“I’ll always be some kind of headline, Taio. Might as well give them something interesting to conspire about. I’m not mad, babe. I am…wondering how you are. I’m sorry about your dad. I’m so sorry he tried to use me against you.”
I let out a heavy exhale. “He only knew because I told him how excited I was about us. How much you already meant to me. I didn’t expect?—”
“Shhh.” Only when I’m seated are we eye level. She holds my gaze as she traces my frown lines with the tip of her finger. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t let you beat yourself up over this. You and me? We’re a team now. We’ll solve your problems like we did mine—together.”
I gather her in my hands, tracing her silhouette. “How did you sleep?”
“Like the dead. Turns out orgasms are better than melatonin. Multiple orgasms? Basically a medical-grade sedative.” She grins at my expression—somewhere between proud and flustered—then reaches past me to steal my coffee cup, taking a long sip. “Ugh, how do you drink it black? This tastes like punishment.”
“It’s an acquired taste.”
“It’s an acquired cry for help.” But she takes another sip anyway, wrinkling her nose. “Okay. So.” Her face shifts into something more serious, the playfulness draining away. “Are you ready for the reckoning?”
“The reckoning?”
“Sage is on her way up. She texted me while I was in the shower. Actually, she texted me approximately thirty-six times while I was in the shower.” Charlie sets down the coffee cup and pulls out her phone, scrolling through what I assume is a parade of damage. “She’s mad, Taio. Like, capital-M Mad. The kind of mad where she stops using exclamation points and starts using periods, which is how you know it’s serious.”
“How bad is it?”
“Grayson went nuclear on socials overnight.” She turns the phone toward me, showing a screenshot of an Instagram story—Grayson’s face, artfully lit, with a caption that reads:Some people show you who they really are. Believe them the first time.
“He’s…” Embarrassed, wounded, and probably mortified. But that’s not what I say. “…such a punk-ass bitch.”
“Oh, it gets worse.” She swipes to the next screenshot. “He’s been liking comments that call me a cheater. Responding to DMs with cryptic bullshit that makes it sound like I was the one who did something wrong. And apparently”—she swipes again—“somebody, aka Grayson, gave an ‘anonymous source’ interview to TMZ about our ‘troubled relationship’ and my ‘erratic behavior’ and my ‘inappropriate closeness with a member of my security team.’”
“All in less than twelve hours?”
“Celebrity gossip never sleeps.”
“It should.” My jaw tightens. “He took over the whole narrative.”
“Of course. He’s trying to make me look like the villain so he can play the victim.” Charlie’s tone is flat, resigned. “It’s not even that creative. This is like,Toxic Ex Playbookpage one. But it’s working—the comments are already filling up with people calling me a slut and saying Grayson deserves better.”
“Babe—”
“I know. I know it shouldn’t matter what strangers on the internet think. But it does matter, because those strangers buy tickets and stream songs and determine whether I have a career next year or not.” She sets the phone face-down on the counter, like she can’t stand to look at it anymore. “Sage is going to want a strategy. A spin. Some way to make this look like anything other than what it was.”
I consider this for a moment, turning over the options in my mind. “I mean, she could probably spin it. Make it look like just a fight between you and Grayson—a lovers’ quarrel that got heated. You called your bodyguard to pick you up because things got tense. The confrontation outside the restaurant was just me being overprotective, doing my job. We can say the handholding was comfort, not romance. Doesn’t have to be a whole thing.”
Charlie’s quiet. Too quiet. She’s staring at the counter, fingers tracing patterns on the marble.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t want to spin it.” She meets my gaze, and there’s something new in her expression. Something steely and resolved that I haven’t seen before. “I’m done, Taio. I’m done with strategies and lies and carefully curated narratives that make me look like someone I’m not.”
“Okay…”
“For years I’ve been letting other people tell my story. Managers deciding what version of Charlie Riley the world gets to see. A publicist orchestrating fake relationships to boost my image. Stylists dressing me in things I’d never choose formyself. And every time something real happened, every time I felt something genuine, I had to bury it because it didn’t fit the brand.” She takes a breath, steadying herself. “I’m tired of being a brand. I want to be a person.”
“You’ve always been a person to me.”
“I know. That’s why I fell for you.” She says it simply, like it’s just a fact of the universe. Water is wet. The sky is blue. Charlie fell for Taio.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Tell the truth,” she says, like it’s obvious. Like it’s easy, even though we both know it’s anything but. “You and I are together. Grayson and I were a PR arrangement that’s now over. That’s it. That’s the whole story. The world wants answers, and I know social media is probably imploding right now with theories and speculation and people demanding to know who you are and what’s really going on.” She squares her shoulders. “But it’s not my job to supply them with a convenient story. I don’t owe them a performance of my personal life.”
“What about the fallout? The headlines? The?—”
