Intemperance X - the Life We Choose
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 8: On the Record
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 8: On the Record - INTEMPERANCE X is the tenth and final novel in the main Intemperance series. As the band headlines its biggest moment yet, decades of music, loyalty, and hard-earned love converge on one unforgettable night—where everything they’ve built is tested in front of the world.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual BiSexual Fiction
San Francisco Chronicle Building
January 19, 2005 – 10:00 AM
The fifth-floor conference room was all brick, stone, and organic, ethically sourced, free-range coffee. Jen Collins sat at the far side of the oval table with her messenger bag on the floor beside her chair, a battered legal pad open in front of her. Across from her sat Paul Cartwright, the Chronicle’s editor-in-chief, sleeves rolled to his elbows, glasses perched low on his nose. To his left and right were the two reporters he’d assigned to work with her—Miguel Ortega, who still wore his press badge like an accessory, and Samantha Reyes, who had the quiet, deadly air of someone who could talk her way into the Pentagon basement with a smile and a clipboard.
Jen slid a manila folder onto the table.
“This,” she said, “is what we’ve got. Seventy-eight digital images sent to KVA Records’ public-facing fan email. The message claims to be from someone inside the American Watcher building who didn’t want these buried.”
She pushed a printout of the email across the table, followed by a CD-R in a paper sleeve.
“I had tech services go over everything first,” Jen continued. “Header analysis, file metadata, IP tracing — the works. Everything checks out. On a technical level, this message came from inside the Watcher’s own network.”
Cartwright leaned back in his chair, tapping the printout with one finger. “Could it be faked?”
Jen hesitated just long enough to make the answer honest. “Yes. Tech says it’s possible. But—”
Cartwright’s brows rose. “But?”
“It would be stupidly complicated,” Jen said. “You’d have to scrub every little speck of metadata from the images — EXIF headers, file histories, device IDs, even microscopic clock drift signatures. Then you’d build a brand-new email account, route it through multiple relay servers until you hit one physically close to the Watcher’s own IP block, and bounce it from there so the origin looks native. And all of that without leaving a single stray packet that ties back to you.”
She shrugged. “Tech says maybe a half-dozen people in California could pull it off clean. And every single one of them could make more money doing something legal.”
Miguel let out a low whistle. “So ... not your average crank with a grudge.”
“Not even your above-average crank with a grudge,” Jen said. “If this was spoofed, it was a pro job. And I don’t see anyone going to that much trouble to make Jake Kingsley look heterosexual.”
Cartwright paged through the printouts of the photos she’d already had copied. Forty-two kisses, dozens more moments of quiet, ordinary intimacy — the same ones Jen had stared at in her office the night before.
“They’re exactly what the Kingsleys told us they were,” Jen said quietly. “Boring, affectionate, consistent. If they’re real—and I think they are—then the Watcher cut them because they blew up their preferred story.”
Cartwright looked up at her over the rims of his glasses. “And you believe the Kingsleys’ preferred story is the truth?”
“I believe we’re holding photographic evidence that supports our article,” Jen replied. “Which means if we run this, we’re not just defending our reporting — we’re proving it.”
The room was silent for a beat, except for the faint hum of the HVAC.
Cartwright finally set the stack of printouts down. “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. These aren’t just any vacation snaps. These are part of the New Zealand Christmas set—the same trip where Peterson and the other guy camped out on a bluff with a 600-millimeter lens.”
Miguel made a face. “Paul Peterson. Christ. I remember his name from J-school—wasn’t he the one who—”
“—took the naked shots of Kingsley and Mindy Snow on that houseboat back in the early eighties,” Cartwright finished. “Sold them for five figures, I heard. If there’s a Mount Rushmore for sleazy paparazzi, he’s Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt.”
“And the other guy’s Drew Conners,” Samantha said. “More recent vintage. He’s the one who got those parking lot photos of Tif during the Judge Olson scandal. The ones every tabloid ran for a week straight.”
Jen nodded. “Same two. Which means if they were on assignment—and they were—the Watcher owns the rights to every frame they shot. Doesn’t matter if they published them or not. Work-for-hire rules are ironclad.”
Miguel frowned. “So legally, the Watcher could come after us for using these.”
