called her, she would immediately let me know that information.

I had to admit, I was pretty pleased with myself. I wasn’t certain that the person was going to call to cancel that specific appointment, so I also did the same thing with three other magazine editors. Chances were at least one of them were going to get a phone call trying to cancel.

Unfortunately, when a week or so later I still didn’t have any response from them, I was starting to get worried. Well, worried was the wrong word. A part of me was hoping that whoever was doing this had gotten tired of their little game and had given u
p on it completely. I didn’t want to bank on this though.

Pretty quickly, I also noticed Jonathan realized something was up. He asked me questions about what I was doing, asked me if everything was all right, and Violet pretended everything was fine I knew that he knew it wasn’t. Still, he seemed to know that I didn’t want to be pressed, and backed off pretty quickly. But when two weeks had gone by and I still hadn’t heard from any of the editors, I knew that my fidgeting, my increasing grumpiness and my nerves were getting worse than ever.

“Hey, Sara, I know there’s something wrong, and I know you don’t really want to talk to me about it, but is there anything I can do without knowing what it is? You look really stressed, and I want to make you feel better.” Jonathan told me this fall we were watching a movie one night, and I had to admit it was all I could do to not break down and tell him everything. He was so loving, so caring, so thoughtful. But still, that nagging feeling in the back of my head told me that he wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t time, I wasn’t ready to tell him.

“Thanks Jonathan, I really, really appreciate you trying to help me right now, but this is something I need to do by myself. I promise you that as soon as I know what’s going on, I will come to you, I will tell you everything and I will apologize for not getting you in the loop sooner. But I just can’t do that right now, I hope you understand.”

“I do. I don’t like it, but I do understand. Just let me know, you’re not in any danger are you?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that, don’t worry about me. It’s not even anything that
important, it’s just to do with work.”

“Speaking of your work, how is that new hire Tammy working out?”

“She’s actually really good. I guess secretly it might’ve been a blessing in disguise that Marissa left. Tammy works really hard, she’s enthusiastic and very bubbly. Plus, I actually have a sneaking suspicion that her and Oliver are starting to date.”

“Well, that could get ugly if they ever break up.”

“I know, but I’m hoping that we’ll never get to that. After all, I can’t really keep them apart from each other, they work in the same small office space and I’m quite often not around. Even if I told them they weren’t allowed to do it, they would probably do it anyways.”

Jonathan laughed. “That’s a great way of looking at
it, I think you’re completely right about it.”

As the conversation moved on, I couldn’t help but be thankful for Jonathan. He knew that I was going through something, but he wasn’t pushing, and yet at the same time he was letting me know that he was there for me. I didn’t deserve a man like this. Jonathan was way too good for me.

If anything, it made me only more determined figure out what was happening. I didn’t want to disappoint Jonathan, and I knew I was disappointing him every time something screwed up my business. I knew that every time this PR miscommunications stuff came up, he looked at me with a little bit less respect. I could understand it, after all it was supposed to help his band. If I was screwing up his band, I was screwing up with his life. I’m sure in his head he saw that every single mistake that I made meant that I didn’t care for him as much as I should, that I wasn’t working to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible.

Tha
t was the worst part to me, knowing that I was disappointing him. Anger I could deal with. Sadness I could deal with as well. But disappointment, that was worse than anything else. I wanted Jonathan to be proud of me, I didn’t want Jonathan to think that I didn’t care for him as much as he cared for me. I cared about Jonathan more than anything on the planet. In fact, with every passing day, I began to actually be thankful for the fact that Kevin was cheating on me. After all, if I hadn’t caught him, I might still be with him today. I wouldn’t be dating Jonathan, I wouldn’t be experiencing some of the greatest moments of my life, and I knew that I had to keep searching in order to prevent the best thing that had ever happened to me from slipping away.

It’s funny how life works. When I first found Kevin cheating on me, I thought it was the worst thing on the planet. I was devastated, completely devastated. And yet, now I thought of it as a blessing in disguise.
It was liberating, as strange as that is to say. Kevin’s cheating allowed me to be with Jonathan. It gave me that freedom. The world’s a funny thing that way.

Three days after Jonathan and I had that chat, however, I was certain I had lost him forever. Completely, absolutely certain of it. I was eating breakfast with Jonathan, having spent the night at his place, as we waited for the day to get started when he got a phone call. After a minute or so he moved into the other room, where his computer was. I didn’t think anything of it and kept eating my cereal, thinking about the day ahead. Then, a few minutes later, Jonathan called me into the room.

