JANUARY 2004 #2
She shut the newspaper and tossed it onto my bedside table.
She came to mine now, never the other way round and always under the cover of some sort of ruse.
Her house was presumably bugged. And it wasn’t just the press we imagined were watching her movements.
Ruchi and Adrian were the only things making even this possible—sneaking us across the threshold in the backs of cars and shielded garages. Like fugitives.
Like criminals.
“Do you think I should go to this premiere?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said at once. “The only way to suffocate this trial by media is to not give it any air. Treat it like a ridiculous rumor and people will come to believe it is exactly that.”
The thought of Harper Moore—the reported good girl in this rivalry, the fun one, the nice one—committing murder was, after all, ridiculous. No one spouting these headlines actually believed them; it just sold papers. It was a fun little distraction from boring lives.
The woman had just lost her husband, and there was no sympathy to be found.
“I wish you could come with me,” she said, reaching for my hand and tugging sharply once she had it. I fell half on top of her. “One day we will, when all this dies down. You and I, hand in hand on the red carpet.”
“You want that?” I asked, though it was difficult to think with the way her breasts pushed against mine, her fingers still grasping my own.
Her long lashes fluttered as she attempted to look away, but as close as we were I could still see her gaze even as she averted it.
“I think I’ve already hit the pinnacle of damaging accolades.
Besides, I’m reaching my limit of … things to keep secret.
I don’t want to hide you. Us. So yes, if you still want that and don’t mind being tarnished by my rumors, I’m not adverse to claiming we’ve just started dating one day. ”
Just—when we were approaching an anniversary we couldn’t even acknowledge, because it would mean tracking the anniversary of other events too.
“The world is enraptured,” she said quietly. “Friends, enemies, rivals—we might truly break it with this. There might never be another headline about anyone but us ever again.”
“What an ending that will be.”
“Ending,” she scowled. “Please, that will be the start of everything.”
Would it? It seemed ludicrous, really, to believe it might ever be possible.
What if, ten years down the line, someone connected that we had been in the same hotel, that my timeline for the night did not entirely make sense, that our relationship itself might be motive to be rid of him, even if it wasn’t why, even if he had nothing to do with us …
“It’s going to be a miserable evening without you,” she said.
It would be a miserable evening regardless.
The release of Broadgate was already marred in scandal.
The promotion leaned heavily into Harper’s character holding a gun, trying to pull those headlines into box-office sales.
It would work, too, so they’d never stop doing it.
The weight of the mystery would forever hang over her.
“Come back here tonight,” I suggested. “I’ll wait up for you.”
Even this was dangerous. What if someone saw us together? Or witnessed Harper pulling past my gates? Would anyone truly believe we were friends again?
She stared at the ceiling, curling a lock of my hair idly around her finger. “I just don’t understand how the press can say whatever they please without consequence. They don’t care about what’s true, just what will sell papers.”
“Harper, what’s true will sell far more papers, and we’d better make sure they never find it.”
But I was starting to wonder that myself, to forget, to believe the lies we were telling ourselves.
That was the power of film, of Hollywood, of the whole damn performance of Harper Moore and Nadine Heywood: The truth was only ever what we decided it.
Police Searching for Unidentified Woman Whose DNA Was Found on Joel Ingram’s Body
Kasia Bartosz Gives Son Second Christening, Removing Harper Moore as Godmother: “It just didn’t feel right, given everything. Not until we get some answers.”
A Killer Night Out? Harper Moore Attends Celebrity Bash at Home of Octavia Knowles, Exclusive Photos Inside
Harper was not quite unraveling, but crumbling. The weight of the speculation was crushing her, sapping her relentless amusement and previously unflappable belief that everything in life was funny if you just laughed hard enough.
So we tried to take back control.
Ruchi and Adrian booked us segments together, so we could snipe and argue live on air.
I told Victor I rescinded my previous missive, that I wanted to hop on Harper’s publicity and we should find a project together.
It wasn’t just the press and the hounding of the public.
It wasn’t just that Harper couldn’t go anywhere without people screaming “murderer!” after her, that restaurants asked her to leave because kicking her out was better promo for them than letting her stay or that everyone seemed to want her for thrillers and slashers while the rom-coms and dramas that had become her niche began to dry up and recast.
