CHAPTER NINETEEN
NINETEEN
So when I say take my hand I mean take a chance, take off fears, take off expectations and leave them at your door as you step out, step out of banality and into the wild …
– from ‘Risk It, Baby’, by These Exiles
SOMETHING WAS PULLING ME out of sleep, and I hated it.
‘Ughhh.’
That was all I could manage. Sleep was so good, so precious, and now I was waking up?
Waking up with a smile on my face. A smile I didn’t understand. What was so good that I –
My eyes snapped open as memories poured through me.
Jessy. Jessy, laughing as we walked in the park. Jessy, listening to me at that dim sum place. Jessy, grinning as she got a seagull tattooed on her. Jessy, panting and quivering under me –
I looked over.
The bed was empty.
The sudden swell of disappointment was so tangible I could almost taste it. My bed was empty, my bedroom too as I glanced about in the hope that she had just got up.
I tried to quieten my breathing, tried to listen to see if she’d just popped to the loo or hopped in the shower.
My flat was completely quiet – the kind of silence that only came from emptiness.
Sagging back on to a bed that now felt lonely, I tugged a hand through my hair as I tried to think why.
Despite the fact that it could only be, what, eight, nine in the morning, Jessy was already gone.
She had fucked me and then left me? It didn’t make sense.
I glanced down and noticed I’d pulled on my PJ bottoms at some point, which made me feel a little less physically exposed, but still so emotionally vulnerable that nausea roiled in my stomach.
Where was she? Why had she just … gone?
I looked around. She hadn’t even left a note.
I tried not to panic. I thought we had spoken truthfully last night when we’d shared about our feelings. I’d told her, hadn’t I, that this was more than the contract, more than a fake relationship?
It was hard not to feel a little taken advantage of. I mean, was that all it had been about? Now she’d slept with me, she was out of here?
I shook my head. Jessy wasn’t like that. She wasn’t Celine.
Still bleary-eyed, and wishing we’d bothered to close the curtains so I hadn’t woken up so early, I groaned as I reached out and grabbed my phone.
07:23. Fuck.
I blinked. And a message from Jessy.
After staring at my phone a long, hard minute, I tapped in my passcode and read her message.
Jessy
Sorry about leaving while you were asleep. Had to run – desperately in need of new clothes – but last night was perfect. Same again tonight? Minus the curry sauce x
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, tension leaking out of my body with it. My smile was bright and I kind of wished she could have seen it. Same again?
There was very little I wouldn’t be up for when it came to Jessy.
Warm tingles were travelling up my spine as I pulled my duvet down and propped myself up in bed.
It was one thing to completely worship a woman I was swiftly falling in love with, but it was quite something else to fall asleep with her in my arms. The intimacy had been beyond anything I had ever known, or could have ever expected.
Sex, yes, but closeness. Vulnerability. That was something else.
It was hard to believe she’d managed to slip out without waking me.
This was … this was so much more than I had expected. More than I had hoped for when I first admitted I was tired of pretending. Certainly more than I’d ever known before – I mean, Celine?
It had been nothing like this. Nothing like Jessy. This was so much better.
My phone lit up.
One unread message from Derek PR
I tried to think quickly whether Jessy and I had done anything last night that would have landed us in trouble – with Derek that was – and came up empty.
I opened the message, confident its contents wouldn’t be berating, for once.
Derek
What the hell is Jessy doing?
I blinked. What?
I read the message again, but there didn’t seem to be any obvious answer to Derek’s weird, cryptic message.
Jessy? What had she done? Nothing that I hadn’t done, but Derek didn’t seem to be mad at me.
He wouldn’t be up this early, he never was, but I tapped out a quick message that he’d see when he finally woke up.
Patrick
What are you talking about?
I locked my phone and allowed it to drop on to my bed.
Jessy. What could she possibly have done to stir Derek’s anger?
Maybe there had been some faux pas I’d missed.
Maybe she hadn’t smiled at the right person, or had smiled at the wrong one.
I hadn’t seen her make any particular mistakes last night – probably because I was too busy ogling her the whole time.
Jessy was the sort of woman a guy could spend his whole life searching for, hoping for, but never actually meet. She wasn’t interested in what I could give her or what my fame could afford her, she was only interested in me, in –
My phone flashed with a new message. I picked it back up from where I’d dropped it.
Derek? This early?
When I opened our chat, there was no actual message from him, just a link.
A link to one of the gossip sites he had made us promise never to visit.