“Not in this case,” Jen said. “And that’s the point. We didn’t license them. We didn’t buy them. We didn’t take them. They came to us unsolicited, through KVA Records who received them from a public-facing fan email account that’s posted everywhere from the Intemperance website to the CD liner notes.”
Samantha leaned back, tapping her pen against her notepad. “So we didn’t solicit. We didn’t pay. They were just ... dropped in our lap.”
“Exactly,” Jen said. “There’s case law for this. If material is sent to a news outlet without solicitation, and there’s a clear public interest in the content, we can use it—as long as we didn’t participate in the theft or encourage the theft. Which we didn’t.”
Cartwright raised an eyebrow. “But we know the Watcher owns the copyright.”
“We do,” Jen said. “But copyright’s not absolute when the use is transformative and newsworthy. We’re not running them as pin-ups or stock images. We’re using them to corroborate prior reporting—reporting the Watcher wants to discredit. That’s First Amendment territory.”
Miguel nodded slowly. “So the Watcher’s best argument is still that they were stolen.”
“Which puts them in an awkward spot,” Jen said. “To make that argument, they have to admit the photos exist and are genuine. And once they do that, they’ve just confirmed we’re telling the truth.”
Samantha smirked. “So either they call them fake—which makes them look like idiots if anyone else has copies—or they call them stolen, which makes them look like liars for not running them in the first place.”
Cartwright’s mouth twitched in what might have been the beginning of a smile. “That’s a trap I can live with.” He slid the photos back across the table toward Jen. “All right. We go with it—but we go with it ironclad. I want every angle nailed down before we hit publish.”
He looked at each of them in turn. “Talk to anyone you can to confirm anything you can. Kingsley’s mother. Valdez’s mother. Laura’s family, if you can even find them. Didn’t her mom accuse Jake of beating her once, back in the nineties? Let’s see what she says now. Get it on record.”
Miguel gave a short nod.
“See if you can talk to Conners and Peterson about the photoshoot,” Cartwright continued. “They won’t say anything, but we need it on record that we tried. No loose ends.”
Samantha frowned. “Won’t that tip our hand to the Watcher?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Cartwright said, “but we have to do it anyway. We don’t officially contact the Watcher for their response until Friday afternoon though. By then, whatever atrocity they’re planning to run this week will already be in print. That’s when we hit them for comment. If the paps squeal before then, fine—the Watcher will have their legal team all over it by then, but if your information holds, we’re covered.”
He tapped the edge of the folder. “I’ll have our legal team reviewing this before the end of the day, just to be sure. We are not getting blindsided on this.”
Miguel sat forward. “You want straight reporting, or do we hit them head-on?”
“Both,” Cartwright said. “I want a clean, sourced, bulletproof piece that makes it impossible for them to scream ‘fabrication’ without looking like idiots. And I want it on my desk in forty-eight hours so we can run it Sunday. Collins, Ortega, Reyes—you’re the team. Start now.”
Jen closed the folder with a quiet snap. She’d come in with her mind made up. Now it was official.
The truth was going to print.
Sometimes that happened.
Jen’s office occupied a corner of the Chronicle’s fourth floor, all high ceilings, tall windows, and dark oak trim that had been polished by a century of newsprint hands. The heavy door still bore the original frosted glass, her name stenciled in black block letters beneath the paper’s masthead. Brass radiator under the window, an antique file cabinet that probably came with the building, and the faint smell of ink and paper that no amount of modern ventilation could erase. Outside, Market Street traffic moved in slow, noisy streams, the cable car bell cutting through every so often.
She sat at her desk, tapping her pen against her legal pad.
When she’d written the original piece on the Kingsleys—polyamorous triple, open admission, no shame—she hadn’t bothered with parents. Back then it had felt unnecessary, maybe even exploitative. The piece was about them, not their families.
Now it was different.
Cartwright wanted ironclad. Ironclad meant layers. Statements from the people who raised them, the ones who’d seen them through the messy parts of their lives. Tom and Mary Kingsley. Roberto and Maria Valdez. And Laura’s parents—whatever the hell their names were. She could dig those up in a few minutes when it was time.
If she failed, the tech guys could pull them even quicker. But that wasn’t the point. She didn’t want to just hit them cold. Parents weren’t traditional targets. You didn’t blindside them if you wanted anything worth printing.
