VAR review
WOULD'VE, COULD'VE, SHOULD'VE BY TAYLOR SWIFT
I’m almost done replying to every email from the weekend when a knock comes at my office door.
“Yeah?” I call, eyes still on my computer screen.
The door opens. I don’t even need to look up to know who’s here. The energy in the room shifts immediately into something heavy and suffocating.
Matt.
My stomach churns. I’ve been avoiding him since the gala. Since he realized the truth. It feels like he holds all the cards now and I hate it.
He’s leaning against the doorframe like he owns the building.
“Busy?” he asks.
“Very.”
That should be the end of it, but of course, it isn’t.
He steps in anyway and closes the door behind him. Every cell in my body goes on high alert. It’s one thing to have to converse with him, but alone, behind closed doors, it’s something entirely worse.
“I thought we should catch up,” he says casually, circling my desk like a goddamn vulture. “It was such a big weekend, after all.”
“I already sent a full gala recap to your team,” I say, keeping my voice steady.
“Oh, I got it,” he says, leaning against the edge of my desk, invading my space. “But you left out some vital information.”
He lets that settle, but I don’t take the bait.
Matt studies me for a long moment before he exhales theatrically, loading his voice with a thick, condescending tone. “You’ve done a lot of great work here, Addison. It would be a real shame to tarnish that reputation with a scandal.”
My blood turns ice cold.
I lean back slightly. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
"Do I?” I play dumb. I know exactly what he’s referring to. What I don’t know is why any of it matters.
“Come on, Addison.” He smiles, but he’s not even trying to be warm. “Or should I say… Addie?”
Silence grows between us. The implication hangs there, thick and poisonous.
“What's your point?"
“You think I can’t see the way he looks at you? The way you look at him? How you disappear, one after the other? That little stunt at the gala?”
He’s waiting for me to flinch, but I don’t. Not visibly, at least.
“I don’t know what you think you saw, Matt,” I say, voice even. “I just do my job.”
“Yes, you do your job very well, it seems.” He leans over me further. “What would the players think if they knew their PR manager was sleeping with the captain?”
I blink once. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t think of that?” He pauses, a slow smirk spreading across his face. “What would Alan think?”
My skin prickles. “Are you blackmailing me?”
Matt has the audacity to look wounded by that accusation.
“I’m looking out for you.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Come on, Addison. Are you really going to tell me sleeping with a client isn’t against the rules in our job? I just want to keep you safe. You’re being reckless.”
Matt shakes his head slowly, pulling something from inside the pocket of his jacket. He drops a stack of tabloid photos onto my desk. Oliver. Different events. Different nights. Different women.
My stomach drops. Not even because Oliver has a past. He explained why he always had a different date to every event, and I’ve seen most of these photos before.
What gives me pause is the fact that Matt has been holding onto this until the right moment.
He’s been waiting. He’s a hunter, and I have been his prey.
“Do you really want to be another one added to the pile?” he asks, voice gentle but like a knife pressed against my throat. “Do you really want to be discarded once the season ends?”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” he counters. “I’ve been in this industry a long time. They say all the right things until they don’t.”
“You would know all about that,” I bite out. “I can make my own choices.”
He stares at me, jaw tight. He doesn’t know how to respond when I don’t shrink myself for him, when I don’t cower.
He turns and leaves without another word. And I sit here, heart hammering in my chest, proud of myself for standing tall, but terrified of what he’ll do next because there’s no way he’s just going to sit calmly with this information.
Pippa tops off my glass without asking, because, bless her heart. She must know I look even worse than I feel. I sink deeper into her couch as the Merlot starts to melt the sharpest edges of my anxiety.
“So, what did the fucker do now?” Pippa groans.
I hesitate. “He came to my office. Cornered me. Alone.”
Her eyes snap to mine, sharp and protective. “Addison.”
“No,” I say quickly. “He didn’t touch me. It’s just… after the gala. He knows.”
“About you and Oliver?”
