Page 69 of The Man in the Cottage

"Lovely."

"There's also—" I hesitate. "There's a thread on Reddit. People discussing whether you're really a gold digger or just naive. I didn't read the whole thing."

"Probably for the best." She reaches across the table and closes the laptop. "Okay. We've seen the damage. Now we figure out what to do about it."

I stare at her. "You're being very calm about this."

"I screamed into a pillow for about ten minutes while I was in the shower. Got it out of my system." She pulls her legs up onto the chair, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Now I'm in problem-solving mode. What are our options?"

This is what I love about her. The steadiness, the practicality, the refusal to let things knock her down for long. She fell apart yesterday—I saw it, held her through it—but she's already putting herself back together. Already thinking about next steps.

"Option one," I say. "We do nothing. Let the story die on its own. Most news cycles move fast—in a week or two, they'll be onto something else."

"And in the meantime, my name stays attached to gold digger forever. It'll be the first thing that comes up when anyone googles me."

"Yeah. That's the downside."

"What's option two?"

"We issue a statement. Through my agent, probably. Something that pushes back on the narrative, sets the record straight."

"Would that work?"

"Maybe. It would at least get our side of the story out there. But it also draws more attention. Could make things worse before they get better."

Kelly nods slowly, thinking. "What about option three?"

"What's option three?"

"We go public. Really public. Stop hiding, stop being defensive, just... own it." She meets my eyes. "The narrative right now is that I'm some shadowy woman who trapped you and cut you off from your family. What if we showed people that's not true? What if we let them see us—the real us?"

"You mean like... social media? Interviews?"

"I don't know. Maybe." She shrugs. "I'm just thinking out loud. The story has power because it's the only story. What if we gave them a different one?"

I sit back, considering. Going public goes against every instinct I have. For months I've been hiding, staying off social media, avoiding cameras. The idea of putting myself out there again—putting us out there—makes my skin crawl.

But Kelly has a point. The vacuum of information is what let my family control the narrative. If we don't speak for ourselves, they'll keep speaking for us.

"It's risky," I say.

"Everything is risky. Doing nothing is risky too." She leans forward. "Think about it, Travis. Right now, the only voices in this story are anonymous sources who hate us. Your family gets to define who I am, who we are, without any pushback. That's not fair. And it's not true."

"I know it's not true."

"But nobody else does. All they have is the story your family is telling. The calculating gold digger. The controlling girlfriend. The vulnerable athlete being manipulated." She shakes her head. "That's not us. Anyone who actually knows us would laugh at that narrative. But no one who actually knows us is talking."

"Because I asked them not to." I think about Jaxson, about Dave, about the handful of people who know the real story. "I wanted to protect you. Protect us. I thought staying quiet was the safest option."

"It might have been, before. But now our silence is being used against us." She reaches across the table and takes my hand. "At least if we go public, we're controlling the story. We're the ones deciding what people see."

"What would that even look like?"

"I don't know. Maybe we start small. Post something on your Instagram—you do have Instagram, right?"

"I have one. I haven't used it in months."

"Post something. A picture of us, a simple caption. Something that shows we're real people in a real relationship, not whatever tabloid villain they've turned me into."