Better to have the son or daughter pave the way.
Which meant calling Jake.
Except she didn’t have Jake’s cell. She had the home number—the ceremonial beard of phone lines, existing solely to frustrate reporters. You dialed it, you got a long, cheerful answering spiel about how your call was important to them and would be given all due consideration if you would just leave a detailed message and contact information, and then the voice of doom: We’re sorry, the mailbox is full, followed by an unceremonious hangup. Total time wasted: forty-seven seconds. She had timed it once.
She wasn’t wasting her afternoon in that loop.
Instead, she picked up the desk phone and punched in a different number—the one she knew would pick up.
“Pauline Kingsley,” came the smooth, no-nonsense voice on the other end.
“Pauline, it’s Jen Collins at the Chronicle.”
“Hello, Jen. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need to talk to Jake. It’s about the follow-up piece we’re doing.”
There was the smallest pause, not quite enough to be called hesitation. “I’m not giving you his number, Jen.”
“I figured,” Jen said, leaning back in her chair. “But you could call him and have him call me. That works too.”
Another pause—this one shorter. “I’ll pass along the message. What’s this about?”
“Background interviews,” Jen said. “We’re trying to confirm some things. I’d rather get family numbers from him than ferret them out myself. It’d save everyone some irritation.”
“I’ll let him know,” Pauline said, her tone as even as before.
And just like that, the line clicked dead.
Jen set the receiver down gently. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if the rock god called the reporter back.
Mary Kingsley was in the kitchen of her large, comfortable retirement house on the Archer/Kingsley compound in Cypress County, California. It was one of those winter days northern California specialized in—cold enough to make your breath show the instant you stepped outside, but so clear the sky looked freshly scrubbed. Sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows, catching the gentle sheen of the original counters she and Tom had picked out when they’d designed the house, still holding up just fine.
Tom was off at the course with Stan Archer, Nerdly’s father, and Cindy, who didn’t golf but loved to drive the cart like she was qualifying for the Indy 500. The three of them had taken a tightly rolled joint of medicinal weed Tom had picked up from the legal dispensary in Heritage after securing his medical marijuana card three months before. It was a great time to be alive in California.
Between KVA’s success, Pauline’s stake in the company, and their own careful planning, Mary and Tom had been set for a comfortable retirement long before their children’s contributions started sweetening the pot. Now “comfortable” had shifted to “good life,” and she was still getting used to it.
Not that she was idle. She’d finally stepped down from conducting the Cypress High School orchestra last spring—fourteen years after she’d agreed to “just help for a semester”—but she was already thinking about signing on again next year. She’d never been built for too much stillness.
Right now, though, her ambition was confined to the kitchen counter. A large stockpot burbled on the stove, the kitchen scented with garlic, onions, and the stubborn mystery of spices she was sure Maria Valdez had measured by some instinct no recipe could capture. The asado negro had been a showstopper during the New Zealand visit, but Mary had already called Maria three times for advice this morning. She was contemplating a fourth—how exactly was one supposed to tell when aji dulce peppers were “ready to listen”?—when the phone on the counter rang.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and checked the caller ID.
Jake.
Mary smiled faintly and picked up. “Well, this is a surprise.”
“Hey, Mom,” her only son greeted. “How’s things up north?”
“Cold and sunny,” she said. “The kind of day that tricks you into thinking it’s warm until you step outside.”
“Kind of like that here too.”
She leaned her hip against the counter. “Haven’t seen you since New Zealand. How’s the circus down there?”
Jake chuckled. “About the same as always. Cap’s figured out how to use the patio furniture to get onto the roof. We caught him halfway up the trellis yesterday. He would’ve made it if his own sister hadn’t ratted him out.”
Mary shook her head. “You’re going to have to tie that boy down.”
“He’d just chew through the rope.”
A small laugh escaped her. “And Caydee?”
“She’s good. Busy with school. Says she’s going to try out for some spring music thing—forgot the name of it—but she’s been practicing like crazy.”
“That’s your girl,” Mary said, smiling.
They drifted in the warmth of it for a beat, just enough for the sense of distance between visits to creep in.
