21. Vincent
21
VINCENT
A fter three hours of shmoozing and smiling, I’d hoped the night was finally winding down, but the DJ cranked yet another crowd pleaser I didn’t recognize, and the dancefloor was packed. It wouldn’t be smart for the host to duck out early, so I pretended I was perfectly happy to keep my smile plastered on.
The truth was, I felt on edge for reasons I couldn’t explain. Sure, I was thrilled to be celebrating Evermore , but there was an undercurrent of tension with Piper making me uneasy.
I glanced around to find her since we’d barely had time to talk throughout the event. I’d hoped to shine a spotlight on her hard work, but everyone seemed focused on me. Of course, it wasn’t like she needed me to prop her up. I knew she could hold her own with all of the bold-faced names around us. She was probably talking golf with the Sullivans or charming some princess from Austria.
I finally spotted her leaning over the balcony railing, talking with someone I couldn’t see. When the crowd shifted, I realized it was Rodrigo, the model from the Evermore shoot.
They were laughing. Which, really, was fine. People laugh. But why was he touching her back? I squinted at Piper and saw her giving him the smile I thought was reserved just for me. The way they were leaning close looked too familiar. Too flirty. Of course, that was Rodrigo’s vibe, but Piper? I’d never seen her so…coquettish.
What the hell was going on between them?
I realized I was grinding my teeth. I trusted Piper—of course I did. But the flashbacks…they came anyway.
This was exactly what Maya used to pull with me when she felt like I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. She’d find a guy, any guy really, and focus all her attention on him to make me jealous. Usually, I managed to ignore it, but sometimes that backfired when it drove her to take things way too far. The end result was that any hint of those sorts of games was enough to give me a headache automatically.
But this wasn’t Maya. This was Piper.
So why the hell couldn’t I shake the jealousy?
Then Piper slid her arm around Rodrigo’s shoulder to give him a quick side hug. When he dropped his head to her shoulder and she rubbed his back, something in me twisted.
I’d seen enough.
The perfect night meant everyone was outside, so the only spot for me to disappear to was the darkness inside, just beyond the sliding glass doors. I needed a few minutes to myself, to breathe. I smiled my way through the crowd, doing my best to avoid getting dragged into yet another endless conversation about exactly how we’d distilled the heliotrope or how perfect Maya looked in the new campaign, and let out a sigh when I finally crossed the threshold and pulled the door shut behind me.
The party sounds muted, and I could finally exhale.
It was a triumphant night for Summit, but I felt hollow inside. Something had been shifting with Piper, and it felt like she was slipping away. But every time I asked what was wrong, she insisted everything was fine, leaving me with no clue how to make things better.
I loosened my bow tie, popped open a few buttons on my shirt, and dropped into a chair.
“You taking that all the way off?” a voice floated out to me.
My shoulders reflexively sagged because I recognized it immediately.
Maya. The last person I wanted to see.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m only here for a minute. I need to get back outside.” And away from you , I thought.
She was playing the part of supermodel in a beige-y mesh corset dress that made her look naked. At least her outfit would guarantee tons of social media event coverage.
“Babe, you sound so sad! What’s wrong?” she pouted as she sashayed to me. She always strutted like she was on a catwalk with the world watching.
“Don’t call me that,” I sighed.
She came and stood right in front of me and placed her hands on her hips. “You look miserable, but I bet I know how I can cheer you up.” She gave me a wicked smile. “It starts with me on my knees.”
“Maya, come on. Enough,” I grumbled, leaning back in my chair to put some space between us. How many times did we have to go through this?
But Maya was relentless.
“We both know what makes you happy, babe. You need some vitamin me .” With one swift motion, she hiked her skirt way up her thighs then straddled me.
I only had time for the one thought: Are you fucking kidding me?
She was lightning fast as she wrapped her arms around my neck and tried to pull me into a kiss. I stood up so abruptly she slipped off my lap and almost fell onto her ass.
“For fuck’s sake, Vincent!” Maya sputtered as she tried to right herself, grabbing onto the edge of the table. “Why are you acting like this? I know you still want me, it’s so obvious!”
“I’m in a relationship, and you know it,” I said through gritted teeth.
Maya threw back her head and laughed. “You expect me to believe you’re actually serious about that little photographer? Please. You’re only with her to try to make me jealous. It’s not even real, is it? Admit it. You’re totally faking it.”
The pressure and stress that had been building within me exploded. I didn’t want to have this ridiculous conversation with her, but she’d left me no choice.
“You know what, you’re right,” I shouted back at her, not even caring how loud my voice was. “It did start off as a fake relationship, and you were the reason! You refuse to leave me alone, so Piper and I agreed to play the part of a couple so you’d finally get the message. Obviously, it didn’t work, because you’re acting as desperate as ever.”
“ Desperate ?” Maya shrieked back at me as her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Vincent, look at me! It’s physically impossible for a body like this to be desperate.”
“Well, why don’t you stop acting this way and stay the fuck away from me?” I barked back at her.
“And why don’t you stop giving me mixed messages?” she seethed. “Hiring me for the most important campaign in Summit history? That means something, don’t you dare try to deny it.”
“It was business !” I roared at her.
“Just like your fake relationship with your ‘creative director,’” she screamed back at me, making mocking air quotes as she said Piper’s title. “It’s all business, no heart, just like you.”
She sniffled as her eyes filled with fake tears.
