Chapter 49
Alyssa was glad Rufus’s favourite crappy café was as deathly quiet as usual, and that Princess Trudy was behind the counter looking bored.
The waitress may only have had forty-three Instagram followers, but with a quick whispered explanation, Alyssa discreetly handed Trudy her phone.
Because what was about to happen was not a thing to be missed.
Alyssa plonked herself down at Rufus’s table, having stashed her suitcase behind the counter. He was engrossed in his phone.
‘I don’t mind a bit of Bryan Adams,’ she said, casually. ‘Good song that one.’
As she’d been hoping, she caught him off guard. ‘Yeah,’ he said, grinning and looking up, as though they’d not long had a conversation about him. ‘Good album, in fact.’
Then his face faltered – because he’d sent that message as Alyssa’s troll, and he knew it.
He ran a hand over his face. ‘Urgh, I’m tired. Bryan Adams?’
‘You may know him from such other songs as “All For Love” and “Please Forgive Me”.’ She smiled sweetly, enjoying that he looked unsure how to take her.
She slid a hand across the table and grabbed one of his, squeezing it as though she was grateful for his wise, shrewd nature. What she actually wanted to do was kick his highly untoned arse.
‘It’s OK, Rufus. I get it.’
‘You do? I mean, you get what?’
‘Why you sent a private investigator to follow me and take photos of me and the people I feel strongly about. Why you set up a bogus social media account and used it to threaten to expose secrets – not all of which hold an ounce of truth. Why you scheduled messages to arrive in my inbox when I was with you, to throw me off the scent.’
Alyssa was using some guesswork, but from the look of shock in his eyes, she was right. In the corner of her vision, she could sense Trudy was doing a good job of pretending to be staring at her phone, still bored. Rufus hadn’t cottoned on.
‘I didn’t. I wouldn’t!’ He scratched his nose and cleared his throat, his eye contact shifty. He might as well be running through what not to do if you didn’t want to look like a flaming liar.
In any other circumstances, it might have been comical.
But there was nothing funny about trolling someone and threatening to blow people’s lives apart.
He’d put her one chance of happiness at serious risk and she would not let him get away with it.
In fact, once she’d secured his confession, she’d be sharing what she knew with the police, and the minuscule list of his clients that she’d grabbed from his desk drawer.
But first, she had to win his confidence.
She slid a second hand over the table, now using both of hers to squeeze his.
He was shaking. A tiny part of her wanted to feel sorry for him.
This sad, lonely excuse for a man, with nothing better to do than interfere with other people’s lives, no doubt with the sole aim of earning more money.
He’d probably envisaged some of the celebrities he obsessed over finally lining up to work with him, once he’d got her on TV.
He was delusional, and she wasn’t going to waste perfectly good pity on him.
‘It’s OK,’ she repeated. For someone who’d spent so many years pretending, she was finding it a struggle.
‘It’s worked out well for us, you trolling me as @whoami23456 and fibbing to the media about me walking out on the ’Appy Together love tasks.
It was a stroke of genius, really. Clever you.
’ She gave him her best smile, even though the words were leaving the taste of bile in her throat.
‘Now we’ve got offers of much more lucrative work. We’ll be raking it in.’
She’d massaged his dumb ego, and it was working. The shake in his hands was lessening and he was starting to smile, almost smugly.
‘I knew you’d see the benefit, in the long run,’ he replied. ‘Whoami – good, hey? I wouldn’t call it trolling, exactly. Just a nudge in the right direction. But yes. It was a stroke of genius.’
His idiotic, self-contented face was enough to make her blood boil. She pulled her hands away from his and stood up sharply.
‘Rufus Diamond, you’re a troll. A cowardly, sneaking internet bully.
You’ve brought misery and fear into what should have been the happiest moments of my life.
The moments when I was finally allowing myself to believe in something deeper, and to let myself feel it.
You’re right that I was a love coach who, for many years, did not believe in love.
You’re right that I hid behind an overly polished persona, pretending my life was rosy, healthy, wholesome and bloody wonderful, even though on the inside I was lonely and desperately in need of other people’s acceptance.
I was wrong to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, even if I did so from a good place, hoping to inspire others.
To help people with their relationship troubles, even if I didn’t believe in the love part of that equation.
But at the same time, I was frightened. Frightened that if anyone got a glimpse of the real me, they wouldn’t like or accept me.
I thought the real me wasn’t good enough.
And you were wrong to take advantage of my self-doubt and to use it to bribe me.
And you were all kinds of wrong to threaten to spread malicious rumours about the people I hold dear. That was one step too far.’
As Princess Trudy moved towards them, making it clear the phone she was holding was angled at them and she’d been recording his confession, the look on Rufus’s face was priceless.
But Alyssa didn’t have time to hang around, gawping at looks on faces.
She had a final love task to arrange. And as agonising as the grand gesture of love felt, she was ready to give it a shot – even if she had precisely no idea if she could get through without collapsing with the stress of it, nor if Devan would want to receive it.