Jake’s tone shifted, less casual now. “Listen, there’s something I need to bring you in on. You remember those photos the paps took in New Zealand?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Well,” Jake said, “KVA came into possession of some photos recently. Not the garbage the Watcher ran—these are different. They came in through our public email, no name attached, but it looks like they were sent from inside the Watcher building.”
Mary’s brows went up. “Really.”
“Yeah. They show us the way we actually are. Nothing staged, nothing salacious—just normal life. And they match exactly what we told the Chronicle in that first interview. I decided to hand them over so they can run something that supports the real story.”
She reached for the spoon in the pot, gave the stew a slow stir. “And you’re telling me this why?”
“Because the reporter who wrote that first piece—Jen Collins—wants to talk to you. If it’s okay, I told her she could call you at twelve-thirty.”
Mary froze with the spoon still in the pot. “Today?”
“Today.”
She set the spoon down. “And what exactly am I supposed to say to her?”
“Just tell her the truth,” Jake said. “If there’s anything you don’t feel comfortable answering, don’t answer. But I’m authorizing you to tell her the truth about us—anything she asks—so long as it’s on topic. I’ll trust your common sense to steer clear of things that have nothing to do with what she’s working on.”
Mary let out a slow breath. “You always did know how to brighten a Wednesday morning.”
Jake chuckled. “You’ll be fine, Mom. She’s not looking to burn you. She’s looking to back up the truth.”
The next hour and ten minutes crawled by.
Mary tried to keep herself busy, but it wasn’t the same kind of busy she’d had in mind when she’d gotten up this morning. She’d talked to reporters before—her son was Jake Kingsley, one of her daughters-in-law was Celia Valdez—but those had always been the polite, smiling kind of interviews where she was expected to say very little and say it nicely or the avoidance encounters where she said ‘no comment.’. She’d never been called on to actually answer a series of questions. And she had never been asked to speak openly about her son’s strange, tangled, but somehow functional marriage arrangement.
She stirred the asado negro twice more, called Maria again to clarify a step she already knew by heart, and made herself a half sandwich she barely tasted. The clock still hadn’t made it to twelve-thirty.
By twelve-twenty she gave up pretending she wasn’t fidgeting and poured herself a glass of white wine—just enough to take the edge off without clouding her head. She carried it into the living room and sat on the couch, the glass balanced lightly in her hand.
At exactly twelve-thirty, the phone on the end table rang.
She glanced at the caller ID. A 415 area code. San Francisco.
Mary drew in a breath and set the wineglass down. Then she picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Kingsley? This is Jen Collins with the San Francisco Chronicle.”
“Yes, I know who you are,” Mary said. “First time we’ve spoken, but I’ve read your work.”
“Oh?” Jen sounded genuinely curious.
“I’m not much of a fan of entertainment journalism,” Mary admitted, “but I thought your article about my son, Celia, and Laura was ... well, very well done. Honest. You didn’t try to turn it into something it wasn’t.”
“That means a lot, Mrs. Kingsley—thank you. And please, while we’re talking like this, call me Jen. We’re not on the record yet. Nothing you say right now can be used. I find it helps if we just ... talk for a bit, get comfortable before we dive into anything official.”
Mary nodded to herself. “That sounds fair.”
“Jake called you?”
“He did. Said you wanted to speak with me about the relationship he has with Laura and Celia and some photographs that have popped up.”
“Right,” Jen said, her tone casual. “We’ll get there. But tell me a little about you first. I know you’ve got a musical background, but I’d rather hear it from you than read it on paper.”
Mary chuckled. “Well, that goes back a long way. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. I was one of those kids who was always humming something or plinking away at the family piano. Started piano and violin in the fifth grade—school program. I liked the piano, but the violin just ... stuck. Fit me in a way nothing else did.”
“Did you always know it was what you wanted to do for a living?”
“Not at first,” Mary said. “But by high school, I couldn’t imagine not playing. I was in the orchestra, every ensemble I could manage. My parents worried it was just a hobby—this was the fifties, after all—but I kept at it. Practiced until my fingers hurt.” She smiled at the memory. “And I’ve never been just about classical music. Of course I love it—it’s my foundation—but I’ve always had a soft spot for rock and roll. When it was new, it was thrilling. That backbeat, the energy. Growing up in the fifties, I liked the early stuff—Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly—but when the sixties hit, I really embraced it. The Beatles, the Stones ... there was so much happening.”