When I came in, he looked at me, his face like a stone.

“Do you want to tell me what all this is about?” he asked, motioning at the screen. I stared at the words, and then the picture on the screen. My jaw dropped open as I realized that I was looking at. It was me. Or at least, it kind of looked like me. Jonathan’s browser was set to one of the major gossip websites on the Internet. This was listed as one of the biggest news headlines of the day.

“KNIGHT BLINDNESS GIRLFRIEND GOES ROGUE” the headline read. Underneath were blurry, out of focus shots of somebody who definitely looked like me. There was a series of four photos. The first one showed the person looking like me holding hands with a mysterious man, one that I didn’t recognize.
The second photo was of me with that same man, only this time we were doing more than holding hands. We were making out behind what looked like some small cabin in a park somewhere, surrounded by trees, obviously secluded.

The third and fourth photos were possibly the most damning, if that was even possible after the second one. The third photo showed the person who looked like me going, with the man, into a cheap motel room. I didn’t recognize the
motel, I had no idea where it was. The fourth was of the person looking like me, once more, leaving the hotel with a guilty look, searching around to make sure no one was watching.

I had no idea who this man was. He didn’t look a thing like Jonathan. First of all, he had short blonde hair, and his shoulders were pretty thin whereas Jonathan had
brought, sexy, muscular shoulders. No, this was definitely not Jonathan, but if it wasn’t Jonathan I had no idea who it could be. I mean, I hadn’t cheated on him at all. Not ever. I would never, ever have done that, not in a million years.

I read the words below the pictures. “The girlfriend of Knight Blindness rocker Jonathan Knight, Sara O’Neill, has been living a double life for at least the past week. These photos were supplied to us, showing her with the man whom we have not yet identified, but who is very obviously not Jonathan Knight. What does this mean for their relationship? Are they broken up? Well, we have photos of the two of them together as recently as two nights ago, which is after these photos were taken. So, we can only speculate that Sara has been getting some on the side, although the next question we would ask is why she would possibly do this when she’s dating a man commonly referred to as the sexiest man in America. Is there trouble in paradise? Are there things about Jonathan Knight we don’t know? Combined with the scandalous article that appeared in a certain magazine last week, we wouldn’t be surprised.”

That’s where I stopped reading. There was a little bit more, but I already felt like I was going to throw out the nine you if I kept reading I wasn’t going to be able to hold it down any longer. I looked over at Jonathan.

Thoughts swirled through my head. How on earth was this happening?
How had they gotten these photos? I mean, there was nothing to say that it was definitively me, after all they were the best quality, but they definitely looked like me. I had to admit that. What on earth was going on?

I looked at Jonathan, and I knew the instant I looked into his eyes that he believed they were pictures of me. The hurt, the disappointment in the pain were all evident in the eyes that usually sparkled at me with such love and longing.

“No, please Jonathan, don’t believe the photos. There are not of me, I swear!”

“What am I supposed to believe Sara? I’m supposed to believe that these photos, which definitely look like you, aren’t as you? I’ve barely see me this past
week, you’ve been so secretive, so reserved. I wish I could believe you, I absolutely want to believe you, but I’m afraid I just can’t.”

His voice broke as he finished the sentence, and I began to realize just how much I was hurting him. Tears sprang to my eyes, my body unable to stop them from pouring down my face. I got down onto my knees, and tried to grab Jonathan’s hands in mine, but he pulled away. Instead, I looked down at the floor, my tears beginning to stay in the hardwood as I begged him to believe me.

“Jonathan, I swear. I absolutely swear to God, I swear my mother’s grave, I swear on absolutely everything that I hold dear in the world that I did not cheat on you. That’s not the type of person I am. You know me. I’ve told you everything. You know that after I even just kissed you in the club that night I went back to Kevin, who is my boyfriend at the time. I went to beg for his forgiveness, to admit to everything that I’d done. What these photos show is so, so much worse, and after everything I went through with Kevin especially I wish you a believe that I would never do something like that to you at first.”

“Don’t. Just, stop. Please. I want to believe you Sara. You have no idea how much I want to believe you, but I just absolutely… I just don’t. You’ve just been acting so weird lately, I didn’t want to believe you are that kind of person, I didn’t want to think that you would do something like this to me, but you can’t deny what the photos show.”

“But it might not even be me! It’s not me! I don’t even know where that motel is. I’ve never seen it before my life. All we have is some blurry out of focus shots somebody who kind of looks a little bit like me. It’s not like it’s definitive proof or anything.”