CHAPTER ONE
North
December 21
It wasn’t like I’d wanted to show the entire fucking world my “engorged cock,” as the angry mob on Twitter kept calling it. I hadn’t meant for anyone to see it except for HungryTop34, and I’d only shown him because we’d sexted a few times before, and this time he’d begged to see “the whole package.”
Maybe it wasn’t smart of me (you think?), but I’d sent a picture of my “package.” A great shot of it, too. It took twenty minutes just to get the right angle. For his eyes only!
Or so I’d thought.
Because somehow? What I actually did? Was share the photo to my Instagram story, which automatically cross-posted to my Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat. How had I made such an idiotic mistake? Had I really been that horny and excited I’d gotten confused between the chat on my hookup app and my Insta story?
All signs pointed to yes.
There I was, leaning back in bed, hand around my dick, waiting to hear what HungryTop34 thought of my “package,” when my phone began pinging wildly with messages from every social media app I had and with incoming texts from everyone I knew.
Blinking at comments like, “Ew, bro wtf,” I sat in stunned confusion until someone commented, “That’s your dick?!?”
That was when I’d felt it. Just the way everyone described.
My blood turned cold, and my stomach dropped with a horrifying swoop. Vomit surged up my throat, and I feared I was about to heave all over my bed. Luckily, I made it to the bathroom first.
Once I stopped puking and got my brain together enough to figure out I should do something about my massive, enormous, horrible error, my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t get the pictures deleted fast enough. I tried. I really did try.
But it was far too late.
Afterward, my mind went blank, like someone had painted it over with that bumpy ceiling spackle they have in old buildings, or maybe it was more like a snowstorm. Just raging, howling, whiteness. Along with an urgent need to escape—to hide.
I shoved some stuff into my backpack—left empty on the floor of my closet ever since I quit college last month—and took the stairs two at a time down to the parking garage. I climbed into my favorite Lexus and hightailed it out of Seattle, my home for the last two years.
At first, I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I drove blindly onto I-90, fighting traffic and panic. My phone was going bonkers. I dumped it into the central storage compartment beneath the arm rest and blared music so I couldn’t hear it vibrating.
As I drove into the darkness, my mind whirled with visions of the never-ending humiliation ahead.
Unfortunately, accidentally uploading a dick pic wasn’t my first brush with scandal. Being the child of famous people and standing to inherit millions and millions of dollars, people cared way more than they otherwise would about every little thing I said, did, thought, wore, read, watched, or listened to.
The scrutiny—that’s a word my ex-bodyguard Liam had used to describe my situation—was as intense as it was endless.
Gossip sites and tabloids were relentless in their pursuit of information about my family. They stalked not only our social media accounts but also the accounts of our friends. And even people we weren’t friends with if they thought there was even a chance they knew us. I was convinced there were tabloid reporters following the social media posts of my Seattle apartment’s neighbors, hoping to get a glimpse of me in the background of one of their on-site pool or gym pics.
My worst past scandal took place just a few months ago, and it still wasn’t dead and buried. It hadn’t even been my fault, but I’d taken all the blame.
The situation: I was at a Halloween party thrown by my then-friend Lily Maynard. (Daughter of Eddie Maynard of Farm Fresh Frozen Foodies fame, aka “new money girl” as my Grandmother Astor called her.) I’d had my space alien costume made just for the event, complete with a big, round, gray headpiece, glittery antennae, and gray bodysuit.
I’d always been a big fan of anything extraterrestrial. And dragons! I loved reading stories about these fantasy creatures, watching TV and movies including them, and I loved to draw them. Particularly dragons. Drawing was probably what I was best at in life.
Later, after the scandal blew up, I often wondered: had I dressed as a dragon that night, would things have gone differently? Because of…what was it called? My sister Southerland had told me about it…
Ah, the Butterfly Effect. Change one thing in the past, and you change everything in the present.
But there I was, standing near the chips and salsa, stuffing my face, and obsessing over the fact our college’s it-boy, Robson Reynolds, was also at the party. When I’d first arrived, he’d grabbed my ass and whispered in my ear, “Hot aliens come first.”
That was a flirty request for sex, wasn’t it?
Confused, worried, and hopeful—and kind of turned on—I’d wished I had an NDA handy for him to sign, just in case…
Yeah. An NDA.
Because I was “North Astor-Ford of the Astor-Ford hotel/acting fortune,” as the gossip sites called me, and I couldn’t jump into bed with just anyone. There was too much to consider.