Jen’s voice warmed. “That must have been something, to live through as a musician.”
“It was. Tom and I even went to Woodstock,” Mary said with a laugh. “We might’ve been the two oldest people there. Met a pair of bona fide hippies at a Vietnam War protest over at Heritage State, and they invited us along. Next thing we knew, we were in their VW microbus headed east. Left nine-year-old Jake and thirteen-year-old Pauline with my mother and drove clear across the country, smoking pot, drinking beer, and blasting Hendrix and Dylan the whole way. We’ve got pictures, but I wouldn’t show them to you—too much evidence we were enjoying ourselves.”
Jen laughed softly. “I think that was part of the job description for Woodstock.”
Mary grinned. “Well, we did our part.”
Jen’s answering laugh softened into something quieter. “Since we’re still off the record, maybe I should give you a little about me, too. Fair’s fair.”
“All right,” Mary said, settling back against the couch.
“I’ve got a degree in journalism from UCSF,” Jen began. “Born here in San Francisco, raised here, and—this is the one that gets people—I’ve never lived outside the city limits. Not once. I travel plenty, but I always come home to the city by the bay.”
“That’s rare,” Mary said. “Not many people can say that and mean it.”
“True enough.” Jen hesitated just a fraction, then went on. “I’m a lesbian, and I’m proud of it. I’m in a domestic partnership with another woman—because, as you know, we can’t legally marry. But someday we will. Kenzie’s my soulmate ... as long as I have a wealthy soul.”
Mary chuckled. “I understand.”
“I’m telling you this so you know I’m not coming to you from a place of judgment about your son’s ... unusual marital situation. And yes, I write about entertainment. Some people will hear that and immediately think ‘sleazy reporter.’ But I hold to journalistic ethics, and so does my paper. We’re not a tabloid chasing check stand headlines. We don’t forge entertainment out of thin air.”
Mary listened without interrupting.
“We printed that piece about Jake, Laura, and Celia because they convinced me it was true. And now these photos—” Jen’s voice warmed—”these photos give visual proof of that truth. I just want to get some background from Jake’s family to add weight to the follow-up. I already spoke to Pauline for the first article. Now I’d like to talk to you, to Celia’s mother ... and to Laura’s parents.”
Mary’s mouth tightened just slightly. “Laura’s father has passed.”
“Her mother then,” Jen replied without missing a beat.
Mary hesitated, then asked, “This is still off the record, right?”
“Still off,” Jen confirmed.
“In my experience,” Mary said, “her mother and sister are ... well, rather unlikable people. Very closed-minded. Mormons—not that all Mormons are like that. It’s just the shield they hide behind.”
Jen’s mind flicked over that. Mormons? Jesus Christ. She kept her tone neutral. “All right. I’ll take my chances with them later today and maybe skip the ‘I’m a lesbian’ speech when I introduce myself. For now—how about we go on the record, if you’re ready.”
“I’m ready,” Mary said.
“Good. The recorder is now on. You’ll hear a beep every ten seconds while it’s in operation.”
“I understand.”
Jen’s voice shifted into its professional cadence. “This is Jen Collins with the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m on the phone with Mary Kingsley, mother of Jake Kingsley of Intemperance fame. Mrs. Kingsley, could you please verify the spelling of your full name and give your date of birth for the record?”
“Mary Agnes Kingsley, born August eighth, 1935.” She spelled it out, letter by letter. “Age sixty-nine currently. Maiden name Holland. Married Tom Kingsley in 1955.”
“Thank you,” Jen said. “Now, could you briefly go over your professional background for me?”
“I have a master’s degree in Music from UC Davis. I was a violinist with the Heritage Philharmonic for thirty years, from 1961 until my retirement in 1991. I spent fourteen years as the orchestra instructor for Cypress High School. I also played violin on the first two of Jake’s solo albums, and the first two of Celia Valdez’s solo albums. My orchestra performed on two songs of Jake’s Winter Frost solo album.”
“It’s been officially established,” Jen said, “that your son, Jake Kingsley, is currently involved in a polyamorous relationship with Laura Kingsley and Celia Valdez-Kingsley, and has been for some time. Obviously you’re aware of that at this point in time, but were you aware of it before it became headlines?”
