“Normal?” I scoffed. “For who? Rachel is still out of a job and her identity is all over the internet. You’re going to make sure she gets her job back.”
“I don’t think we can,” Cole said. “She went against company policy?—”
“Tell them you’ll pull the account. And if that doesn’t work, you can contribute to a big severance package for them to offer her. Something substantial, that would probably be a lot less than what you’d have to pay if she sued you.”
“She’d want to sue us?” Kent gaped at me, the color draining from his face at the horror of potential bad publicity.
“She would after I suggest it.” My lips curled into a smile. “Remember my lawyer? The one who made you draft four contracts? He’d get her a good five years of salary and more, I’d bet. He’ll also be taking another look at my current contract to make sure you can never use my personal life to sell tickets ever again.”
I left the room as they regarded me with the same widened, panicked eyes.
I leaned against the doorway as I unlocked my phone, cursing as I saw all the pictures Kent had mentioned. I closed the app when I caught the comments about her, ranging from her weight to if I paid her by the hour.
Instead of protecting her, I’d thrown her to the fucking wolves.
I only had a minute to calm down, and if I had any hope in salvaging any of this, I couldn’t go out there like the madman I felt like.
I’d promised I’d take care of her, not ruin her life.
I hoped I still could. This wasn’t how I planned to announce us to the world, but we weren’t going back. I’d love her out loud and out in the open, and I wouldn’t let anything take her away from me.
I only hoped that after I’d cost her this much, she still wanted me too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
RACHEL
“We could sit outside,”Taylor said, her voice garbled around a spoonful of ice cream. “Get some air in the yard without running into anyone.”
I lolled my head toward my sister. Since my conversation with Gayle, tense and short despite all the years I’d been her star writer, I’d camped out on the couch, my head already making an indent on the top of the back cushion.
I’d let Taylor serve me ice cream once I’d been able to swallow something, but I hadn’t moved from the time I’d plopped onto the couch.
The words “have to let you go” echoed in my head and turned my stomach each time. I’d expected to hear them eventually since, as Auden had pointed out, it had only been a matter of time before one of us slipped.
If we hadn’t been outed so publicly, I might have had some recourse. If I had just come clean and explained how this was a real, loving relationship and not the home-wrecking scandal that had made them write the damn clause in the first place, getting caught wouldn’t have been such a risk, even if it would have had the same results.
If I had confessed already, I would have been able to visit Silas wherever the team was playing and sit in the stands to cheer them on, not hide out in a bar and take a separate elevator to his hotel room.
The deep despair was twinged with a little bit of relief. I wouldn’t have the stress of reading the room before I said that I was a romance author. Silas and I could walk up my block holding hands and not worry about it getting back to my job.
Because it had gotten back toeveryone.We just had to deal with people gawking at us and asking inappropriate questions.
I’d shoved my phone away in the end table drawer next to the couch when scrolling became too much. The summary of the comments was how I was a hack of an author, why is Silas with a “plus-sized” girl, and one cute inquiry asking if I bought my dress from “hookers r us.”
I’d been a published author for long enough to be familiar with keyboard warriors, miserable people who grew the balls behind a computer screen they lacked in real life.
Maybe I wasn’t a skinny girl and the dress I’d worn was snug enough to show it, but Silas looked at me as if I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen from the first moment we’d met—after he’d recovered from my jab to his stomach.
We needed to talk, but I was just so tired from the drop of my hours-long adrenaline spike ever since I’d walked through my door. Tired, worried, and sad. I was sure this hadn’t looked good for him either, and I prayed no one mentioned their sponsorship of Taylor’s team this past season in anything that was circulating today.
I curled up on the couch in my grandmother’s old quilt. I’d put our air conditioner on high to make the room as cold as possible just so I could burrow myself in a blanket without a layer of sweat.
I’d worry about how to pay for the air conditioning, softball camp, and everything else tomorrow.
“I’m sorry, Tay,” I finally said, my voice hoarse with exhaustion. “I didn’t want this for you.”
“Some creep took your picture and blasted it on Instagram. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Taylor came up next to me, crossing her legs under her. “You’ve been so happy. Don’t let idiots take that away.”
