It was not a blurry photo shot with a phone from far away like Danielle would have suspected. In fact, what was attached to the article Chris was showing her on his phone was not a photo at all but an entire video that revealed much more than a simple photograph would have. Danielle watched it a second time and then a third. She'd felt, in the moment, that the kiss had been much too short but, according to what she saw on the screen now, it had lasted a lot longer than she'd thought. After her fourth watch, Danielle finally scrolled past the video to read the article.

EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE! Actress Danielle Allen and director Thomas Hunt seen kissing passionately on the set of their new movie! Could this be the reason Hunt is back in the director's chair after so many years?

She scrolled further down and, oh yes, it was bad. Below the first lines of text, there was the photograph of her and Hunt at Sundance, which certainly looked a lot worse now. He had only put his hand on her shoulder when he'd given her some advice about the situation with Anders Stone, and everyone had simply thought it was just a professor who was proud of his student's achievements, but now…

Danielle knew the next few lines would be speculation about whether something had happened when she'd still been his student, and she was right. The next words were very much not kind towards Hunt, and she really wished she could talk to him right now. But he said he needed time, and considering his life may have just been ruined, Danielle was going to respect that.

"Look, this sucks right now, but we both know what they're saying there isn't true. And since there's no evidence, this might just blow over," Chris tried to console her.

Danielle cringed. "I'm not so sure about that."

"What do you mean? We were together when you were at HWU, you wouldn't have—"

"Oh, no, God, no!" she interrupted him. He was still watching her skeptically, and she sighed. "I never cheated on you, Chris, and certainly not with Hunt."

Chris visibly relaxed at that. "So what is there to worry about?"

She really had no choice but to come clean about the entire thing now, did she? "Montmartre. We have worry Montmartre to worry about." He gave her a puzzled look, and Danielle continued, "He's been blackmailing me, and Hunt, too. There are some… pictures that look like we were closer than we really were, and… especially with this now…"

"Shit."

"Yes. Shit."

As if the TMZ article hadn't been bad enough, Thomas decided to subject himself to something infinitely worse – he opened Twitter for the first time in a few months to see just how much damage this had already done. He was, unfortunately, not at all surprised to see that both of their names were trending. It did not escape his notice that Danielle's name was higher on the list of trends than his own, but his dwindling prominence was an issue for another day. Thomas sighed, then closed the app before looking at any of the tweets. He did not need to do that to himself today.

As soon as he was ready to put his phone aside for the time being, another call came through. This time, it was his publicist. Thomas was almost scared to answer the call – now, he would have to come clean about the images that were still out there and could turn this entire thing into even more of a PR nightmare than it already was.

"Hello Lena, I'm—"

She immediately interrupted him. "Is it true?"

"What do you think?"

Lena sighed on the other end of the line. "Did you or did you not have a sexual relationship with one of your students?"

"Of course not!" he exclaimed, feeling rather offended that she would even consider that a possibility. "This is... not what it looks like."

"Well, Thomas, unfortunately it is my job to be concerned with what things look like, so we've got a bit of a problem here."

"I can see that." He swallowed hard. "And you're not going to like what I'm about to tell you."

"Save your breath, I already know about your little problem with Viktor Montmartre."

"How—"

"I've contacted Danielle Allen's team before calling you and, clearly, she's got a lot more sense than you do and actually talks to the people trying to protect her image."

So much for Danielle not talking to anyone about this. But, he supposed, the people she surrounded herself with professionally had always been trustworthy – Montmartre notwithstanding. "I was handling it."

"Oh, I'm sure you were," Lena said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "You better be thankful the girl seems to have a soft spot for you."

Thomas furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"She went against the wishes of her team when she went along with the blackmail. Obviously, she was advised to release what she had because, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you that, she's got a lot less to lose than you do. And from what I've heard, there's no reason she shouldn't have done that."

So much for her team being trustworthy. He couldn't fault them, though. To an outsider, the way he'd treated her up until a few days ago would certainly warrant not being all too considerate towards him. In fact, had their roles been reversed, he wasn't sure he wouldn't have taken the easy way out.

Thomas should probably go speak to her. For what felt like the millionth time by now, he told himself it was not solely her fault this was happening, even if it might be less damaging to her career than to his.

"Look, I'm going to keep working with her team and try to figure out how to handle this situation," Lena said when Thomas didn't react to her last statement. "Stay off of social media for now, and don't talk to anyone. If you deny now, and the other material comes out, it's going to look so much worse for you. I'll be in touch."

Just when Danielle got off the call with Ethan, who had informed her of the PR strategy her team had come up with so far – which consisted of her and Hunt keeping their fucking mouths shut – there was a knock on the door. Chris went to open it, and Danielle was surprised to see Hunt standing there. Even bigger was her surprise when he spoke.

"I believe we still have some important matters to discuss."