His face fell. “You don’t think my feelings for you will last?”
“I know you think they will. And you might be right. If this were any ordinary relationship, we might have a chance to figure that out.”
“What are you saying?”
“I love you, Micah.” My voice had given up trying to sound emotionless. I wiped a tear off my face with the back of my arm. “Believe me when I tell you I want to make this work.”
He smirked in his adorably bratty way. “I knew it.” When I didn’t smile back, he shifted. “But?”
“Micah, for the short time I’ve known you, you’ve done everything right, and if I thought this could last, I’d stay.” I straightened my spine and steeled myself like I used to whenever I had to chase people down with my camera. Steeling myself for the kill. “But I don’t know how to deal with any of this. I can’t tell up from down. I can’t keep going forward like this. I need some time to get my head together. Can you give me some time? Away from all that?” I pointed toward the front where right now, those two men who were just doing their job (God, how many times had I said that?) were waiting to pounce.
He stared at his feet and didn’t speak right away. Finally, he said, “I’ll give you all the time you need, Josie. Whatever you need. I know you’ll eventually come around. When you do, I’ll be waiting.” He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me for a solid minute.
It would have been so easy to fall into him. Pratosh could cook for us, and we’d kiss and kiss and kiss. I wanted it so bad it hurt.
But I needed to take care of myself first. And I was damn good at forgoing temptation.
I grabbed my gear and stood. “I need to go.”
Micah called his service, gave me one last big hug inside, told me again how much he loved me, and then walked me out through the onslaught.
Those two guys were still rolling tape as we death-marched to the waiting car. They started in on Micah first. “What’s going on, Micah? Are you guys still together?”
Despite my best efforts, my lips trembled. I gritted my teeth, but before we’d made it to the car, I lifted my hand involuntarily to wipe a tear off my face. Then the camera was in my face. “Josie, did Micah dump you?”
Micah pressed between me and the camera. “Give her some space, guys. Come on.” He shielded me until he had to open the door. As soon as he moved out of the way for a heartbeat, the camera filled in the empty space.
When the door closed, I heave-sobbed, submitting to the emotions I’d bottled up for the past hour—and the past fifteen years. The driver asked me for the address, and I lifted my head to give it to him. A reporter loomed in the right side of the windshield, camera pressed to the glass, recording my complete breakdown. Micah passed in front of the car and grabbed the guy by the elbow, jerking him away.
As the car drove off, I turned and watched as Micah, red-faced and angry, yelled at the reporters while they stood by recording it all.
Chapter 25
Naïvely, I thought I could go home and decompress. Alone at my apartment, I could brew some tea, take a hot bath, shut out the world. And wait for the world to forget about me.
But when the car pulled up at my apartment, photographers I’d worked with at other events were hunkered down outside my apartment. One of them had a big fancy camera—the kind with an external microphone. I lowered my eyes and put my hand up to block my face. While I punched in my key code, they pestered me with their fascination. They wanted to know if I’d intentionally dated Micah to get a story. They wanted to know if I’d fallen in love while in the trenches. They wanted to know if we’d split up because I didn’t need him for anything anymore. Or had we split up because he no longer needed me?
Apparently, they were building the story of beauty and the beast, and they hadn’t yet decided which part I’d played.
A woman who’d bothered to wear a nice two-piece suit pushed through to ask me, “Jo, what on earth were you thinking?”
The oppressive shit storm might have relented if those rubberneckers outside Micah’s hadn’t captured video of his alleged ex-girlfriend blubbering in the back of the car he’d deposited me into. Throw in video of an angry Micah yelling, “Just leave her alone now,” and you’ve got a recipe for the kind of chum that draws more sharks.
The reporters supplied their own narrative, painting Micah as a shallow playboy who’d dumped me in the same way as he’d dropped every other girl.
Exhibit #1:Inside Scoopposted the headline “Micah Sinclair Adds Another Notch to the Bedpost. Who Wants to Be Next?”
Exhibit #2:The Dishsaid “Coyote Micah Sinclair Gnaws His Own Arm Off in Record Time.”
Micah made no comment to dispel that interpretation, taking the brunt of the gossip. And nobody wanted the nuanced truth over a sensational lie anyway.
My phone turned into something that reminded me more of a sex toy than a communication device. I could ignore the chatter about me online, but the reporters kept intruding into my real life with their incessant attempts to milk an easy story, even though it wasn’t even big news. And I had one bitter thought—seeing cutthroat reporters in action brought home how badly I’d always sucked at this job. And I knew I couldn’t keep doing it.
But the road to freedom was paved in quicksand. I emailed Sang Moon-Soo to ask him again if he had space for me in his department. He’d published both articles I’d sent him, so I knew he was happy with my work. He wrote back, “Not yet. Unless you want to work freelance.”
I didn’t. I needed the health insurance of a salaried job, and with nothing else to fall back on, I had to suck it up and go in to the office.
As soon as I got to my workstation, Kristin and Jennifer were kind enough to come over and give me a hug, telling me not to worry, everything would blow over. Kristin whispered, “And we’re both dying of jealousy that you got to shag that beautiful man.”