“Yes,” Mary said. “Almost from the start.”
“How did you find out?”
“It began while Laura was pregnant with Caydee, but I was unaware until after Caydee was born. I found out about it when I was staying with the family over one of the holidays—might have been Christmas, might have been Thanksgiving. Celia was staying in the house too. The story was that she was sleeping on the couch in Caydee’s bedroom. One morning, early, I went in to check on the baby, and Celia wasn’t on the couch. The couch hadn’t been slept on at all. Nor could I find her anywhere else in the house.”
Mary could still remember the moment, the faint hum of the refrigerator in the otherwise quiet kitchen, and the way the morning light slanted through the hallway windows as she looked. “So ... I asked Jake about it, and ... he told me the truth.”
“How did that make you feel?” Jen asked.
Mary let out a slow breath. “Well ... even though I was a left-wing musician who used to be a hippy back in the day...” She hesitated, letting the old memories drift up. “Tom and I actually sat on a hill at Woodstock back in ‘69—me with my violin, him with his guitar—and played for the crowd between sets and in the middle of the night. He sang all the classics for the time—Mr. Bojangles, Like a Rolling Stone, Hanky Panky, Ticket to Ride, House of the Rising Sun—groovy tunes like that, you know what I’m saying? We made enough from dollar bills and pocket change tossed into a hat to pay for our tickets and our share of the microbus fuel for the trip.”
Jen gave a low, amused sound. “That’s a very cool story, Mary.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Mary said, smiling at the recollection. Then her tone sobered. “But I was still born before the Second World War. Still brought up in a Christian household. That upbringing doesn’t disappear just because you’ve been to Woodstock and lived through the sixties.”
“So it was hard to accept at first?”
“Yes. I didn’t care about the sex part of it—never have. I’ve always been about exploring your true feelings, being honest with yourself and others.” She paused, choosing her words. “What I worried about was Caydee. The effect it might have on her, growing up in a family arrangement most people wouldn’t understand, let alone approve of.”
“Did you talk to Jake about those concerns?”
“I did,” Mary said. “More than once.”
“And?”
“At first he didn’t really have an answer for me. It seemed like they assumed it was just something that wouldn’t go on long enough for that to be a concern. Like they were just experimenting, trying something new, having some fun. I think a part of him even believed that back then. It was just a little fling that he and Laura stumbled into and were having so much fun with it they didn’t want to let it go. But even then ... I could tell it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?” Jen asked.
“They were in love!” Mary said. “It was quite plain to me even then. I always knew Jake and Laura loved each other. I was living with them up in Oregon when they first became a couple. That was while we were recording Jake and Celia’s first solo albums. God, it’s been fourteen years now. Seems like yesterday.”
“You have a good opinion of Laura?” Jen asked.
“I love Laura like a second daughter,” she said. “She is everything I ever dreamed of in a daughter-in-law. She grounds Jake like no other woman was ever able to. She completes him. And I adore her. Always have. She’s cute. She’s smart. She’s funny in that dry way of hers. She’s a talented musician. She’s an incredible mother to Caydee and Cap even though Cap is not biologically her child. She still treats him as if he is.”
Jen let the moment breathe for a beat before asking, “And what about Celia? What was your first impression of her?”
“Oh, I remember that exactly,” Mary said. “That was back in 1991, before any of us had even met Laura. Jake and Celia and Pauline came to visit us at our home. That was when they asked me and Cindy—Cindy Archer, Bill Archer’s mother—to play violin and piano for them on their first solo albums.”
Her smile came through in her voice. “I knew then, even though Celia was married to Greg Oldfellow at the time, that there was something between the two of them. There was chemistry. A spark. It seemed like the two of them didn’t even know it was there, but I’m his mother. I’m a woman. I could see it plain as day.”
“And you turned out to be right?”
“Oh, I was right,” Mary said with a little laugh. “Might have taken almost a decade for them to act on it, but that spark never went away,” She paused, then added, “You know, when I first found out Celia was involved in Jake and Laura’s marriage in the most ... intimate way, I really wanted to dislike her. Mistrust her. It would’ve been easier.”
Jen made a small sound of acknowledgment.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.