What if the person I had sex with took secret pictures or videos of us and sold them? What if they wrote a thinly veiled blog post or Twitter thread about me and published the details of our encounter for the world’s amusement and judgment? What if a girl claimed I got her pregnant? What if I did get her pregnant? What if a guy or girl said I gave them an STD? What if they gave me an STD? What if they tried to blackmail me for money? What if, what if, what if?
Not that I’d been smart enough to consider all the potential consequences on my own. Foresight wasn’t one of my gifts, though I had many others, as Grandma Ford always said. She just meant my looks. I couldn’t think of anything else I was exceptional at. Well, except for drawing cool aliens and dragons.
But because I wasn’t very good at being able to predict what the outcome of any given situation or choice might be, my family had taken extra precautions. Which was why, ever since Southerland and I became teens, our parents had arranged for us and our bodyguards/managers to attend monthly meetings with “image consultants” and family lawyers to check we were staying on track.
My folks always wanted to make sure we understood the potential problems of making a “relationship mistake.” Warner Jackson, my dad’s manager, once said to me, “A thing which starts out small when it’s just you and the girl alone in a room together—a kiss, a hand job, a whispered secret—can escalate into something enormous once it’s out in the wider world. Don’t ever forget it.”
Well, Warner Jackson? I thought as I steered my way toward the mountains. Ever since I hit send on the message to HungryTop34, I’ve thought of nothing else.
Sending that pic had seemed like such a small thing—not my dick, it was plenty big—but the actual sending of the picture had seemed harmless enough. It’d been a private moment just between HungryTop34 and me. Intimate. Secret.
But now, because of my stupid mistake, it would spiral into a mammoth, huge, thunderous, monstrous, ever-growing, utterly humiliating disastrous crisis which would probably consume my whole life. Maybe it already had, given the state of my phone.
The armrest vibrated insistently with new notifications. I turned the music up again and clutched the steering wheel with both hands. Sweat rolled down my temples, and my stomach lurched, but I kept on driving.
God, how had this happened? The mess was all the app makers’ fault!
It shouldn’t have been possible for a person to set up all that automatic cross-posting! What a terrible idea! When I’d originally chosen the option, I’d felt smart, thinking of the time and effort I’d save myself from then on. But how had I not predicted an accident like this? It was destined to happen.
Stupid app designers! My dad should sue them. No! I realized I should! Because I was an adult, and I could do things like that. Yes, I could sue them for a bazillion dollars, which would barely even begin to cover the emotional trauma and damage to my reputation.
Though I couldn’t say I had much of a rep left to protect.
Which brought me back to the big scandal at Halloween, the one that’d prompted me to drop out of school: Robson Reynolds had entered the kitchen where I was choking down chips and salsa, sauntered up to me, rested his forearms on my shoulders, grinned, and darted forward to lick a bit of salsa from the corner of my mouth.
Pulling back, he’d given me a wicked smirk. “Getting messy without me, alien?”
I was so excited by this hot guy who’d apparently set his sights on me, I didn’t even notice all the phones out, all the pictures and videos being taken.
Worse, I didn’t look at Robson Reynolds’s costume.
I was caught up in his wide shoulders, his piercing blue eyes, his smug smile, and his arms around my neck, dragging me in for what became my first and only kiss with a guy; I was nearly numb with shock.
I’d kissed a number of girls before, usually at parties, in dark closets with the door closed, and I’d touched several sets of breasts, but I’d never been crushed up against another guy’s strength before. It sent my head swimming, my senses reeling, and my dick throbbing.
Breaking the kiss, Robson cupped my crotch and announced loudly, “Looks like he likes it both ways.” He’d swung around to the room at large, shouting, “Pay up!”
Money passed hands. Robson laughed as he collected it, tucking the green bills into the breast of his costume—at that point, I’d recognized it as a military jacket—and sauntered out of the room without looking back. Feeling like I’d been backhanded, I stared after him, slack-jawed and embarrassed. The cackling teasing of my so-called friends filled my ears. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
On the elevator down to the ground floor of Lily’s apartment building, my phone started buzzing away in my alien costume’s side pocket. I knew what that meant: I’d kissed another guy in public, and now the whole world knew about it.
As soon as I reached the parking garage, I drove straight home to my apartment, ignoring my phone as it continued to blow up.
Just the way I was ignoring it now.
That willful ignorance of the fallout of Robson’s lips on mine hadn’t lasted long. My parents had arrived the next morning with their most terrifying attorney, Lu Weinstein, and I’d had to issue a formal, recorded apology for my “mistake.”