I nod, swallowing hard. “Yeah. We let our guard down at the gala, and he figured it out. He came today and made these thinly veiled threats disguised as care. He showed me pictures of Oliver’s past. He said he didn’t want me to end up discarded too.
It was classic Matt. Gaslight, manipulation, and blackmail.
His patented three-step program to getting what he wants. ”
“Fucking bellend,” Pippa says, looking like she’s about to throw her glass of wine across the room.
“I told him off,” I say. “Told him my choices are mine to make.”
Pippa is about to respond, but then the door creaks open and Luke steps into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
I freeze.
I don’t know how much he heard, if anything at all.
Luke raises an eyebrow, like he knows he walked into something. “What’d I miss?”
Pippa opens her mouth to cover, but I beat her to it. “Oh, I was just telling her—”
“About you and Oliver?” Luke says easily.
I stop again. “What?”
Luke stares at me, then shrugs like he’s talking about the weather. “Yeah. I’ve known for ages.”
I sit up straighter. “What?” My head whips towards Pippa. “Did you tell him?”
She holds both hands up like I accused her of murder. “No! I swear!”
Luke plops down on the couch, casual as anything. “She’s clear. I figured it out on my own. You two were so obvious.”
My cheeks burn. “Seriously? We’ve been trying to keep it a secret.”
“I know,” he says, unfazed. “That’s what makes it so funny.”
“Seriously?”
Luke grins, annoyingly smug. “I’ve known him for ages. I’ve known you even longer. Neither of you are a secret to me.”
I groan, but some of the pressure in my chest loosens.
“You won’t tell anyone?”
Luke snorts. “Please. Whatever you two have going on has been far more entertaining than an episode of EastEnders. I won’t tell a soul.”
I laugh, for the first time in days, and it feels good, like the unclenching of a fist I didn’t realize I was holding.
“What did Matt do this time, then?” Luke asks, leaning forward.
I stare into my glass, watching the wine swirl as I recap the entire conversation for a second time. Pippa’s jaw tightens even though she’s heard the story before.
Luke’s eyes darken as he shakes his head, bewildered. “I have no idea how you stayed with that guy for so long.”
I don’t know where it’s coming from, but suddenly all these words are clawing their way out of me like they’ve been waiting for years to make their escape.
“Because I thought that was what love was,” I whisper.
Luke’s eyes soften. “What do you mean?”
“I thought that’s what love was,” I say again.
“Shrinking. Compromising. Contorting yourself to someone else so much that you couldn’t bend any further.
I thought love was proving you were worth staying for, worth even loving at all.
I thought if I could just be good enough, perfect enough, then I’d be deserving of more. ”
My eyes sting, but I keep going.
Luke doesn’t say anything. He just passes me the wine bottle and I top off my glass again.
“It’s easy to look back on now and say some philosophical, emotionally intelligent thing.
I know he didn’t love me. I think deep down, part of me knew even back then that he didn’t love me.
Not really. Sometimes I even wonder if I really loved him.
I thought I did, but how would I even have been capable of it?
He took away my heart, my soul, and my voice.
He left me nothing to love him with. It was like he took all my tools away and expected me to build a house. ”
“I hate that you ever even met him,” Luke admits through gritted teeth.
I swallow, voice fraying. “It’s easy to say in hindsight that I wish I had never met him.
I don’t know if that’s true though. I don’t wish for the pain he inflicted on me.
I don’t wish to be constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if I’m too loud, or too successful, or too much myself.
But some small part of me wonders—would I be the person I am now, the person I’m proud to be, if he hadn’t broken me first?
And that thought pisses me off more than anything, because I don’t want a single part of me to be because of him.
I don’t want him getting credit for making me the person I am.
He’s the one that broke me. Why should he get any credit for how I put myself back together? ”
Pippa reaches over and grabs my hand. “But you left. You finally did it.”
I nod. “I know. Part of me still hates myself for how long it took, though.”
“Why” Luke asks, voice soft.
“Because I’m terrified of ever doing it again,” I admit.
“You won’t,” Luke says gently. “You know the difference now.”
Pippa squeezes my hand. “And no matter what, you’re not doing it alone.”