Chapter 29
ELI
TRACK: Johnny Cash, “Hurt”
My stomach sinks like a rock in water, blunting any pain still ringing through my hand at knocking that dipshit on his ass.
“Reese, wait!”
She doesn’t wait. She’s walking so fast I have to jog to get to her office at the same time as her. You scared her. You fucking asshole, you couldn’t control your temper and you did what you always do—feel too hard. Care too much. Over-fucking-react.
“Reese—” I say when I reach her office.
She doesn’t slam the door in my face—there’s that.
Instead she walks over to her desk. Only she doesn’t turn around. She leans over her desk, her shoulders shaking.
She’s crying. My stomach twists. “Reese, I—”
But when Reese spins around, my words fall away.
Her brows are slanted inward, lips tight. “What the hell were you thinking?”
She’s not scared. She’s furious.
Shame rocks through me hard. I did it again. I get a flashback to the time I put a hole through Seamus’s wall. To when I hit him, in fact, when he drove the car that scarred Chelsea.
“Reese, I just saw him going after you, and I heard what he said—”
“I heard what he said too! And that was nothing compared to what he’s going to do next. Eli, I told you about him. I told you about what an asshole he was, how he’d sue you if you tried anything…”
“I don’t care about any of that! After all that shit with Neil especially, I—”
“What shit with Neil?”
My stomach plunges even lower. I didn’t think that was possible.
I bury my face in my hands.
Fuck me. I really just blurted that out.
“What shit with Neil, Eli?”
My lungs feel like they’re filled with broken glass. “Neil—he was hitting on Augusta. Harassing her. I didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to lose the show. And I…I needed you to keep singing, Reese.”
Her lip wobbles slightly. “You hid that from me?”
“I was trying to protect you,” I say. “And they wanted the show to go on. Would you have let the show go on if you knew he was being a creep?”
Reese wipes the tears springing from the corners of her eyes with the heels of her palms. I hope—I pray—she can see my side on that one at least. But when I take a step toward her, she takes a step backward, stopped only by her desk. “No.”
But she’s not answering my question. The bitter taste of panic burns my throat. She’s saying no to me.
You’re going to lose her. Just like you lost Kelly.
Only this isn’t like that. I realize in this moment that I always knew, with Kelly, that what we had wasn’t for keeps. I tried to hold it together with everything I could, I gave it everything. But underneath it all, there was a truth I hid from everyone, even myself.
“Reese, my whole life I’ve tried to stuff this part of me down, to hide this ugly part of me away. But I don’t know how to not feel. And when it comes to you—I feel more than I’ve ever felt. When I see someone hurting you, when I see him…”
I cut myself off. Because even now, when the intensity of my reactions might have destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me—and there’d be no going back from this if I lost her again, my hands curl into fists. How anyone could have pressed the passion I saw in her down for so long…
If it happened again, right now, I’d do it again. I know I would, and I think Reese knows it too.
“Reese, if he’s what tears us apart this time…if he’s responsible for you hating me once again, maybe I will murder him. Maybe it’ll feel good, too.”
But Reese is shaking her head. “You still don’t get it, Eli. It doesn’t matter what you think is right. There are other people’s feelings involved.”
Shame floods my chest. An old, bitter shame I’ve felt my whole life.
I don’t know what to say now, but the sound of clipping heels comes fast down the hall outside, and Reese’s eyes darting up over my shoulder prevent the need to say anything. I know before she even speaks it’s going to be my sister.
“Eli, you absolute—”
“I know!” I shout. “Goddammit, don’t you think I know?”
But Cass doesn’t blink. She goes off on how I’ve embarrassed the hotel. I’ve embarrassed her, the family, everyone and their goddamned mother.
Oh Eli.
Mom’s voice echoes in my mind. She was the only one who never focused on my anger, who saw what I got mad for.
Except when I look back at Reese, I know that thought is a lie. Reese knows too. Only it doesn’t matter. My chest clenches. She was talking about her own feelings that I trampled all over when trying to deal with my own.
I thought hitting Simon was for her, but it was really for me, and that was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.
“Eli, are you fucking listening?” Cass exclaims, exasperated.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I fucking heard you. I fucked up. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it. Then I’ll get out of everyone’s goddamned hair.”
“You’re already gone,” Cass says coolly. “Don’t you remember? You quit.”
Behind her, Reese’s eyes go wide. Fuck me. She’ll take that the wrong way now, like I’m leaving and wasn’t going to tell her. For all she knows I could be doing anything. Begging Kelly to take me back. Worse, overdoing it. Throwing too many big life decisions at her too fast, like I did with Kelly.
