Page 72 of The Man in the Cottage

"It's only been four days."

"Four days is a lifetime online. There's already a new scandal—some influencer lied about being at a charity event. Everyone's talking about that now."

I should feel relieved. And part of me does. But there's another part that can't quite let go of the past few days—the panic, the exposure, the feeling of being watched and judged by thousands of strangers who didn't know me at all.

"How are you, really?" Nicole asks. She's sitting next to me on the couch, close enough that our shoulders touch. "And don't say fine. I can tell when you're lying."

I take a breath. "I'm tired. I'm angry. I'm relieved it's dying down but also terrified it's going to flare up again." I stare into my wine glass. "And I feel stupid for being this upset about it. People deal with worse things every day."

"Your feelings aren't stupid," Mona says. "You had your privacy violated. Your name dragged through the mud. That's traumatic, Kelly."

"It doesn't feel like trauma. It just feels like... embarrassment. Like I got caught doing something wrong, even though I didn't do anything wrong."

"That's how they want you to feel." Brit sets down her phone. "That's the whole point of stories like this. Make the woman feel ashamed, make her question herself, make her doubt her own reality. It's gaslighting on a massive scale."

"When did you become a media critic?"

"I took a class in college. Also, I've been reading a lot of think pieces since this happened." She shrugs. "I wanted to understand what you were going through."

"The worst part," I say, "is knowing his family did this. People who are supposed to love him. They didn't care that they were hurting him too—they just wanted to hurt me."

"They wanted to control the narrative," Nicole says. "You're a threat to them. You're someone he chose over them, and they can't handle it."

"I didn't ask him to choose me."

"You didn't have to. That's what makes you dangerous." She takes a sip of wine. "Real love doesn't ask for loyalty tests. It just shows up. And Travis showed up for you. His family can't compete with that, so they're trying to destroy it instead."

I think about that. About Travis cutting off his family for me, about the phone call with Savannah, about everything he's sacrificed just to be here. It still doesn't feel real sometimes—that someone would choose me over their own blood.

"How's your mom handling it?" Mona asks gently.

"Better than I expected. She was upset at first—called me crying, asking why she had to hear about my boyfriend from a gossip site. But once I explained everything, she was actually really supportive." I smile. "She wants to meet him. Said anyone who's willing to stand up to his own family for me must be worth knowing."

"Smart woman."

"She has her moments."

Something warm spreads through my chest. These women—my friends, my people—drove four hours to sit on my floor and drink wine and tell me I'm not crazy. I don't know what I did to deserve them, but I'm grateful every day.

"Okay, enough doom and gloom," Nicole announces. "We came here to cheer you up, not make you more depressed. Brit, tell Kelly about your Hinge disaster."

"Oh god." Brit groans. "Do I have to?"

"Yes. It's hilarious and Kelly needs to laugh."

Brit takes a long sip of wine, steeling herself. "Fine. Okay. So I matched with this guy last week. Cute, seemed normal, had a bio that wasn't just his height and a fish picture. We talked for a few days, decided to meet up for coffee."

"This sounds promising so far," I say.

"It was promising. Until I got there and realized he'd used photos from ten years ago. And I don't mean like, slightly older photos. I mean this man looked like a completely different person. He'd gained fifty pounds and lost most of his hair."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. But here's the thing—I'm not shallow. I was willing to give him a chance. People change, right? Maybe we'd still have chemistry." Brit shakes her head. "We did not have chemistry. Because within five minutes of sitting down, he started telling me about his ex-wife."

"His ex-wife?"

"His ex-wife. In detail. How she left him for his best friend. How she took the dog. How she's probably a narcissist, according to a quiz he took online." Brit finishes her wine in one gulp. "I sat there for forty-five minutes listening to this man process his divorce. I learned more about his marriage than some of his family members probably know."