Chapter 59
AUSTIN
Something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but Melody wasn’t herself.
She wasn’t touching me. That was something I had come to expect from her.
We were always touching. We were always holding each other.
But she was going out of her away to stay away from me.
I woke up and she was gone. I wasn’t worried about her ditching me.
For one, I was in her house. And we had gone to bed holding each other after an amazing day.
We had been good. But now, it was clear we weren’t good.
And I didn’t know why.
“This coffee is incredible,” I said, trying to lighten whatever mood had settled over us. “Way better than the hotel stuff.”
“It’s the best,” she replied, but her voice was flat. Distant.
I watched her take a small bite of her muffin, chewing mechanically. She wasn’t even looking at me. Her gaze kept drifting to the window, to her phone, to anywhere but my face.
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked. “You seem distracted.”
“I’m fine,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “Just tired.”
But I had seen Melody tired. She had fallen asleep an hour before me. And she couldn’t have gotten up much earlier than me. This wasn’t that. This was something else entirely. She was somewhere else, lost in her own head, and I had no idea how to reach her.
I took another sip of coffee, running through possibilities. Had I said something wrong last night? Done something? The evening had been perfect—or at least I’d thought it was. The show, the dinner, the dancing. She seemed happy.
Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe she really was just exhausted and needed some space.
Or she was thinking about the future again. She was in her head about my declaration I didn’t want children. It wasn’t off the table, but I thought she understood I needed some time.
The thought settled uncomfortably in my chest. I’d been at her place a lot lately. Practically living here some days. Maybe she needed room to breathe. She worked a lot, and I was cramping her style. She needed to work without me constantly around.
She was an influencer, a businesswoman with her own schedule and creative process. And I had been monopolizing her time.
“You know what?” I said, setting down my coffee. “I should probably head out. Let you recover from the last couple of days.” I added a wink, trying to inject some playfulness back into the morning.
She looked at me then, and for a split second, I saw something in her eyes I couldn’t identify. Relief? Fear? Sadness?
Then she smiled. But it didn’t reach her eyes. “You don’t have to go,” she said, but there was no conviction in it.
“Nah, I’ve been hogging you all weekend. You probably have work to do, content to create. I don’t want to be in your way.”
“You’re not in my way.”
“Maybe not, but I respect your process.” I stood up, stretching. “Besides, I should probably check in at my place, make sure they haven’t rented the place out.”
That should have gotten a laugh. It would have gotten a laugh yesterday. But she just nodded, standing up too. Now I knew something was definitely wrong.
I walked to her entryway and found my shoes, slipping them on while she hovered nearby. The energy between us felt all wrong. It was full of tension. Normally, it would be easy and comfortable.
“Hey,” I said, turning to face her. I cupped her face in my hands, searching her eyes. “Whatever is going on in that head of yours, you can tell me. You know that, right?”
She nodded but didn’t speak.
“When you’re ready,” I continued. “I’m here. Whatever it is.”
“I know,” she whispered.
I kissed her forehead, then her lips, soft and quick. She kissed me back, but it felt like goodbye somehow. Like she was already pulling away even as her lips touched mine.
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Okay.”
The ride back to my penthouse was quiet. I stared out the window, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Everything had been great last night. Amazing.
And now it was wrong. I felt it in my bones.
Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe she really was just tired and needed space. Maybe I was reading too much into it because I was so far gone for her that every small shift in her mood felt seismic.
The cab dropped me off at the hotel entrance. I rode the elevator up to my floor, already planning to text Melody later. I would give her the space she seemed to need but also let her know I was thinking about her.
The elevator doors opened, and I stepped into the foyer. Cash was sitting in the living room—again.
“What the fuck?” I muttered. “What are you doing here?”
I was going to talk to security. I didn’t care if my brother flashed his name around, it was getting old.
“We need to talk.”
“You know they have this cool thing called a phone.”
He nodded. “It’s a great invention. Too bad you never answer it.”
Fair. “It’s Sunday morning. Don’t you take time off? We can talk tomorrow.”
“Now,” he said firmly.
I was getting pretty sick of my brother showing up uninvited, inserting himself into my life, but the look on his face stopped me from telling him to fuck off. Cash looked stressed. Actually stressed, which was rare for him.
“Coffee?” I offered more out of habit than hospitality.
“No. Just sit down. This is important.”