It was also the police, ringing at all hours, asking more and more questions.
“Can we go over that argument you had one more time?”
“And to confirm, you went back to LA on the twenty-sixth?”
“We just wanted to check again, in case you’d had any further thoughts, of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your husband?”
I wanted to suggest she have her assistant field them, to limit their access to her. But it wouldn’t look particularly sympathetic if she wasn’t cooperating with the police.
“Let’s go out,” I urged, because Harper had been avoiding it, canceling appearances and brunches, not even daring to visit her mother in case her home was bugged too and Greta, knowing about the two of us, mentioned and implicated me. “We could go to your bar?”
“And be seen partying while Joel is dead?”
“They’ll vilify you either way,” I said. “Besides, he still cheated on you, still lied, was still going to leave you. Your grief is allowed to be complicated.”
There was, I believed, a fine line to tread of appearing right for the public and having the public opinion so firmly anchored in your mind you could not move for the weight.
We dressed. I plugged my iPod into its dock and music filled the house.
I poured us glasses of champagne, and we threw my clothes everywhere as we assembled our outfits and I tried not to think about my need to replace Amos.
(I didn’t, in the end. He might be extorting me, but he could still do his job, and better someone who suspected and had proved themselves controllable than someone new to let close.)
I hadn’t told Harper about his blackmail.
I didn’t want to worry her even more.
Harper’s pink top slouched off one shoulder, exposing a single freckle, and I came up behind her to plant my lips there. She hummed, deep in her throat and caught my gaze in the mirror.
I did that—even in the depths of her despair. I brought that smile back to her face.
We booked two cars to take us to the bar. If people saw us together, we would simply be playing nice, for once. Pissed off at choosing the same bar, sure, but not willing to ruin our night.
But those plans fell away with each tequila shot.
A group gathered around us—Harper’s friends and D-list celebrities. Enough that we had a buffer, could be a part of the same group without more than a raised eyebrow.
Life seemed to flow back into her with each thundering beat.
The edges of her blurred a little as the alcohol curled in my stomach, and against the hazy club lights she appeared almost ethereal—her hair an ebony slash through the smoky air, her hips swaying, bangles on her delicate wrist forming their own beat.
She danced. She sang. She beamed.
And I watched, trying the same but reveling far more in her than in the music that pulsed through us.
But then her heel snapped and she tumbled, caught onto me and started laughing as she kicked her shoes off entirely.
I wore a silver minidress, belted with a neon pink band at my waist, and that’s where Harper’s hand fell, and she was so close, those dark eyes of hers a trap that would never fail to ensnare me.
She moved closer, the sweet fig and rose scent of her perfume underscored by the alcohol on her breath.
She was so very close to kissing me when I realized what we were doing. And I saw her eyes shoot open in panic as she did too. She reached for my hair like she still might close the distance and we lingered, for a second longer in that moment of what if.
What if we did? If I kissed you here and now? What if we stopped burying everything and exposed it to the light?
And the moment we decided we couldn’t, and like a choreographed dance I pushed her back, hard.
“Don’t touch me you skanky bitch,” I snarled.
She shoved me right back. “Don’t come into my fucking club and—”
I lost her in the rest of it, too focused on her fingers curling back into my hair and tugging hard.
I ripped her hand away and twisted it behind her back.
She swung with her other, and my hasty dodge sent drinks at the next table flying.
My hand collided with her, and she hit me in the gut. My nails raked across her arm and—
Someone held me back, just as someone else went for her. And then there were bouncers.
And then, inexplicably, police. Two of them.
“This is the owner,” the manager tried explaining, the bouncer’s arm on Harper’s shoulder notably laxer than the one gripping me tight. “I’m sure there’s a misunderstanding.”
“And I’m sure they can both think it through with a night in a cell.”
They stepped forward.
“No, no it was all me,” Harper said, shaking her bouncer off only so she could raise her hands in surrender. “I started it. I hit her. She didn’t even fight back, just tried to get me off her.”
“I don’t want to press charges,” I hastily added.