Because somehow, someway, it was my fault Robson Reynolds was wearing a Nazi armband on his military costume that night (what a disgusting asshole!), and it was my fault he’d kissed me in the kitchen, and it was my fault people had posted videos and pictures of it all over the internet.
North Astor-Ford’s new boyfriend is beyond problematic, and here’s why…
North Astor-Ford’s out of the closet and into the foulest of messes…
North Astor-Ford licked by Neo-Nazi and likes it…
North Astor-Ford—
It’d gone on and on.
And I’d done what was asked of me.
I’d apologized for Robson’s offensive costume and for kissing him while he wore it—though I’d actually had nothing to do with his choice to wear such a horrific get-up, and I hadn’t kissed him at all; he’d kissed me!
And the family attorneys made sure I apologized for attending the party and apologized for embarrassing my family, and for being gay (even though I’m not? I’m bisexual! And even if I were gay, there’s nothing wrong with that!), and finally, I apologized for basically existing.
Meanwhile, Lily posted a tearful video on her social media saying Robson, and I had ruined her party, and she’d never forgive him or me for it. So long to those six whole weeks of friendship! The longest one of my short life. Unless you counted my kinda-sorta friendship with Liam, and Southerland said I couldn’t count that because he was my employee.
Robson himself made a stilted, subdued apology for the costume after being kicked off the university basketball team. He’d said: “I’m also sorry I ever met North Astor-Ford. He’s led me to make poor choices. I’m going to distance myself from him and do some hard thinking. I’m going to be a better man from now on.”
Like it was my fault? Like we were even friends, or boyfriends, or more than casual acquaintances before that night? Like I picked his costume?
After the Robson incident, I became a pariah on campus, more for ruining Robson’s potential basketball career and for upsetting Lily Maynard—that innocent pretty princess of a girl—than for being an idiot who’d dressed as an alien for Halloween and somehow been caught up in a prank kiss from an asshole who’d just wanted to drag me into his nasty game and sully my reputation.
Sully. That was a good, fancy word. My folks’ attorney used it a lot when talking about how careful Southerland and I needed to be in our behavior.
To this day, no one has ever asked me how I felt about the kiss. No one cared how it’d affected me as a person or that I’d felt violated and sick that my first kiss with a guy had been stolen by such a horrible human being. No one had everasked if I was all right or not.
Liam would have, but he wasn’t around anymore.
Because I’d fired him.
Memory aching, I gripped the steering wheel, maneuvering around trucks, and wondering how many of the drivers knew about my scandal with Robson and now how many had seen my dick.
Eventually, I realized I couldn’t drive forever. It was getting late, and I was shaky with nerves and exhaustion. I needed to choose a place as a destination, but there was nowhere on earth I wanted to be. Except with Liam. I’d be safe if I were next to him.
I knew where he was living these days. At his mom’s house. In Idaho.
But that was hours and hours away, and I couldn’t just go there. What would his mom think? If her son’s former protectee showed up in the middle of the night wanting comfort after posting his dick pic for all the world to see? That’d be rude. And an Astor was never rude in public, and a Ford was never rude at all, so I had to be polite for sure. My bloodlines were counting on it.
My panic had turned to a buzzy itch beneath my skin, and as I struggled to think of where to hide out, my mind offered up one of my last memories of Liam from three Decembers ago.
“I worked at the chalet all through high school,” he’d said, his voice warm and steady, brimming with nostalgia. “It was like a second home to me.”
“Did you need a second home?” I’d asked.
He’d smiled, shiny as a penny with all that rich, red hair and his sparkling, cinnamon-brown eyes. “Don’t we all need as many places to call ‘home’ as we can get?”
Shaking the memory from my head, my car’s lights cutting out a path on the dark road, I said out loud, “I just want any kind of home right now. Anywhere to feel safe.”
An idea came to me. What if, instead of trying to get to Liam at his mom’s place, I went to the chalet where he’d once worked instead? I could stay there through Christmas Day, avoid the world and my parents, and maybe I’d get the guts to seek out Liam before I left… Apologize to him for firing him like that.
I wracked my brain for the name of the place. I remembered it rhymed, but I couldn’t quite grab hold of the details. I’d just given up when it came to me.
Camp Bay Chalet.
I pulled off the road and punched the name of the inn into my GPS.
As I hit enter, the robotic woman’s voice announced, “Starting route to Camp Bay, Idaho.”
I felt safer already.
Buy the full book now: North’s Pole
