28. Molly
28
MOLLY
I woke up several hours later to my phone dinging like crazy.
And then I remembered where I was. Noah’s room. In his bed. I was curled up with my back to him, his arms around me and his chest against my back. He was breathing slowly, which told me he was still asleep.
Whiskey was asleep on our feet.
I closed my eyes and smiled, reveling in the feel of our own little family. Noah, me, the puppy... We were on the road and far from home, but this had to be what home felt like. The right person and the dog you’d adopted together. The warm bubble of safety surrounding us.
God, I wanted to stay here for the rest of my life.
Then my phone dinged again.
Shit, I was going to have to answer that or it would wake Noah. I reached out for the phone, wondering if I could reach it from here, but then remembered that I’d left it on the table by the door. Dammit. I got up as careful as I could, praying I could disentangle myself without waking Noah or the puppy, and finally managed to get out of bed. By the time I got to my phone it had dinged twice more, and I was starting to panic. What the fuck was so important that someone was texting me so often?
When I picked it up, I saw that there was more than one person texting me. Matt. Anna. Sadie.
Janette.
Oh God, oh God. What had happened?
I read Sadie’s text first, because I needed to know what was going on before I tackled Janette’s.
Sadie: Girl, you’re in trouble. Someone took pictures of you and Noah kissing in the bar and they’re everywhere. All the press has them. They’re on all the sites.
My stomach fell out of my body and ran along the floor. God, he’d barely kissed me in the bar and I’d made a joke of it because it was the middle of the night and I’d been sure no one was there. We hadn’t even done anything. Sure, I wasn’t supposed to mess around with him, but that had been me going down to the bar to get him out of there because he was drunk and needed to go to sleep. Nothing had happened.
At least, not in the bar.
Still, that wasn’t going to matter, and I knew it. If the press was running with those pictures...
I took a deep breath, girded my loins, and opened the text from Janette.
It wasn’t nearly as nice.
Janette: Molly, I told you the rules for working at this magazine. No messing around with the stars. I’m looking at pictures that say you’re absolutely messing around with one of the stars. I hope to God you’ve got a good reason for this because I don’t want to have to fire you. Call me as soon as you get this.
I was going to lose my job. And it wasn’t even because of what I did today–multiple times. It was because I’d gone down to get Noah from the bar when he was too drunk to know what he was doing, and he’d fucking kissed me. Why hadn’t I checked the bar when I went in there? Why was someone in there with a camera in the middle of the fucking night? Had they been waiting for me? Trying to undermine me with the magazine?
Oh God, oh God, this was bad. And it wasn’t even bad only for me. Noah was supposed to be playing the good boy and cleaning up his act to make nice with the labels. He was not supposed to be making out with a roadie who also happened to be one of his best friends. This was the opposite of laying low.
No wonder the labels weren’t showing up for him. They must have known he was going to do something like this.
Holy fuck we’d thrown everything away. It was all going to disappear on us, and for what? Sure, the sex was amazing. And yeah I’d been thinking I was in love with the guy. But I worked my ass off to get this job and now I was just throwing it away on some guy. That wasn’t the plan.
None of this was the plan.
I ran around the room, gathering my things and stuffing them into my camera back. Damage control. I needed to figure out a story for this. He was my oldest friend and I was just helping him out. We knew each other in the orphanage and he was practically my big brother. He was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing, and we all laughed about it at the time because it was so ridiculous. Nothing happened. Nothing was happening between us.
I grabbed my phone and typed out the response to Janette before I thought about it, hoping that I’d be able to play on her empathy. I’d never told anyone about the orphanage and it wasn’t ideal, but if it made her feel sorry for me and saved my job, I didn’t care. She could scream about it from the rooftops if she wanted.
I finished the text, hit ‘send,’ and then looked around the room to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind. My eyes caught on Noah, and then Whiskey, and I nearly sobbed. He was still peaceful in his sleep, all tattoos and cigarette smoke, and looking just as sexy as he ever had.
I loved him. I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t. But I couldn’t keep him and my job at the same time.
I was going to have to fix this. I had to save us both, and I was going to do it. Even if it meant taking the next available flight back to LA and leaving the tour. I had to get back to the office and make things right with my boss. Tell her what had really happened and salvage both my career and Noah’s.
Because his label was on the line here, too.
He’d understand. He’d have to. Sure, he’d wake up to me having walked out on him, but as soon as I told him what had happened, he’d get it. He’d know I’d done what I needed to do to save us both.
Hell, he’d probably say it was for the best, anyhow.
He didn’t like to keep girls around for longer than a night, and I didn’t want to stay long enough to see him leave me.