She stilled, her smile fading instantly. “Imogen, what?—”
“I am not being modest and I am not joking around with you,” I said, heart pounding faster and faster as I stepped around the coffee table and started to pace. I was incapable of staying still for another second. “I cannot have that online. I cannot have my picture out there. Mynameout there.”
Gwen and Flo watched me pace, wide-eyed and silent. So did Socks, though he wasn’t silent. He let out a low whine, as if he could sense my sheer panic from across the room.
I tried to get a handle on it, but I couldn’t.
I was officially spiraling.
Run.
Now.
Get in your car and go.
He’s coming for you.
“Imogen, please,” Florence said gently. “Can you explain?”
My head shook back and forth rapidly as my boots clapped across the hardwood floor. I was breathing hard, nearly hyperventilating.
“Don’t you understand?He’ll find me.If that’s out there…” I drew abruptly to a halt. Tears filled my eyes as my words faded to an inaudible whisper. “He’ll find me and he’ll drag me back into hell.”
Gwen flinched. “Who? Who’ll find you?”
A single tear slipped down my cheek. I took a deep breath. “My uncle.”
And there it was.
Therehewas.
The source of all my horrors. The nightmare on my heels. The grim reaper in the back corner of my mind. The man who made my life a misery from the moment I found myself living under his roof until I finally fled at age fifteen, when I could take no more.
Not of him.
Not of the spotlight he’d pushed me into.
Not of the big plans he had for my future in Hollywood.
If I hadn’t left, there was no telling where I’d be now. Dead, possibly. Miserable, most definitely. Every facet of my existence controlled, every morsel I consumed measured, every communication I made monitored. No friends. No relationships. No interactions he didn’t approve of personally.
Days at the studio, recording. Nights either doing press interviews or prepping for them.
A shell of a life.
And for what?
My name in the papers, my face on the television. My fame feeding his greed, a vicious cycle without end. I trembled as memories washed through me. The ten years I spent in his house, after my parents died and left me in his care, were not something I liked to look back on. Most days, I tried my hardest to forget it ever happened. If I just kept moving forward, if I just kept running, I might go days or even weeks without thinking about it.
Until, without warning, it caught up.
And clobbered me.
For a moment, no one said anything.
There was no snarky comment from Florence, no reassuring remark from Gwen. They stared at me in utter silence, watching as the tears dripped down my cheeks, their expressions both contorted in horror and sympathy and — even worse — pity.
Expressions like that were exactly why I didn’t talk about my past.