At her request, I agreed to leave my job quietly and to have no further contact with Dorian Fisher or anyone working with her. I confirmed that Dorian had never touched me inappropriately. Never touched me at all, actually.
This will stay between us, Carly had said. Her team was small, but I’d become close with my colleagues. They must have wondered what had happened. What had she told them?
But it didn’t matter because Dorian had protected me then. The photosand videos had never surfaced on the internet, something I checked multiple times after I was fired.
I kept my promise and never reached out to Dorian again.
But now, he wanted to be together again.
For real this time.
Like we were always meant to be.
Marnie
Denial was a place in Cannes, and I wanted to barricade myself in it and never come out again.
And that’s exactly what I did, for as long as I could.
This Harper girl clearly had no idea what she was talking about. I clung to that thought so hard that, when I spotted Ben in the lobby of the Martinez after a meeting, all I felt was relief. We hadn’t spoken since Harper had dropped that bomb on me. Now, even in a sea of beautiful men, Ben looked dashing as he talked excitedly with some important-looking guy, his eyebrows shooting up in delight.
I loved our life together. His family had been so warm and welcoming. I fit so perfectly within their happy bubble. I couldn’t give this up. I’d have to be crazy. We would make it work. Everything could, and would, be explained away.
Ben finished his conversation and scanned the room, eventually pausing on me. My heart fluttered. There was a movie quality to the moment. Estranged lovers reunite after too much time apart. Just roll with it for a second. The crowd splits. The music goes down. They smile wildly at each other as they close the distance between them.
The world no longer exists.
Love prevails.
As I made my way over to him, the knot in my stomach twisted tighter. Maybe I didn’t need to ask the questions that had been swirling in my head. Maybe there was a way to skip right past this on our way to the happy ending we deserved. But if there was, I couldn’t see it.
“Hey,” I said, casually.
“Oh hi,” Ben responded.
You would have thought we were random acquaintances.
The crowd was thinning, the latest batch of celebrities on their way to yet another screening, party, press conference. I gestured to the lounge area, where we found an empty couch. Ben sat at a reasonable distance from me, avoiding my gaze.
“I had a chat with Harper.” I paused, watching for Ben’s reaction. He seemed puzzled but not concerned. I gathered the courage to continue. “She told me about your screenplay.”
“She shouldn’t have done that. You’re busy; I don’t want you to worry about anything. I’ll talk to her.”
He made a move to get up, like the real problem was that I was working too hard to deal with the fact that he’d stolen my work.
“Harper told me what your screenplay is about. The vengeful mistress who kills her lover.”
His face was blank. No admission. No contrition. I felt like I was speaking in a different language.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at him directly.
“Weeks ago, I had an idea for a story about a vengeful mistress who kills her lover. I got excited and wrote a few pages of the script, just for fun. But then I kept thinking about it, so I ended up finishing a whole draft. The file has been on my laptop the whole time. I should have toldyou before, but I never meant to do anything with it. And now I think, maybe… The screenplay you’ve been sending around is actually mine.”
This time, the facade dropped. Ben scoffed as he shook his head, like I was making no sense at all.
“It’s notyours.” He let out a sardonic chuckle.
“So youdidn’tfind it on my computer?”
