Chapter 4

Christian

"This will smooth over before you know it. For now, just focus on your work, and the media will forget this ever happened."

"Until it's convenient for them to remember it again," I said.

It had been just a couple days since my "Mystery Girl" ended my life on Hollywood Tonight, and that was the best advice Frank could give me as I tried to move forward. I figured he and my publicist would do some damage control, but their strategy was to sit back and let the story run its course.

One thing was for sure: I was done with live shows. I would stick to pre-recorded episodes from now on. At least that way, I would have a chance of stopping any potential train wrecks in their tracks before the episode aired.

On the bright side, the internet seemed more interested in tracking this girl down than in reliving my embarrassment. Alright, that might have been wishful thinking on my part. There was still a lot of emphasis on my very public roast, more than I would have liked.

While I normally loved seeing myself go viral, usually for the simplest of posts – seriously, I could post a picture of my water bottle after a workout, and someone would write about it – this wasn't the kind of attention I was going for.

I shifted in my seat, grimacing at the sound the black leather seat made every time I moved. I hated taking the limousine for random trips. For flashy events, sure, whatever, but for a trip to the recording studio to see the singer I was "dating"? That just made me come across as a douche, unless I had a big date planned for the two of us, which I didn't.

"Don't worry." Frank didn't even look up from his phone. That was how unpreoccupied he was with my struggles. "By then, you'll have done something even dumber to make them forget about it for good."

"Wow. Thanks for the support."

He didn't even bother with a response, although my sarcasm didn't really call for one. His fingers just kept typing away on his phone. I honestly wasn't sure what he did on a day-to-day basis, but whatever it was, it kept my workload to a minimum. Usually, all I had to do was show up to whatever he and my publicist had planned, smile, mingle, and go home.

I glanced out the tinted window as we arrived at Ocean Way Recording, pulling up behind a flashy car that looked like it was getting ready to leave.

"You coming with, or are you just gonna sit there and play with your phone?" I asked Frank when it became clear he had no intention of moving. I felt like my mother. She said the same thing to me when I visited her and didn't pay attention to her the entire time.

"I'll just be a minute," he said, still not looking up from his phone. I tried to get a peek at whatever he was doing, but he was holding his phone in a way that blocked my view. As much as I liked kicking back and letting other people do all of the work for me, Frank had the tendency of making moves on my behalf without telling me, and they weren't always good ones.

"Alright." I wasn't going to sit around and wait for him to decide to return to this realm. Whatever he was up to, it couldn't have been that bad. "I'll see you in a few."

Just as I grabbed the door handle, Frank said, "Wait. I've got her."

"Got who?"

"Her. Your mystery girl. Her name is Sophia Hastings. She's 18 years old, and she's from Indiana."

"Sophia Hastings." Her name easily flew off my tongue. Why did it sound familiar? I guess it wasn't the most unique name in the world. I'd probably heard it somewhere before. "How'd you find her?"

"I tracked down the theater we got the footage from and called them. One of the workers knew her. One of her friends, a – what was her name – a Bianca something. I don't know why I bothered. I think Twitter beat me to it."

I guess that meant I had to stop calling her my "Mystery Girl," or my personal favorite, Contest Entry #587.

"Well, what took you so long, then?" I asked. I quickly back-tracked when I saw the less-than-amused look on his face. "I'm just kidding. I knew I hired you for a reason, old man." I affectionately slapped him on the shoulder before opening the limousine door. I just wanted to get this over with.

The girl I was seeing, Heather Meyers, was an up-and-coming country singer with a lot of promise. Professionally, I mean. Romantically, I couldn't see this going anywhere. It was one of those things our publicists set up.

My publicist, Lila, thought it would be good for me to go out with someone new after breaking it off with my ex-girlfriend a few months ago. I didn't feel like exclusively dating anyone new, but both she and Frank thought it would look bad if Cassie moved on before I did.

It wasn't like Heather got nothing out of the deal. Dating me, even for just a few weeks, had already given her career enough of a boost to land a decent opening act gig.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sure Heather thought we were going to get married someday. I don't think she fully understood the symbiotic nature of our relationship. I went out with her a few times, let the paparazzi take some pictures of us together, and all of a sudden, she thought I was actually her boyfriend. I kind of felt bad for her, but not bad enough to stop me from figuring out a way to end things.

