18. The Hot Mic #2
“He didn’t just go back, Sutton,” Ruby said. “He is making himself radioactive to the studios. Listen to what he’s saying.”
The television broadcast abruptly cut out.
A glaring, pixelated standby graphic flashed across the screen, casting harsh light across the kitchen.
The sudden loss of the camera feed snapped me out of my daze.
My boots scuffed against the floor as I began to pace.
The space between the stove and the island felt narrow.
“The picture is gone, but we can still hear them,” Ruby said. “Listen.”
I stopped pacing near the refrigerator. A harsh hiss of static cut through the speakers. A slamming door rang into the room, followed immediately by two people shouting over each other. I clamped a hand over my mouth as the vicious argument bled through the broadcast feed.
“Don’t you dare try to make me the scapegoat for this, Hayes! You know damn well Eleanor ordered me to post that photo to boost the metrics!”
Blaire’s shrill, terrified voice bounced off the farmhouse walls. Hearing her panic ruined any lingering illusion of a flawless Hollywood starlet. The woman who had sat in my husband’s lap and smiled for the cameras was now trying to deflect the blame to save her own skin.
“I had to stage those things because you couldn’t keep his attention on your own, Blaire! I handed you a golden opportunity to be an A-lister, and you ruined it.”
Eleanor’s response was a blistering, screeching reprimand. The venom in her tone sent a chill down my spine. The two women were trapped in a room, entirely unaware that their screaming match was broadcasting live to the country.
“They are tearing each other to pieces on live television,” Ruby muttered, gripping the remote.
I couldn’t respond. The reality of what she had done was sickening.
Eleanor hadn’t just capitalized on a convenient headline; she was the one who had intentionally invited the cameras into my marriage.
Every invasive photo and every calculated press leak had been a deliberate attack meant to erase me from the picture.
“You didn’t hand her anything. You just used her to harass my wife out of Los Angeles.”
Hayes’s voice cut through the static, low and stripped of the usual charismatic warmth he reserved for the press.
His steady, unapologetic defense of my existence rooted me to the spot.
He wasn’t retreating behind his mother’s skirt or trying to mediate the disaster.
He was standing in the middle of the wreckage, dropping the final match.
“I arranged that entire anniversary dinner at The Rustic Hearth to save your career from that pathetic nobody! You were too weak to cut her loose, so I did it for you!”
The confession echoed through the quiet kitchen. My knees buckled. I stumbled forward, pressing both hands flat against the butcher block to keep myself upright. The edge of the counter dug into my palms as I leaned my weight against it.
Eleanor had planned the evening. She had weaponized our sacred anniversary spot, knowing exactly how devastating it would be for me to see the paparazzi photos. She had deliberately destroyed her own son’s marriage just to protect his box-office draw.
A sudden, piercing electronic screech erupted from the television as the microphone hit the floor. The feedback filled the kitchen before the audio feed abruptly cut to a flat, dead hiss.
I stared at the blue standby graphic on the screen.
The hum of the refrigerator was deafening in the dead air.
Hayes had just let his mother expose herself to the world, handing the studio exactly what they needed to ruin Eleanor’s agency forever.
He had obliterated the monster that kept me hidden in the dark.
My grip on the butcher block slipped. My legs gave out. I sank to the floor, sliding against the lower cabinets.
I stared at the overturned chair. The legs pointed toward the ceiling. I reached out, grabbed the top rung, and dragged the chair closer.
“Let me help you with that chair,” Ruby said, setting the remote on the counter. “You shouldn’t be sitting on the floor.”
I ignored the ache in my lower back, pulling myself up and sinking into the chair. I stared at the dark screen. The icy boundary I had spent four months building around my heart simply dissolved.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ruby muttered, crossing her arms. “The boy actually grew a spine, torched his contracts, and burned the witch at the stake.”
I reached up, wiping the tears suddenly spilling over my cheeks. The kitchen blurred, and the exhausted detachment I had carried since Los Angeles finally gave way.
“He destroyed his life for us,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “He deliberately cornered them into a confession and let the whole world listen, but he never gave them my name.”
I had demanded that he stop acting like an A-lister and start acting like a partner. I never believed he possessed the strength to do it. But he had walked into the belly of the beast and sacrificed his own career, leaving himself with nothing but the mud and the flowers.
Ruby walked across the kitchen. She stopped beside my chair, resting a warm, calloused hand on my shoulder. The weight of her hand steadied me against the dizzying spin of the room.
“He didn’t destroy his life, Sutton,” Ruby said softly, her fingers squeezing my shoulder. “He just cleared the space so he could finally come home to you without the cameras following him.”
I clenched my hands in my lap. He had destroyed the agency that kept me hidden, and Hollywood had no power over him anymore. The numbness I had carried since Los Angeles simply fell away, leaving nothing but the reality that my husband was fighting to come home.