Money For Something

12 - White Lies and Alibis

**Willow**

"Bloody hell woman, they are not going to hate you." Ace wrapped an arm around my shoulders and shook me gently. I dug an elbow into his ribs in an attempt to dislodge him.

"You can't know that. They're bound to hate me." His friends were so going to hate me, they were all rock stars and famous people. My normally solid self-esteem had taken a bit of a battering in the face of Jack's (almost a rock star and semi-famous person) cheating.

"Of course they're not," Ace scoffed tightening his grip around my shoulders. "I like you Petal, so they will too. In fact, I like you so much that I let you get me wankered enough to put a ring on it!" He grinned and touched a finger to the rock on my left-hand ring finger.

I couldn't have stopped the circuit my eyes did of the inside of my head if I'd tried. "That's exactly why they're going to hate me. I'm the random girl they've never heard of before that you come home from Vegas married to."

Surely, I shouldn't have needed to point that out?

Ace and I were seated in the back of a luxury SUV on our way from the airport to the house he shared with his band. I felt like pinching myself. I was with Ace, not Jack. In Los Angeles. Not on my way back to Chicago with the promise of an annulment. It still boggled my mind.

Instead of slinking back to Chicago with my tail between my legs and a tale of epic stupidity, I was arriving in Los Angeles with my husband – my husband! – after our honeymoon – our honeymoon! – at a luxury desert resort in Utah. When I say honeymoon, I obviously mean the four nights that Ace and I spent hiding away from the consequences of our actions. Nothing says blissfully married like a stay at a luxury resort where a night's stay cost more than my monthly rent in Chicago.

Maybe I shouldn't have been worried about meeting Ace's friends. Minty had seemed to like me well enough in Utah. In fact, she'd invited us to join her, and her and her mostly silent Russian boyfriend Sasha, for a private helicopter trip to Bryce Canyon. I'd been before with my parents, but Ace hadn't seen it and an aerial view was too good for us to pass up. At the end of the day, I felt safe in assuming Minty liked me. She'd promised to look us up in either Los Angeles or London. Such was the life of an international jetsetter.

Minty's approval didn't mean I wasn't freaking out about meeting the rest of Ace's friends. It wasn't just the blow that Jack had dealt to my self-esteem that left me feeling so uncharacteristically insecure. No one had ever warned me how confronting navigating an airport with a famous person could be. Ace may have worn a hat and sunglasses, but long blue hair wasn't the easiest to hide.

I'd never had any insecurities before Jack's betrayal. I knew I was short and without make-up too much like a child to be classed as more than cute or on a good day with my superhero red lipstick, pretty. I was never going to be anyone's idea of sexy and I didn't care. I was more than my looks. My family liked me. My friends liked me. My blog followers liked me. Most importantly, I liked me.

I really, really didn't care what people thought of me. So I was horrified to find that the vicious comments of strangers had left a wobble in my self-confidence. The entitlement and brutally expressed opinions of some of Ace's fans was an eye-opener.

Jack had cheated on me with a multitude of big-haired, buxom groupies. Well, at least two from what I'd seen, but that insult was private. Hidden. I wasn't supposed to be around for it. It was an impersonally personal attack. Jack's groupies hadn't cared about me, because they didn't even know about me.

Most of Ace's fans didn't care about me either. And some were deeply offended by my very existence.

It's amazing what people feel free to shout out in in public in the presence of a famous person. I didn't have any practice at ignoring them, and even if I did, no one likes to be called, and I quote, 'a stunted fire-crotch slut' by a random stranger in an airport because she has the hots for your husband. Now I was getting ready to meet Ace's best friends, and I felt unusually fragile.