“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down, I don’t want a 'no comment,' Alan. I want blood,” I snarled, pacing the length ofthe balcony as the New York skyline blurred into a haze of static. “That ‘stunning blonde’ is Travis’s wife. My sister-in-law. You need to call every major outlet—now. You tell them if that photo isn't retracted, and a formal apology issued to Orla Sheehan by the time her flight lands at JFK, I’m pulling out of every sponsored event this week. I’ll sit on the baseline and refuse to swing a racket until they're bankrupt. I’ll burn my own career to the ground just to make sure this shit never touches her ever again.”
Alan started to stammer about process and legalities, but I cut him off with a sound that was less man and more predator. “I don't give a fuck about the process. She’s in the air right now thinking I’m the piece of shit everyone says I am, and I won’t have it. Call the fucking tabloid. Get them to release the full burst-shot from the camera—the one where Travis is literally holding the cab door open for her. If I see one more notification about my ‘old tricks’' I’m going to the press room myself and I won’t be using a script. Fix it, Alan. Or find a new client, because I’m done playing nice with vultures who touch what’s mine."
I cut the call before I said anything worse.
What was I supposed to do? She wasn’t answering my calls. Wasn’t even opening my texts. She’d probably blocked my number.
I dropped onto the sofa, head in my hands, trying to figure out what I’d say if I ever got the chance to get her in a room again. She had to believe me.
I stayed there for hours, the New York sun moving across the floorboards while I rotted in place. My heart thudded with a relentless, sick rhythm, anger buzzing through my blood like a live wire. I spent the afternoon rotating between pacing the length of the suite like a caged animal and burying my face in a cushion. I couldn't eat. I couldn't think straight. The thoughtof her sitting in her seat, thousands of feet in the air, nursing a broken heart I didn't even break, was consuming me alive.
Then I heard it, the click of a keycard. The faint scrape of a suitcase wheel from the room opposite: her room. The one the tour had assigned her, even though we both knew she’d never need it.
I was out of my seat and at the door before the suitcase wheel had even stopped scraping across the carpet. I yanked it open just in time to see the flick of her hair—that perfect, dark silk—before she vanished, slamming her door so hard the whole corridor rattled.
For a second, I almost went after her. Every instinct in me screamed to close the space between us, to make her look at me and listen. But the fact that she’d slammed the door knowing full well I was standing there told me everything I needed to know. She was furious. She was done.
The old me would’ve matched that anger, thrown fuel on it just to get a response. But I wasn’t that guy anymore. Not with her. She needed space, and I wasn’t about to make it worse by causing a scene in a hotel hallway. So I stood there for a beat, staring at the chipped paint of her door, heart pounding, hands clenching uselessly at my sides, and let her have the time she needed, no matter how much it killed me.
I retreated back into my room, sitting on the edge of the sofa and staring at the wood of my door. I watched the clock. I watched my phone. Ten unseen calls. Twelve unanswered texts. Every minute felt like a physical weight pressing down on my lungs.
I gave her an hour. One hour to cool off. To let her decide to come to me. But nothing. ?At sixty-one minutes the ‘new me’ wore off completely.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I yanked open my door and stormed across the hall. “Orla!” I bellowed, pounding on thewood hard enough that my palm stung. “Open the fucking door.” At this point, I didn’t care who heard.
Silence.
“Don’t do this,” I warned, my voice as sharp as a razor’s edge. “Don’t shut me out over some bullshit tabloid photo.”
Nothing.
My jaw locked so hard it ached. I pounded again, rattling the hinges. “Orla! I swear to God, don’t make me make a scene”
Still nothing.
That was it.
The red haze took over, the same one that had gotten me fined more times than I could count. The one the papers love to write about.Tyler Reed loses his shit again.I didn't care about the fines or the headlines. I cared about the girl on the other side of that wood who was currently erasing me.
I stepped back, braced my shoulder, and slammed into the door. Once. Twice. On the third hit, the lock gave way with a splintering crack, and the door swung inward, hitting the stopper with a bang.
She was standing in the middle of the room in those tiny running shorts, her hair wild like she’d been clawing at it. Her eyes were rimmed a raw, angry red. She looked as broken as she had that night in Washington, and seeing it again—knowing I was the cause, even if the reason was a lie—almost killed me on the spot.
Her suitcase was still upright by the wall, a silent threat that she was ready to bolt the second she had the chance.
Her face hardened into a mask of pure ice the second she saw me. “What the hell, Tyler?!”
“You’re really gonna stand there and not even let me speak?” I stalked into the room, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. “After everything? After the way I’ve been for you?”
She crossed her arms, her chin tilted high in that defiant Irish way. “Explain what? That you can’t keep it in your pants for one fucking week?”
That hit like a punch to the gut.The air left my lungs, leaving me reeling.
I stopped dead in front of her. “Don’t.” I snapped “Don’t you dare put me in the same box as some fucked up version of me that lives in your head. I’m not your ex.”
Her laugh was sharp, ugly. “You’re all the same, Tyler.”
I shook my head, my chest heaving. “No. Not with you. And if I have to break down every door between us to make you see that, I will.”