I stepped outside and looked up, still going through different "breakup" scenarios in my head. I had to get the message across to Heather, but I didn't want to look like a dick and render the stunt a waste of time.

My eyes locked with a pair of hazel eyes, snapping me out of my thoughts. I could only see the part of her face that wasn't covered by bushes – why was she hiding behind bushes? – but the part of her face I could see looked familiar.

Really familiar.

Why did she look familiar?

And then it hit me. It was her. It was my "Mystery Girl." It was Sophia Hastings. It felt kind of weird referring to her by her actual name, but it also felt natural, like I'd known her in a different life.

Her eyes widened, and she stopped dead in her tracks, an admittedly endearing deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. Maybe she was star-struck. Or maybe she was just as surprised as I was to run into each other in person after the conversation we'd had on air just a couple days ago. It was even weirder for me because I had literally just figured out who she was right before getting out of the limo. That couldn't have been a coincidence. Fate had to have been messing with us. 

A voice resonated from inside the bushes. "What are you looking at – oh, my God."

Sophia seemed to snap out of whatever trance it was that held her in her place and turned away, falling out of the bushes less than gracefully. She looked up at me one more time before bolting. She was actually running away from me, as if we were in a scary movie and I was chasing after her with a knife.

"Sophia," the voice from the bushes called out. "What are you doing?"

But Sophia didn't listen to her friend. She just kept running, albeit not very fast. She didn't appear to be particularly tall or athletic.

"Hey, wait," I called out, finally snapping out of my own trance. I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head and took off after her, completely forgetting why I was at the recording studio in the first place.

I wasn't sure why my first instinct was to run after her, but it was. If I was being honest, I was curious about her. This situation had been blown out of proportion by the media, and I felt like at the very least, I deserved another conversation after what she had put me through. Maybe she was taking the playground bully approach and picking on me because she actually liked me. Or maybe she was just the Antichrist.

She picked up the pace when she realized I was running after her. She was a lot faster than I'd expected. I actually had to make an effort to try to catch up with her.

"Wait up," I called out.

I guess I could have already caught up to her if I really wanted to, but I'd always been a fan of the chase, and this was as literal as the chase got. Plus, I kind of wanted to see how long it would take her to give up and stop to catch her breath, or maybe fall down. I was pretty sure it hadn't even been a full minute yet, and I could already hear her gasping for breath, so I had to say, it wasn't looking good for her.

She had been running in a straight path at first, but then she switched strategies and started making random turns. They were unexpected enough to catch me off guard and give her a bit of a lead.

"Stop running! I just want to talk!" I knew she wasn't going to stop just because I asked her to, but I still felt like I had to try. By this point, I was close enough that I could have reached her, but I didn't want to scare her off.

We ended up in front of one of the better malls in the Los Angeles area. Just as I feared, she ran inside.

Alright, enough was enough. I wasn't about to lose her in the crowd after coming this far.

"Stop!"

I finally said "fuck it" and grabbed her by the arm when she was within reach. She had barely reached the central area of the mall when I caught her. I turned her around so she was forced to face me. With my free hand, I adjusted my hood so it covered my face again. In an area this populated, I had to take precautions to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Relying on a hoodie to hide my identity wasn't the best plan, but if there were enough people around, blending in was possible. Luck was on my side, because no one seemed particularly interested in the two people who had just sprinted in through a side door.

"It's you, isn't it?" I asked, although I already knew the answer to my question. The resemblance couldn't have been that uncanny. The long, wavy brown hair, the hypnotic eyes that appeared to change in color every time I saw them, the small frame, the not-terrible-to-look-at-face... Plus, there was no other reason she would have run away from me like that unless she had something to hide.

My breathing had already returned to normal. Hers, on the other hand, kept coming in erratic pauses. Was she was having an asthma attack? It sounded like she was about to lose a lung.

"Uh... are you okay?"

She spluttered incoherently, waving her arm at me. I wasn't sure what the hell that gesture was supposed to mean. Was she saying "yes, I'm okay"? Was she losing control of her limbs? Was that a cry for help? I didn't know.

"Do you need some help or something?" She was starting to worry me. She didn't look like she was so out of shape that she required an oxygen tank to return to normalcy after a few minutes of running.