So much for a lazy Sunday morning. First Melody and now Cash.
“What now?” I asked.
“Summer Auburn.”
“Who?”
“Summer. The woman I hired to be your date.”
“What about her?”
“She’s blackmailing me.” Cash’s jaw tightened. “Or trying to. She sent me screenshots of our text conversations, the contract, payment receipts. Everything. And she’s threatening to go public with it all if I don’t pay her more money.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.” Cash ran a hand through his hair, looking more rattled than I had ever seen him.
“I wanted to warn you before this blows up. Because it will blow up. She’s going to expose the entire arrangement.
She’s ready to go public and tell whoever will listen that we hired her to keep you in line.
And she is going to tell everyone that you ditched her for Melody. ”
My mind raced. “When?”
“I don’t know. Could be days, could be weeks. She’s building her case, reaching out to media outlets. This is going to be a shitstorm, Austin.”
“Why are you telling me this?” My voice was full of anger. It was going to blow up, and for once, this was not my mistake. He had done this. “Why do you suddenly care enough to warn me?”
Cash’s expression hardened. “Because despite what you think, I’ve always cared. I’ve been trying to help you for years, you stubborn asshole.”
“Help me? By hiring a babysitter? By trying to control every aspect of my life?”
“By trying to protect you!” Cash’s voice rose, frustration bleeding through his usual composure. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been in Dad’s ear, trying to get him to back off? Trying to get him to reach out to you after you left?”
I stared at him. “What?”
“When you broke all those years ago and just took off traveling, Dad was devastated. He blamed himself for not being able to fix things with you. He carried that guilt, Austin. And I spent years trying to make him understand that you’re just different.
You’re not motivated by the same things as the rest of us—money, success, reputation, power. ”
The words felt like a jab, and I opened my mouth to argue, but Cash cut me off.
“That’s not an insult. It’s just the truth. You’ve always been different, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You want freedom and experiences and to live life on your own terms. I get that. I respect that, even if Dad doesn’t always.”
I didn’t know what to say. Cash had been trying to help? All this time?
“But there is something wrong with being a little shit who doesn’t care when his behavior backfires on his family. And you’ve done that, Austin. Countless times. The scandals, the headlines, the drunk call to the reporter—every time you act out, it doesn’t just affect you. It affects all of us.”
“I never asked to be a Bancroft,” I shot back.
“No, but you are one. And eventually, you have to grow up and accept what that means. Take some responsibility. You’ve enjoyed all the perks. You have to accept all of it—not just the good stuff.”
The words stung because they were true. I’d spent years running from the expectations and the weight of the family name. But in doing so, I had made everything harder for everyone else.
“I knew the right thing to do was warn you,” Cash said.
“Because when Summer goes public, she’s going to spin this.
She’ll paint you as the villain, paint all of us as villains.
She’ll say we used her, discarded her, that we’re manipulative and cruel.
And the media will eat it up because a story about Bancrofts behaving badly always sells. ”
My chest tightened. “Melody.”
“What?”
“Melody will be collateral damage in this. Summer will drag her into it, make her look like another woman I used and tossed aside. Shit, what if she already reached out?”
The last was more of me thinking out loud.
Cash frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“Because Melody was acting weird this morning. Really weird. Something was wrong, and she wouldn’t tell me what.” I ran a hand through my hair. “We have to fix this. Now. Before it explodes.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Cash said. “I’ve already got our legal team looking into it. We can probably get an injunction, stop her from publishing anything defamatory. But it’s going to be messy, and it’s going to be public.”
Summer had poisoned the well.
“I need to talk to Melody,” I said.
“Maybe give her some space. If Summer’s already gotten to her, it’s just going to make the situation worse.”
“Then I need to fix it.”
“Austin—”
“Cash.” I looked at my brother and saw genuine concern in his eyes. He wasn’t trying to control me. He was trying to protect me. Protect all of us. “Thank you. For warning me. For… everything. I know I haven’t made it easy.”
“No, you haven’t. But you’re still my brother.”
“How bad is this going to be?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I had to get to her. She already knew about my arrangement with Summer. That wasn’t the surprise. But the scandal would inevitably drag her into drama. She didn’t need it. People would assume that our relationship was another setup to save me, and technically they would be correct.
It had started that way, but it wasn’t that. But the public never cared about the details. Once again, she was going to be facing another scandal.