Apparently, there were all sorts of articles about These Exiles, citing sources that were less than reputable, and it was better we never let that sort of thing get in our heads.
Weird. What had he seen that was worth breaking his own ban?
I tapped on the link and, while waiting for the page to load, I wondered if I had any actual food in the flat – I couldn’t remember the last time I had done a food shop. Before I could make any breakfast plans, the page finished loading –
And my stomach dropped.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to be wanting any breakfast.
The article was an exposé, with a headline that made me nauseous.
GIRLFRIEND OF THESE EXILES LEAD SINGER CAUGHT CHEATING
I stared, hardly able to take in the words.
It was a lack of sleep. It had to be.
I read the headline again.
GIRLFRIEND OF THESE EXILES LEAD SINGER CAUGHT CHEATING
Was it an old article? I had stayed well away from the internet when Celine and I had come crashing down, but I had known we’d made it into all sorts of headlines – to my horror.
I had a quick look at the date in the byline. The article had gone live in the early morning.
What. The. Fuck
They had to be talking about Jessy – but that made no sense. She wouldn’t – she wouldn’t cheat. That wasn’t the sort of person she was. And when would she have found the time? We spent practically every moment together.
Half-wishing I could just close the tab and stop reading, I scrolled down.
For a second I thought my heart had stopped beating as the first image in the article loaded.
Jessy. Jessy, inside a fancy restaurant … with Dillon Carmichael, the famous actor who’d just won an Oscar.
What the actual fuck was going on?
I sat up slowly in bed, as though that would change the image I was staring at. The photo wasn’t super detailed, but it didn’t need to be. I would recognize her features anywhere.
And she was laughing.
Laughing.
Complete unknown Jessica Donovan hurtled to fame last month after being confirmed as These Exiles lead singer Patrick Tetlow’s girlfriend.
Jessy, who up until recently was an employee at GSR Financials, has been seen with Patrick at numerous events over the past few weeks.
But apparently one famous boyfriend wasn’t enough to satisfy her.
I was going to be sick.
Knowing I should stop reading, I told myself I should close the tab. I kept scrolling.
Another photo, but this time with a different man. In this photo Jessy was sitting on a bench outside a pub, wearing the sundress I’d begun to think of as my favourite. Even now, my breath grew short seeing her in it. Or maybe that was the shock?
My gaze zeroed in on the caption.
Jessica Donovan seen with Tim Kellersly, famed artist who recently sold a piece for ￡20m
I tried to swallow, but my throat didn’t seem to be working.
‘We know the truth. We know that this is real. That we do care about each other.’
Was it all fake, the whole time?
My gaze raked over the article. Lunches … dinners … seen in public … what must her boyfriend, Patrick Tetlow, think of all this …
What did I think? I was thinking – how could I have been so stupid?
This was Celine all over again. It was like copy and fucking paste. God, I must have doormat tattooed on my –
My hand flew to my ear. It was still tender just behind it.
Shit. I’d got myself tattooed for a woman who hadn’t even bothered trying to hide the fact she was cheating on me.
Derek
Have you read it? There’s more
I was afraid to tap the second link – scared to see how else Jessy had betrayed me, but I couldn’t stop myself. A different article pulled up, with a photo at the very top of Jessy smiling, arm in arm with … Cassie.
That was when my heart really did stop beating.
PATRICK TETLOW’S MOTHER AND GIRLFRIEND BEST FRIENDS!
Cassie Fletcher, mother of These Exiles lead singer Patrick Tetlow, has spilled the details from her lunch with Jessy Donovan, girlfriend of her famous son.
‘Once I met Jessy, I knew she was the one for my Paddy. She’s helping me patch things back up with my boy, you know. I know he loves her dearly. Jessy told me he’s been showering her with gifts and jewels,’ said Cassie. ‘Not that he’s ever showered me with jewels, his own mum –’
I was going to be sick. I was actually going to be sick.
I’d trusted her – I’d never told anyone about Cassie. But I had told Jessy. I’d asked her to back off. That things between me and Cassie couldn’t be fixed. I had thought she’d listened. Thought she had understood.
All the fucking while she’d been chatting to my own mother behind my back.
I was livid.
Not that he’s ever showered me with jewels –
I stumbled out of bed, dropping my phone on to the duvet as I grabbed clean clothes. Where I was going, I didn’t know – but I couldn’t just lie here when the memory of having Jessy in my arms just hours ago plagued me.