"I'm... fine..." She placed a hand over her chest, and I furrowed my eyebrows, still debating whether or not I should call an ambulance. Was it possible for an 18-year-old girl to have a heart attack? Because that was honestly what this looked like, and people were starting to stare. "Just... need... air..."

I carefully let go of her arm when she finally stopped gasping for breath. I hadn't realized I was still holding onto her arm until then. I guess my subconscious saw her as fragile and in need of saving after that episode. What she did next showed fragile was the last word I should have been using to describe her. Cunning was more like it.

Just as I opened my mouth to speak, she pulled my hood down and screamed, "Oh, my God, it's Christian Ryder!"

First of all, I wasn't sure how she even managed to reach my hood. She was like five feet tall, while I was 6'3". How did she even get up there?

Second of all, this girl had some nerve. Damn it, Contest Entry #587. Why did she always have to do me wrong?

The next thing I knew, every face in the mall was fixated on us. My eyes widened, while Sophia sported a smug little smirk. The surprise I felt and probably expressed quickly faded and was replaced by anger. "Damn it. You –"

I didn't even get to finish my sentence. The ear-piercing screams that followed her revelation drowned out my complaints. All I could see and feel were hands and hair flying around everywhere. I was being attacked from every angle and losing precious hearing capacity with every second that passed. I tried to look around for Sophia, but I couldn't see anything from the center of the massive crowd that had formed in an impressively short amount of time. She was gone.

It was almost funny. I'd thought she was fragile and in need of my help just a minute ago, but the truth was that she was five feet of girly evil.

***

It took me a good ten minutes to escape the grasp of the crowd Sophia had drawn towards us. Well, towards me. She had managed to slip out undetected, leaving me to face the numerous grabby hands surrounding me on my own. It wasn't until the mall managed to call in enough reinforcements to separate the crowd that they were able to help me make it out of there without losing any more of my dignity. 

The man in charge of security personally escorted me to safety, safety being a relative term. I never actually feared for my life, but several fans almost punched me in the face trying to get closer to me, and more than one made a grab for the crown jewels.

"Can you do me a favor?" I asked him.

"I can try," he said.

"I came here with a girl, and she left before me. Think your security cameras would be able to show me which way she went?"

He nodded. "Let me see what I can do."

Ah, the perks of being famous. There was very little people wouldn't do for me if I asked. The security cameras didn't extend far enough to be of much help, but they did give me a general idea of the direction she took. With a path in mind, I set off after her. If she was still on foot, I could probably catch up with her. If she had managed to find a ride while I was held up, I might have been going after a lost cause. Still, for some reason, I felt like I had to try.

After a short walk, I found myself in a residential area with a few small shops and a park around the corner. After coming up short, I was about to give up and go get a donut from the bakery across the street when I saw a girl with brown hair sitting on a bench by herself in the park. I couldn't tell for sure from where I was standing, partly because of the distance and partly because of the less-than-stellar lighting, but I had a pretty good feeling it was her.

I was surprised to see her sitting out in the open. I figured she would have hidden in some bushes again, or maybe a tree. Not that that was necessary. I wasn't that bad.

I slowly approached her, feeling creepier and creepier by the second. I really wasn't trying to be weird. I just felt a strange need to talk to her again. People didn't treat me like this. As annoyed as I was, I was also intrigued.

I managed to approach her and stop near the bench without her noticing me. It wasn't until she put her phone in her pocket and stood up that she finally saw me.

"Holy –" She jumped back and almost lost her footing. "How – when did you get here? How did you find me?"

I shrugged. "I have my ways." I looked her over and smirked when I realized I was literally looking down on her. She seemed even smaller up close and in person. She was a lot less threatening when you took the height difference into account.

Her eyes didn't stay on me for long. I could see them wandering, most likely trying to find another escape route. But this time, there were no fans around to weaponize, and if it came down to who was faster or who knew how to get around the city more efficiently, we both knew who would win.

"Right... well, as fun as this little game of cat and mouse has been, I have to go. My, uh, favorite commercial is on TV. Wouldn't want to miss it. It's a classic."