“Maya, come on. Stop it,” I scolded her. “Don’t try that with me.”
“You leave me alone!” she cried out in an anguished but very fake voice. “You’ve broken my heart again , Vincent Forde!”
She covered her face and ran out of the room sobbing. It was only then that I saw the figure lurking in the shadows.
“Hey, uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to overhear.”
The guy hastily shoved his camera in his pocket. He looked familiar, but then again, nearly everyone at the party was a boldface name.
Then it hit me.
The shifty looking guy in the corner was none other than TikTok blogger Jerry Reed, who was known for gossip and so-called blind items framed in such a way that made it incredibly obvious who they were about. He also liked to do “pranks” on celebrities that actually qualified as harassment. I could almost guarantee Maya had noticed him and dialed up the fake tears and so-called heartbreak to spin the story her way. She was that calculating.
“What you overheard was a private conversation,” I said tersely.
He smiled at me and shrugged. “In a public space. And it was kind of hard to ignore, with the yelling and all.”
I wanted to storm over and crack him in the jaw, but that would only make a bad situation worse. The best thing I could do was hide my fury and hope the public would decide the story wasn’t worthy of attention.
Fuck. Who was I kidding? Playboy CEO fakes a romance with an employee and makes his gorgeous supermodel ex cry at a major launch party? The story was going to be everywhere.
“Hey, great party. Later.” Jerry flashed a peace sign at me and walked back outside.
The muscles along my shoulders tensed as I weighed what the leak was going to do to the launch. There was no doubt that the good press about Evermore was going to get lost in the coverage of what had just gone down in the empty ballroom.
I stormed back outside and nearly ran into Piper on her way in.
“Hey, I was looking for you,” she said. Her cheerful expression slid into a frown as she studied my face. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk. Now.”
I turned on my heel and headed through the ballroom to a more private meeting room down the hall.
“Vincent, what’s going on?” Piper asked as she jogged to keep up with me.
I waited until I shut the door behind us before I began. I couldn’t think straight, but I knew one thing: This was going to get ugly.
“What?” Piper reached out to grasp my arm. “Tell me what happened.”
I was so angry that the concern on her face barely registered. “Prepare for a Jerry Reed shitstorm. Maya just cornered me and tried to kiss me, and then basically forced me to admit that we were faking a relationship when we started dating. Jerry saw the whole thing. He might’ve recorded it, I couldn’t tell.”
“What?” Piper whispered. Her face went pale.
“Maya put on a whole contrived show of how I broke her heart, and now this scandal is going to be the focus of the Summit narrative, not Evermore . I’m going to look like a fool!”
I fumed as I considered all the ways Jerry could spin the story.
“I don’t know what to say,” Piper whispered.
“Yeah, that makes two of us.” I raked my hands through my hair and sighed. “All that work…”
“Yes, but once the campaign goes live, people will focus on that,” Piper said in a hollow voice. “It’s gorgeous.”
I snorted at her. “Yeah, I’m sure you think so. I noticed you and Rodrigo couldn’t keep your hands off each other. That’s not going to help fix the narrative either. Hopefully no one got footage of you two together.”
Piper backed away from me, and her face went from pale to absolutely white. “Vincent…” her voice was a pained whisper. “Do you really think I was flirting with Rodrigo? He was telling me that he just found out his girlfriend is pregnant . We were celebrating the good news, that’s all!”
I froze. Girlfriend? I had no idea.
“Well, that’s not the issue here,” I pushed on. “It’s the way the media will spin it. Maya’s already framed herself as the victim here—we’ve lost control of the narrative.”
“But that’s not my fault,” she said softly.
“Did I say it was?” I roared back at her.
Piper shrank back against the wall like I’d struck her, which made me have to vent my frustration by pacing around the room.
The air in the room got heavy as we both tried to process how everything had just gone to hell.
“I think I’m done,” Piper said in a shaky voice.
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “The night’s not over yet. We probably have a few more photo ops with New York Magazine. As if I want to keep fake smiling.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Piper whispered, taking a step away from me, her face crumbling. “I’m done with us .”
“Excuse me?” I asked her as my heart lurched. I’d expected we’d talk about the “us” part of the equation at a later date, when we’d had time to cool down and assess the damage. Not here. Not now.
“You and me,” she replied, gesturing between us. “It’s over.”
I was about to respond when my phone rang.
“ Fuck , it’s Amanda.”
The fact that the Summit social media guru was calling me in the middle of the party was not good news.
“Yeah, you should definitely take that,” Piper said with a little more venom in her voice. “I’ll leave you to it, since business is the only thing that matters to you.”
I stared at her as her expression shifted from sadness to anger. My phone seemed to get louder and louder as it rang, until it sounded like a fire alarm.
Which it sort of was.
I needed to do damage control on the Jerry scenario. The company came first for me—it had to. I had employees all around the world who counted on me to get this right, to make sure the business stayed strong and their paychecks kept coming. But Piper was looking at me like she’d been counting on me too…and like I’d let her down. Everything was spiraling out of control, and the only way I knew how to handle it was to focus on the things I could fix. And that wasn’t—had never been—my love life.
Even if what I felt for Piper was stronger and went deeper than anything I’d experienced before, it had still reached its breaking point. I should’ve seen it coming, shouldn’t have let myself get this invested. I knew better than to expect romance to last.
If I’d been smarter, more careful, maybe it wouldn’t hurt this much.