And it’s pushing her away.
The thought makes me want to throw up.
“Reese, it was time. It wasn’t about pushing you into any decisions.”
But Reese pinches her lips. “Eli, I can’t.”
My stomach plunges.
“Listen to her, for once,” Cass says, and I’m about ready to gently shove my sister out the door and slam it behind her, just so I can have a moment to explain to Reese what I feel. How sorry I am for reacting the way I did.
But I know anything I say right now will just sound like an excuse.
Instead, I turn my back on my sister and say to Reese, “If he tries to contact you, if he so much as looks in your direction, I want you to call me. Please. I’ll stand outside your door all night if it means you’re safe.”
To my great relief, Reese nods. “Okay. And Eli? Let’s talk when we said we would, okay?”
The day filming ends. The day we initially agreed we’d fess up with everyone else about our fake relationship. The day we later decided was when we’d make the decision ourselves.
I can’t help think I’ve already sealed the deal, and not the way I wanted.
“Eli—” Cass begins, but her tone is softer now.
“Yeah,” I say. “I got it.” Cass is tough. Reese is too, if I’d given her the chance to show it.
With that, I leave the office.
It shuts behind me, the click like a final shot.
I tell myself they’ll be okay. They’ll be safe, without me there.
Still, I can give them some insurance.
When I reach the set, I have to grit my teeth to follow through on what I intend to do.
Simon’s sitting on the ground, right where I left him. Only now he’s holding a wad of napkins under his nose, and has his phone tucked under his chin.
“Hey!” he exclaims when he sees me. When he sees I’m coming toward him, his face crumples into panic. He crab-walks backward, his phone clattering to the ground. “No! No, please!”
My stomach turns at the sound of his pathetic words. Not because of what he says, but the way he says them, like I’m some kind of monster.
When I reach him, I thrust a hand down. For a moment, he only stares at it. Then he looks up at me, suspicious.
It takes all the effort I have in me to do this. I manage a feral kind of grunt. “Get up.”
He doesn’t get up. He points his chin at his phone. “That’s my lawyer. The call is still live, so he’ll hear everything you say. “
“Just give me your hand. Unless you want to sit here and wait for them to help?”
Simon glances warily at the cluster of TV crew standing nearby.
They’re the beefy guys who set up and take down the set every day.
They wear all black, and their arms are folded, their expressions hard.
I saw those guys go googly over a drawing Sophie’s daughter made of them when she was in last week.
But right now, they look like they eat whole animals for breakfast.
Finally the asshole’s hand clamps around mine. I pull him up in one quick move before I change my mind.
“Simon,” I begin, once he’s on his feet. His name feels like acid on my tongue. But he jumps in right away, his voice still muffled behind the napkins.
“You can say sorry all you want, but it doesn’t matter, I’m still suing your ass.”
I glance at his phone on the ground behind him.
I know I’m going to need to choose my words carefully.
But as he continues to go off, even going so far as to poke his finger at me, one of the crew members watching us separates from the cluster of them.
He bends down to Simon’s phone and presses the red disconnect button, then gives me a curt nod.
It’s the impetus I need.
“Simon,” I say, hard enough that he flinches. “Shut the fuck up and listen to me. You do what you need to do; you take whatever action you need to take against me. But if I ever hear even a whisper about you going near Reese again, ever…”
The words are on the tip of my tongue. I will kill you. I will break your neck and throw you in the river and nobody will give a shit that you’re gone.
But I think of Reese, that look she gave me in her office a moment ago.
You didn’t think about me.
I take a step toward Simon. “If you go near her again—or even step foot in this hotel or this town again—I will make you regret it for the rest of your shitty, lonely days. Do you understand?”
Simon, of course, just stands there, not saying anything. Then gets an almost gleeful expression on his face as he whirls around and picks up his phone.
It doesn’t matter that his lawyer didn’t hear my words. I’m already incriminated—that punch will air on TV, and I’ll be charged. I humiliated everyone I care about.
I eye the crew, wondering if I could ask them to take him out. But just then I spot a giant red beard coming from the front door.
“What the fuck has happened here?” Rufus asks, looking from me to the asshole with the phone.
“He hit me! And he’s going down!” Simon exclaims.
The biggest crew member steps forward. “Think you’re forgetting the first half of that story,” he says.
Simon sputters.
“I need him the fuck out of here,” I say to Rufus. “They can explain.”
Rufus nods. “Can’t wait to fuckin’ hear it, after we take care of business. Hey, little man?”