She whipped around and tried to walk away from me again. This time, I wasn't letting her get away.  I positioned myself in front of her so she had no choice but to come to a stop. "Not so fast, Sophia," I said.

She caught herself just as she was about to run right into me, mumbling something I couldn't quite catch under her breath. "So you know my name now. How'd you figure it out?"

"Some girl named Bianca spilled the beans to my manager. The girl you were with today said your name, too, so don't try to tell me your name is Dorothy or Jenny or whatever else."

"Damn it, Bianca," she muttered.

"I wouldn't put all of the blame on her. My manager called the movie theater you were at. He has a way of getting people to do what he wants. And I'm pretty sure your notifications were already going crazy before she talked," I said, nodding towards the endless vibrations coming from her pocket.

"Well, congratulations." She crossed her arms over her chest, clearly not impressed by my detective skills. Well, Frank's detective skills, anyway. "You tracked me down. Do you want a trophy? A medal? A certificate?"

I rolled my eyes. "No. I just want to talk."

"I'll pass."

"I didn't follow you all the way here just to let you go so easily."

Now she was the one rolling her eyes. "Oh, because following me for a few blocks must have been so hard."

"No. Following you was easy. You're slower than my grandmother."

For once, she was the one who looked offended. "I'm new here. I don't know my way around yet."

"Well, let me give you your first lesson, then. I'm Christian Ryder. Doesn't that mean anything to you?" I found it difficult to wrap my mind around the idea that there could be a girl – an ordinary girl – that wasn't interested in me. Maybe that was just me being conceited. Or maybe I was right, and this was all an act.

She looked at me like I had three heads and a tail. "Don't you get it? I don't care who you are. You really haven't realized that by now?"

"I'm not an idiot," I said. Of course I realized she seemed to be less than fond of me. I just didn't understand why. "I just thought you might have been playing hard to get or something."

Of all the possible explanations for her erratic behavior, that was the one that made the most sense. Her laughter made it clear she didn't agree. "You're kidding, right?"

I struggled to keep my face straight. I didn't particularly enjoy being laughed at, but I didn't want to make it obvious that I was clenching my jaw. "No."

"I don't play mind games. If I like someone, I'll make it clear. If I don't, I'll make it even clearer. I think even you could figure out which one applies to you."

"Stop treating me like I'm stupid. I've had a 4.0 my entire life and I'm working on my bachelor's degree between filming. I'm not an idiot."

"I don't remember asking for a summary of your education."

I took a deep breath, hoping the extra oxygen would calm me down. I could feel that anger bubbling up again and knew I was just a few insults away from snapping. I was usually a good sport, but she knew how to push my buttons like no one else. "You know, I'm usually a calm person. I don't get riled up easily, and I definitely don't believe in hitting a woman, but you make me want to forget all of that. You're the single most... frustrating person I've ever met, and I've met a lot of assholes here."

"Do it. Hit me. I bet the press would love that. 'Christian Ryder Hits Mystery Girl.' I'm sure your people would have fun cleaning up that mess."

Mystery Girl. All of a sudden, the anger melted away, and I remembered why I was standing in front of her in the first place. "I almost forgot. You're my Mystery Girl." I chuckled at the name. After having spoken to her a few times, I had a feeling being called my 'Mystery Girl' was comparable to the sound of nails on a chalkboard for her.

She shut her eyes, rubbing her temple as if the name actually caused her physical pain. "Don't remind me."

She opened her eyes at the sound of a car approaching. We both watched a compact white Toyota turn the corner, narrowly missing the curb only to fall victim to a pothole just a few feet away.

Why did I have a feeling this menace on wheels was her new escape route?

"Thank God," she said, confirming my suspicions. We stood there and watched the car pull up in front of the park. "Looks like my ride's here."

She started running before I even thought about following her. Honestly, though, I was tired of chasing after her.

"At least apologize," I shouted after her.

She climbed into the car, swinging her legs inside with one swift motion. Instead of immediately slamming the passenger door shut, she glanced over at me, her hand tightly gripping the handle. "Why would I do that?"

I shot her a look. "Do you really have to ask?"

Instead of apologizing – which would have been the decent thing to do after the way she had treated me – she gave me the finger and slammed the car door shut.

The car stayed in park for what felt like at least another minute. I heard a wail come from inside the car, and then they were gone.