I was about to, right before Vin came in. Too little too late, but I was ready to accept the fallout. And Jack might have been pissed, but I had days left on this trip to make it up to him before I went back to California.
Now though, I’m leaving in a few hours, and I’ll probably never get to make amends.
“David Morgan is the name on my birth certificate.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? You’ve been lying every minute we were together.”
“No. Not—” I fold my hands in my lap, choking back the protest because he’s right, and I deserve every ounce of his anger. I try to ground myself in truth—the truth I should have given him from the minute we met. “When you get to where I am in my career, people feel like they have a right to you. Like they deserve answers to even the most personal questions. The thing at Cannes—everyone was watching me. I’m not out, not to the public anyway, and to clear the air on this I was going to have to come out, and I wasn’t...” The words get caught in my throat, strangling me for a moment. Jack’s expression is still excruciatingly blank, like he’s happy to watch me dig my own grave.
I mentally flip through more words—more explanations—until I find more truth again. “The first morning... I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t stop the second-guessing and the questions about whether I had to choose my sexuality over my career. And I found you on the boat, and you didn’t know who I was. You didn’t ask questions or want answers that weren’t yours. And I... Jack...” I search his face, hoping he’s looking back on that morning even a bit fondly. “I needed that. I’m sorry. It was selfish, but I needed space. A moment to not be Damian Marshall so I could breathe again. That was all it was supposed to be. You assumed I was someone else and let me be David. That’s all I wanted.”
I lapse into silence. I don’t know what else to say. Somehow, everything I touch these days goes to shit.
He asks, “What happens now?”
A lump forms in my throat. “With us?”
But Jack shakes his head, and the tiny spark of hope that glowed to life inside me dies again. “There’s no us. I don’t know you.”
“I’m still the same person.”
He turns to the computer on his desk and the screen flares to life. I expect to see the pictures from the boat, blurry screen grabs that will haunt him forever. Instead, he’s been looking at pictures of me. Promo stills. Red carpet shots. That fucking photo shoot on the yacht with the Scandinavian clone models. I’ve been primped and powdered and plucked until I look like a more polished version of myself. Like a wax figure in a museum.
“I don’t know this person,” Jack says. “I met a man named David. This guy...” He raps a knuckle against the screen. “He’s a stranger.”
“He doesn’t have to be,” I say in a rush. “What do you want to know?”
But Jack only shakes his head. My heart is in my throat. We’re coming to an end. This whole week I’ve been so worried about protecting my career, and instead, here’s something I’m suddenly far more worried about losing.
“I think it’s better if you leave,” he says. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay with us.” Every one of his words is careful. The syllables are so precise, it’s like he’s learning lines and terrified to forget any of them.
“You can’t be this calm,” I say. “After everything.”
He laughs once. His whole body shudders with it. Then his eyes narrow, and there—I have just a second to brace before the storm hits.
“I’m calm,” he says, “because this is my job. There are people—ones I have to speak to in the morning and every day after you’re gone—on both sides of these walls, and they will hear every word I say if I speak even a little louder than this. And they’re already going to see the pictures. When they wake up tomorrow, they’ll check their emails or their social media, and they’ll see me sucking your dick. Talk about answering uncomfortable questions. Look at the position you’ve left me in.” As he speaks, my face goes uncomfortably hot, but I hold myself still because I deserve to hear everything he has to say. “My sister will see those pictures. Someday my nephew might see them.”
“Your sister,” I say, desperation rising. “She’s on her way to work out things with her husband. Everyone deserves a second chance. If she can—”
“Don’t.” Spit flies from his lips. “You don’t get to talk about them.”
That was the wrong move. One of so many these last few weeks. “They’ll disappear. The pictures. The video.” One of those people on the call with Vin and Roberta said they were working on getting them taken down, right? But even I know that only goes so far. The internet is forever, after all.
“I had a plan this summer,” he says. “It was simple. Keep my head down, do my job, make enough money to help Stef and Robbie. That was all I had to do. And then you showed up andlied.You selfish asshole. I trusted you, Davi—Damian. Whoever you are. I trusted that we were in this together. That you were here even though you didn’t want to be, just like me, and we were doing what we could with our time together to make our jobs manageable, but you were playing from a completely different rule book from the beginning.”
“Jack. I’m so sorry.” I’ll say it again and again until he believes me.
“And the worst part”—he stares down at his palms—“is that I’ve read the stuff they printed about you. Even while you’ve been here, they’ve still been talking about you. And when I look at your face, I can see how much it’s eating you up. I want to forgive you. I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel like you have to come out to billions of people you will never meet but who can say whatever they want about you online. And I feel sorry for you. What does that say about me? That you can lie to me for days, have sex with me, put me in this situation, and I still feel sorry for you?” He pushes up to his feet, and for a second, I hope he’s about to touch me, but instead he goes to the door, and my heart sinks. “I don’t want to feel sorry for you, David. I don’t owe you pity. Not after what you’ve done.”
His hand on the doorknob is a declaration Roberta would approve of. We’re finished here. He’s got all the information, and nothing he’s said is untrue.
I get up and walk through the door. The hall is silent. If anyone heard us, they’re at least giving us the illusion of discretion.
The last glance I get of Jack is his back as he disappears into his room.
Surprising no one, I don’t get much sleep. When Vin knocks on my door a while later, my eyes feel like sandpaper and my head is pounding worse than any hangover.
“Plane’s ready to go,” he says, not bothering to ask how my night was.
