“Not well. I think he tried to call me fifty times. Showed up to my parents’ house. My dad had to threaten him with a gun to get off the property. And the anger in Colton’s eyes. He was so angry, I almost left with him then and there, worried he’d rain hell and highwater on my parents.” Meghan tucks a lock of golden hair behind her ear as her eyes fill with tears.
“But I stood my ground. Told him if he didn’t leave me be I’d send screenshots of the messages to every news outlet in the country. And I think it spooked him.”
“Do you still have the screenshots?” Naomi asks.
“No,” Meghan says. “I actually never even took any. Stupid, I know. But he didn’t know I was lying.”
“And is that when you got slapped with the NDA?”
Meghan nods. “The terms were that he wouldn’t speak negatively about me but that I couldn’t speak about him at all. I knew it was unfair but I didn’t care. Just wanted to put it all behind me. So I signed it, wanting to be done. He was due to start filming the sequel toMr. Americaso thankfully he was distracted. Contractually obligated to be elsewhere.”
Naomi is about to ask if she dropped out of the project because of Colton, but then she remembers Meghan’s character gets killed off in the first film by the villain, who follows her back to her apartment from a hotel bar. Suddenly, Naomi is more aware of a man dressed in black who’s been lingering at the end of the room, staring at his phone.Has he been listening?She shivers, despite the heat emanating from the fire nearby.
Meghan moves her head, which blocks the man from her peripheral vision, and Naomi is brought back to the present.
“So when you guys got engaged, he seemed fine. Normal? Because if I have the timeline accurate… you got engaged right in between the two murders.”
She shifts uncomfortably, eyes downcast. “I was so smitten with him. Like, head-over-heels, blind love. Now we know how blind, I guess… but yeah, the only problems or fights we had during that time had to do with Harlow.”
Naomi notices the change in her tone from wistful to irritated as the conversation shifts to Harlow. “What was your experience with her?”
“Well, when we first got engaged… she was… she showed up a few times. They’d get into these heated arguments.” Meghan waves her hand. “I don’t hold it against her, though. She was young.” Meghan’s gray eyes stare back at Naomi. “I really thought she had grown up a little, but not so sure now.”
“So even knowing now what you know about Colton, you still think she could be…” Naomi searches for the right question. “Do you ever think she’d go so far as to kill him?”
“I would like to think not,” Meghan shrugs. “But if I had her fire or temper… maybe I would’ve killed him after finding those DMs. Instead, I just succumbed to my own cowardice and scurried away.” Her eyes glisten as she looks to the side.
The admission slightly annoys Naomi, who can’t help but judge Meghan for letting Colton continue to roam free for so long. But then she corrects herself. Meghan isn’t to blame. Colton is.
“I mean, it took me two years to notice his dark side, so maybe she didn’t know,” Meghan continues. “But honestly, I don’t see how she couldn’t have. The way they broke up and then would get back together. It was so toxic.” Meghan throws her hands in the air. “I mean, she was with him for, like, six years? I honestly don’t see how she couldn’t have known.”
Naomi feels warm again, her blood starting to boil as she thinks about Harlow. Despite Colton turning out to be a villain in all this, she’s still not convinced Harlow is completely innocent, her intuition still telling her she either knew what he was doing or was involved herself.
Meghan sighs deeply. “Once again, I’m so sorry about your sister. Truly. And I’ll never forgive myself for not saying anything.”
“Maybe you can help me make things right one day,” Naomi says, imagining writing an exposé on Colton Scott.
Megan laughs, unamused. “If I can give you any sort of advice, it’s to never, ever mess with the Scott family. Please trust me on that.” She looks Naomi dead in the eye when she says this, making sure she’s hearing her. “Plus, Colton is dead. Can’t hurt anyone else now. If you want answers…”
Naomi finishes her sentence. “There’s only one person left to talk to.”
*
It’s strange how time quickens or slows depending on the situation. Like when Naomi is on the verge of cracking a story, time flies and there’s never enough of it. Whereas now, as she waits for the F Train back to Greenwich Village in a dark, dank subway tunnel, time has stalled. Each minute taking an eternity to pass.
The station is nothing special. An underground mosaic and cement tunnel like every other that smells like trash and piss. Naomi spots a boarded-up hole in the wall and walks toward it. She tugs on a note pinned to the boards. “Newsstand closed due to Covid-19.” Naomi shakes her head, imagining the sign being taped up four and half years ago, when everything shut down. It still shocks her how many businesses never recovered.
She walks toward the platform, standing away from the edge. A man walks in front of her and her heart starts to race.Is that the guy from the hotel?
She swallows, feeling sweat prickle on her forehead. She thinks of the other times this week when she’s felt like she’s being followed. Watched. She thinks of what Meghan said about fearing the Scott family. What if they knew they were meeting? What if they were listening?
“Come on, come on,” Naomi whispers at the distant whir of a train down the tunnel, urging it to arrive. She grips the bottle of pepper spray in her purse, letting go once the train screeches to a halt in front of her.
She feels safer onboard, surrounded by people. She thinks about everything she learned from Meghan and what that means for the murders. Her stomach churns, thinking of her sister and Jade suffering something abhorrent at the hands of Colton Scott. She laughs in disgust when her eyes land on something scribbled in permanent marker on the door.
“RIP Colton Scott, forever our hero.”
She wants to vomit. Wants to yell from the rooftops what a sick fuck he is.
