His words, confirming what I didn’t want to believe, hit me like a midrace collision. I manage a flinty smile. “Oh, you’ve done plenty, babes.”
“Fuckin’ hell, that’s not what I… I didn’t… It… it trulyisn’twhat you think,” he stammers.
He’s panicked enough that for a half second I almost buy it. But no one else knew these details. It had to be him, unless I’m willing to entertain the absurd idea that my mother or Priya conspired with my fucking enemy.
“Not what I think?” I jab a finger at the phone. “Take a nice close look, dickhead, and try selling me that. Who else knew this, about Thailand, and Jules abandoning me?” My eyes blur with incipient tears and I fan the anger to burn them away. “I toldyou. And days later, this happens.”
He grabs my phone and scans the article, pacing toward the balcony and closing the open doors, probably in case I scream at him. He scrolls to the end as he slowly walks back my way, then sets the phone down.
“I don’t know how she got this information, but it wasn’t from me, on my honor.”
“Your honor is obviously shit, Alexander. Priya was right about you.”
He shakes his head as if struggling to focus. “It could’ve been someone from the treatment facility.”
I snort. “The fact that Jules istheremaybe. But not the specific personal shit.”
“The personal bits too—yes! He might’ve revealed something in a counseling session. Anyone looking to sell such information would need only search your name to find this woman with a history of slagging you off.”
My smile is harsh. “In the six weeks you’ve set up this… thislong conwith me, you couldn’t construct a better excuse?” I angle stiffly toward him, my voice rising. “You just fucking said, ‘What have I done?’! And I’ve seen pictures of you and that plastic surgery disaster all touchy-feely at the publishing gala! Don’t bother with denials.” I stomp toward the bathroom to collect my things.
“Sage, please! Let me explain what I meant.”
“Yeah? Go ahead and have fun shitting out more lies in the next two minutes. You’re wasting your breath.”
He stands in the bathroom doorway, gripping the jamb in a martyr’s pose as his words tumble out in a fevered rush. “She did ask me to ‘get dirt’ on you when I spoke with her at the gala. It was my intention to tell you about it when I arrived in Melbourne.”
“Yeah? Andwhy didn’t you?”
His head drops, and when he looks back up, his hair is hanging in that way I’ve come to love, but instead of softening me toward him, it just enrages me. My attraction to him is what fucked me from lights-out, and he knew it, and heused it.
The night in Bahrain when he bought the vinyl record and we shared food and made the Christmas lights video, he saw that I’d warmed up to him. Once he clocked my weakness, hemust’ve run straight to CJ Ardley and hatched a plan to tear me apart for getting him fired.
And I fucking fell for it. His sad gray eyes and floppy hair and cute boyish freckles… it’s all been part of the swindle.
The sex? The “I love you”? All these nights talking for hours, sharing our fears and insecurities and favorite things?
Sharing our secrets…
Holy shit, I’m a moron.
What could be a better revenge than fucking me over while he fucks me literally?
I zip up my toiletries bag and barrel toward him, ducking under his arm to exit.
“You’ll think it bollocks,” he continues, following close on my heels, “but I didn’t want to worry you. I feared it might make you more guarded if I told you what she’d asked of me. I know that’s selfish. But I felt confident I could manage the situation myself and keep her from posting about you by promising some big payoff if she waited—”
“And then you obviously fucking gave her one!” I viciously throw the bag I’m holding toward the open top of my duffel bag, but it bounces off and rolls away.
“Ididn’t. I was keeping her contained, protecting you!”
“That’s bullshit and you fucking know it, Sandy.”
Hearing my stupid betraying mouth say his nickname startles the tears out of me quick as a slap. To hide it, I kneel and grab my toiletries kit and cram it into my bag, avoiding his eyes.
He drops to his knees beside me with aclunkthat sounds like it hurts.
“I was afraid to say anything. I didn’t want to upset thebalance of… whatever this is between us.” He puts both hands over his face and slides them off, and it shocks me to see from the red of his eyes that he’s near tears too. “I was playing her.”
