Free Away From the Spotlight by Tamara Carlisle Page A

magazine I had bought at the grocery store.  Maybe looking at all the red carpet dresses would distract me from my sad ness at the pr ospect of being alone tonight.
    I hadn’t gone ten pages into the magazine when I saw it.  My eyes must have gone wide as I stared at the photo of Will with his arm around a beautiful girl a bout twenty-one years -old with long and shiny medium brown hair and beautiful green eyes ringed by long eyelashes.  She was probably a few inches shorter than me and very slender.  I n the picture, they looked happy together.  Both were in formal attire as the photo was taken at a charity event that took place only a few days before Will and I met.  I felt sick.
    It was very hard to pay attention during Crim inal Pro cedure des pite the antics of my comical professor .  I could think of nothing but the photograph.  I was in shock and felt completely hollow inside , but for my stomach, which churned .  I mechanically took notes during the lecture, anxious to get to work and search the internet to see if my worst fears would be confirmed.   I could have done this right after class at the Law Center, but was afraid of attracting an audience.  I needed to be alone.
    I practically ran to my car and headed D owntown without stopping to grab lunch.  I ran into my office without so much as saying “ hello ” to anyone and closed my door.
    I turned on the computer without even putting my purse away.  I googled “ Will MacKenzie ” and came up with pages upon pages of hits.  The first thing I opened was the image results.  Some of the images included what looked like posters for the Midnight series of movies . I had heard of the se movies and the books upon which they were based , but had never seen the movies or read the books.  From these posters, it was c lear that Will and the girl from the photo in the mag azine were the star s of this very popular franchise .
    I glanced quickly at the first few pages of image results .  In addition to the movie posters, a number of the photos of Will included the girl .  T hey were looking lovingly at each other and not all appeared to be movie p ublicity shots.  My heart sank.
    I opened some of the other web pages, consisting mostly of magazine articles and websites dedicated to the Midnight movies .  Others were dedicated to Will personally.  I realized at that moment that I didn’t know Will MacKenzie at all.  My eyes started to tear up.  What kind of sick joke was this?
    I read a few articles that mentioned a rumored long-time romance with costar Katherine Sullivan , the girl from the magazine photo.  That’s when the pieces seemed to fit together.  Will lied because he didn’t want me to know he had a girlfriend.  I thought about it further and realized that this was probably what Will’s conversation with Gemma I overheard was all about.  Maybe Will and Katherine were in a fight.  Maybe she was just out of town the past few weeks.  All I could see from what I read was that they were together – a lot .  H e looked craz y about her.  I started to cry.
    There was a brief knock on my door and John walked in without waiting for my answer.  I stop ped sobbing, but it was still pretty obvious that I had been crying.
    John walked around my desk toward me and stood there with a look of concern.  “What happened?  What’s wrong?”
    I pointed to one of the internet articles I was reading with a big picture of Will and Katherine with their arms around each other.
    “Oh, wow ! I thought he looked familiar.”
    “T hat’s his girlfriend,” I said , barely holding back my sobs.
    “Really? Are you sure?”
    “Ye ah .  P retty sure.”  W ith that , I started to cry again.
    John took me by the hand, picked me up out of my chair and hugged me tight, running his right hand down my hair.  When it appeared that I wasn’t going to stop crying anytime soon, he said, “Come on.  It’s lunchtime.  Why don’t we get you something to