Page 233 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

My shoulders snap rigid despite me.

Honor yanks the cork out with a pop.

“Yo, while I got everybody here,” Andrew says, then behind me, papers slide across the counter. “Need you three to sign somethin’.”

Ben eyes it, suspicious.

“You serious?”

Honor swipes it off the counter.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s an amendment,” Andrew says. “To her contract. Read it. Language’s real simple. Protects everyone.”

Then Andrew’s cell chirps across the counter. He slides over, snatches it up, his smile tugging as he reads the screen.

“Damn,” Ben muses, humor filling his eyes. “Boy’s more turned on by a text than by you.”

“Just sign the damn amendment,” Andrew says as he brushes past, his words raking over the counter as he leaves the kitchen, heading to the terrace, passing Ben on the way, whose grin stretches wider around the apple.

In that second,

I was skin.

I was tits.

I was nothing.

My heart begins to race,

slamming wildly against my sternum as I stand angry, a thin layer of sweat glazing the nape of my neck.

But just before Andrew opens the door,

his icy eyes fall over his shoulder,

his furious stare burning a path to me⁠—

one second,

two—

Then he steps out into the night.

49 / DIRTY DIANA

MICHAEL JACKSON

// DEC 11, 7:00 AM //

HELL WEEK: WEDNESDAY, DAY THREE

At 7 a.m., I wake up drenched in a cold sweat as if I spent my night dry-humping a ghost. I’m not sure if I came or cried in my sleep. My sheets are strangling me, my heart’s racing as if on cocaine, my mouth’s desert-dry, and Little Death’s pacing in its cage, eating its own tail.

The only thing worth getting out of bed for is the memory of Andrew’s cold stare from last night, and what I’m about to turn it into.

I skip my morning shower.