Chapter 37
ANYA
I wake the next morning to a faint buzzing. Blearily, I raise my head from the pillow and reach beside me, searching for a hard body that’s usually curled around me.
Finding nothing but empty space and squinting against the light, I reach for my phone on the nightstand.
I have twelve missed calls. Furrowing my brow and wondering why anyone is calling me after my contract is up, I scroll to the messages and find one from Jess.
Jess: Have you seen Twitter?
With dread sinking in my stomach, I flip through the app and find the number one trending topic ‘Covington’. My heart in my mouth, I quickly flick through the posts until I come across a news article.
SEXUAL ABUSE ALLEGATIONS brOUGHT AGAINST CHARLES COVINGTON BY FORMER ASSISTANT
Scrolling, I find more and more references to the assault, including a detailed profile on Charles’ former assistant, Georgia.
Then, I find something that nearly makes me drop my phone. It’s a grainy picture of Danny from the other night with the caption:
PLAYBOY DANNY COVINGTON SPOTTED AT POPULAR PARIS CLUB WITH MYSTERY brUNETTE
And there I am, wrapped around Danny as we leave the club.
There isn’t just one photo. There are dozens. Him pulling me towards him for a kiss, his arm wrapped around me, then us both in peels of laughter. The only saving grace is I’m not named, and the pictures are dark enough to perhaps not identify me. But the amount of calls from the crew makes it pretty clear we’ve not got away with it completely.
Heart racing, I see one final post– ‘ Like father like son ’– before I fling my phone across the mattress and jump out of bed, buttoning Danny’s discarded shirt up with shaking fingers.
Taking a breath, I open the door to find him sitting on the couch with his head in his hands, his phone resting on the table in front of him.
I cross the room to his side and run my fingers through his hair.
“Hey,” I say, softly. “Are you okay?”
He laughs humorously and shakes my hand off with a shake of his head.
He sighs as he stands, clad only in black boxers.
We look at each other. My heart is racing as I desperately scan his face for any signs of panic. His bloodshot eyes can barely catch mine.
He licks his lips. “I need to go.” He breezes past me on his way back to the bedroom, moving so fast I feel my hair whip in his wind stream.
“You don’t have to go yet. Stay a while and take a breath.”
“I don’t need a breath,” he says tugging on his jeans.
“Look, it will be okay, this will blow over.” He remains silent as he begins to pull his shoes on. It’s a repeat of yesterday, but instead of confusion my thoughts swirl with panic.
“Can I have my shirt?”
I clutch it to my chest. Somehow I know this shirt is going to be the last piece of him I’ll ever get, his walls slamming down like a shutter and locking me out.
“Anya,” he snaps. “My shirt.”
Numbly, I unbutton the shirt and tug it off my shoulders, turning my back to him in a show of shyness I’ve not possessed since that first morning we woke up together. His attitude would have normally made me spit a snarky comment back at him but my voice is lost. Abandoning me alongside the comforting cotton of his button down.
Wordlessly, I hand it to him and pull on the robe hanging on the door.
“Are we not going to talk about this?”
“Talk about what?” he says flatly, pulling his jeans on.
“Don’t be obtuse, Danny. It’s not a good look.”
He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Is it–” I lick my lips, “–is it your dad or is it…us?”
His silence is all the answer I need.
“It’s over, Anya,” he says softly. So softly I almost don’t hear him.
“What?” I whisper.
He finally catches my eye. “It’s over.” The words roar in my ears.
“Are you joking?” I choke, following him as he rushes through the apartment.
No response. “That’s it? A few photos and you end this just like that?”
“It’s not just the photos,” he snaps, refusing to look at me.
“Then I don’t see what the issue is, why are you doing this?”
“This is serious, Anya!” he explodes, his hand running through his hair. “Those pictures are not going to go away. With all the stuff that’s come out about my father –” Danny spits the word with disgust. “This will only get worse, and the worse it gets for the family, the worse it gets for us. Anya, they’re not going to leave us alone, especially now. It’s a bloody miracle the press haven’t figured out it’s you yet, but it’s only a matter of time. And then think what they’ll say.”
Understanding dawns slowly. They’ll say he was taking advantage of his assistant. Just like his father.
“Danny, you can’t think like that. You’re nothing like him .”
“They don’t know that,” he cries. “To the world I’m a washed-up child actor who is sailing on the wings of a predator and snorting lines of coke on the weekends.”
Helplessly, I reach for him.“But you know that’s not you.”
“But they think that, Anya! They do, and there is nothing we can do about it…”
How can we go from the other night to this? Just days ago I had had to bite my lip to keep the words on my tongue. The words that I’ve felt for so long, but been too scared to say out loud. My mind whirls as I try to come up with another solution, a way to stop this from happening. But he beats me to it.
“Look, it’s been fun, but let’s not kid ourselves anymore than we already have. There’s no need to make this anything more than it was, Anya. I can’t do you any favors, so we might as well just end it here.”
I see red. “Favors? Don’t do that. Don’t make this out to be something it wasn’t just so you can do this to me. You know we’re not like that, that we never have been. You’re the one who reassured me when I was having doubts. We both knew how damaging this could be to my reputation but we did it anyway. If this gets out no one will touch me with a ten foot pole. I’ll just be the girl that slept with the lead actor.” Numbly, I realize I haven’t even told him about the new job with Devon.
“Then where can we go from here?” he asks, exhausted.
He doesn’t want it out because it’ll look like he’s taking advantage, me for the same reasons.
Our relationship can’t survive in the shadows forever, we both knew that going in. It’s what we agreed and what we felt coming even as we fooled ourselves it wouldn’t matter.
We stare at each other, and I try to drink him in, commit his face to memory. I know by the way his eyes rove my face that he is doing the same. He nods finally and turns on his heel.
“This was never going to end any other way, was it?” I call from behind, the wobble in my voice killing me.
He stops, unable to look at me. “No, it wasn’t,” he says before pulling the door open and slamming it behind him.
The silence of the empty apartment swallows me whole. I take in the room. I know I will never be able to be here and not picture him sitting at the window with the guitar that will always be his, or emerging from the kitchen with a cup of coffee, or slamming the door behind himself as he walks out of my life. Forever.