Chapter 20 Rose #2
The realization hit me somewhere between the studio and the freeway.
Denise had watched me accuse her, on camera, without proof.
I’d said I believe Denise orchestrated the entire scheme.
I’d said I believe I was targeted by my best friend.
I’d said it live, to the world, with nothing but my gut and a timeline and the bone-deep certainty that comes from knowing someone for years and finally seeing them clearly.
And Denise was going to sue me.
Of course she was. That was the smart play, the Denise play, the move I should have seen coming from the moment I walked into that studio.
She’d file for defamation. She’d paint herself as the wronged friend, the loyal partner falsely accused by a bitter woman who’d lost everything and needed someone to blame.
She’d hire a good lawyer and she’d cry on the stand and she’d be so convincing that even I might doubt myself.
I’d just handed her the weapon.
I told the driver to take me to the airport. Pressed my forehead against the window and watched the California freeway blur past and felt the full weight of what I’d done press down on me until I couldn’t sit up straight.
I’d told the truth. But the truth without proof was just an accusation. And an accusation, on a livestream, with my name and face attached, was exactly the kind of thing that could destroy whatever was left of me.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe the way Dr. Carlisle taught me, in for four, hold for seven, out for eight, and felt nothing except the specific terror of a woman who’d just jumped off a cliff and couldn’t see the ground.
I was back in New York by eleven.
Maggie was waiting at the door. She took one look at my face and didn’t ask questions. Just steered me to the couch, put a glass of water in my hand, and sat beside me while I stared at nothing.
“You were incredible,” she said after a while.
“I was reckless.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Maggie, I accused Denise of a crime on a livestream. Without proof. Without a single piece of documentation. She’s going to sue me for everything I don’t have.”
“She might.”
“She will. It’s what I would do, if someone went on camera and said those things about me without evidence.”
Maggie was quiet for a moment. “Do you regret it?”
I thought about it. Really thought about it, not the reflexive no that would make me feel brave, not the reflexive yes that would make me feel safe.
“No,” I said. “I don’t regret telling the truth.
I regret that the truth is all I have. I needed proof and I went in without it because—” I stopped.
Set the water down. “Because I was afraid that if I waited for proof, I’d never go at all.
I’d talk myself out of it. Find a reason to stay hidden. Let the fear win.”
“So you jumped.”
“So I jumped. And now I’m falling and I can’t see where I’m going to land.”
Maggie squeezed my hand. “You’re going to land fine, Rose.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But I know you. And you’ve survived worse.”
Drake appeared from the bedroom with the twins, who were supposed to be asleep but had clearly staged an uprising. Shannon grabbed my finger the way she always did, tight and possessive, and I held on because her small warm hand was the most real thing in the room.
I went out to the fire escape. I brought the blanket and my phone and the specific exhaustion of someone who’d just turned herself inside out on camera and was waiting to see if the world would punish her for it.
The city was doing its thing below me. Millions of lights, millions of lives, millions of stories that had nothing to do with Rose Gracen and a livestream from a studio in LA.
I sat there for a while. Didn’t check my phone. Didn’t look at comments or headlines or the texts that were still coming in from numbers I didn’t recognize. Just sat and breathed and watched the lights and waited for the panic to subside or the ground to give way, whichever came first.
The window slid open behind me. Maggie climbed out onto the fire escape, which was a production because the window was small and Maggie was not a graceful climber. She had her phone in her hand.
“Rose.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“I know. But you need to take this call.”
I turned to look at her. She was holding the phone out to me with an expression I’d never seen on her face before, urgency and tenderness and the particular look of a woman who was trying very hard not to cry.
“Who is it?”
“Graham,” she said. “He watched the interview. He called Kaya, Kaya gave him my number. Rose, he says he has proof.”
My hands went still. “Proof of what?”
“Everything. Denise. The bank account. All of it.” Maggie pushed the phone closer. “Take it.”
I stared at the phone in her hand. Graham. Calling Maggie because I wasn’t answering my own phone. Because he’d found another way around my walls, the way he always found another way, patient and stubborn and unwilling to let me disappear.
I took the phone.
“Hi,” I said.
Silence for a moment. Just his breathing and the wind on his end, and water somewhere nearby. He was outside too.
“Hi,” he said. His voice was rough. Wrecked. Like he’d been crying or running or both. “I watched the interview.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.” A pause. “Rose, what you did in that studio. Going in without evidence. Saying Denise’s name with nothing but your word.” His voice cracked. “You’re either the bravest person I’ve ever met or the most reckless.”
“Maggie says those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He almost laughed. “Rose, I have proof. Everything you said about Denise is true. I hired a forensic accountant after I left Colorado. Her name is on the bank account. She signed the documents in person, three months before Taylor ever started at the ranch. She set the whole thing up.”
I sat there with the phone pressed to my ear and the city swimming below me.
Relief.
Not because the truth was good. The truth was devastating. The truth was that my best friend had been a predator and I’d been her mark and everything I’d feared in that studio, everything I’d accused Denise of without proof, was real.
“I didn’t know,” I said quietly. “When I did the interview. I didn’t have proof.”
“I know. That’s why it mattered.” His voice was very soft. “She can’t sue you for defamation now, Rose. Because it’s not defamation if it’s true.”
The knot that had been tightening in my gut since the freeway loosened. Not all the way. But enough to breathe.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because I’m an idiot who thought sitting on the truth was the same thing as protecting you.” He exhaled. “I was wrong. About that. About all of it.”
“You weren’t an idiot. You were scared.”
“Aye. Same thing, sometimes.”
“Come to New York,” I said.
“Rose—”
“I’m serious. Come. Maggie has a guest room and the twins will probably try to eat your shoes, but come.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
A pause. Then, quietly: “I love you, Rose.”
My eyes were burning. The city below me was a smear of light.
“I love you,” I said. “I loved you in the barn and I loved you when I pushed you away and I loved you every night I didn’t watch your video because I knew hearing your voice would break me open. And I’m done pretending that’s not true.”
“Then stop pretending.” His voice was wrecked and warm and it sounded like coming home. “And leave the door unlocked. I’ll be there by morning.”
I hung up. Sat on the fire escape with the phone in my lap and the blanket around my shoulders and the city spread out below me like a promise I was finally ready to believe.
Maggie climbed back out the window. She didn’t say anything. She just sat beside me and put her arm around my shoulders and held on.
“He’s coming, leaving tonight,” I said.
“I know. I heard.”
“The twins are going to destroy him.”
“They’ll love him. Everybody loves a man who lets babies chew on his shoes.” She paused. “Are you okay?”
I thought about the question. Really thought about it, the way I hadn’t let myself think about anything in weeks.
“No,” I said. “But I’m going to be.”
For once, I believed it.