Chapter 14
Two days later, Olivia lay facedown on her couch while her grandmother sipped tea from her armchair and her best friend dripped nips of whiskey into everyone’s mugs. When she’d finally changed out of the yellow jumpsuit that she’d fled the house wearing, she’d turned to a pair of sweats and a hoodie she’d called home for almost forty-eight straight hours. She’d refused to see anyone or take any calls until Mansi had shown up with Grandma Ruby and bags of Mexican food that evening and threatened to break down the door if she didn’t let them in.
Now the three of them sat in her stuffy living room surrounded by half-eaten takeout containers and watched at least the fiftieth episode of Friends Olivia had left playing scroll by on her TV screen.
Grandma Ruby sat close enough to pet Olivia’s hair, which was in dire need of a wash. “My sweet girl, you mustn’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Grandma,” Olivia said into the throw pillow she’d reacquainted herself with after half a burrito, “ I gave up a million dollars. Well, nine hundred thousand something and change after all the rules we broke.”
She’d come clean about the premise of the show and her financial situation. She’d had to after everything, especially now that her grandmother’s living situation was hanging in the balance again. She’d also told her the truth about what had sent her running from the house.
“Well, yes. That is true,” Ruby said, and sipped her tea. “But it was just a game.”
“If that were the case, it wouldn’t be such a big deal that I lost it for us.” She smashed her face back into the pillow.
“Look on the bright side, Liv,” Mansi said.
Olivia lifted her head to see her sitting at her dining table still dressed in a slick skirt suit from work. At least she’d kicked off her red-bottomed heels. “You’re not locked in that house anymore,” Mansi said with a shrug before she blew on her tea and sipped it.
Olivia groaned and face-planted into the pillow again.
“Have you talked to Chuck yet, my dear?” Ruby said.
“No,” Olivia said to the pillow.
Surprisingly, he’d called and texted. It was their modus operandi: she ran, he came to find her, but in this case, Olivia thought he’d never want to speak to her again. He’d even tried to get to her through his sister; she’d gotten an R U Ok? text from Chelsea begging for a response. Yesterday, Chuck had gone as far as coming by her apartment and knocking until a neighbor came out and told him Olivia obviously didn’t want to talk to him. She’d huddled on the couch through the whole thing, hugging a pillow and crying over wanting to open the door and being too ashamed to face him.
“Well, then, how do you expect anything to get better?” Ruby said.
Olivia sat up and frowned at her grandmother. “There’s nothing to get better, Grandma. I lost him a million dollars. Not to mention, he cheated on me.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Ruby said with a cluck of her tongue. “You of all people should know how a tabloid photo can be manipulated, Olivia.”
The conviction in her grandmother’s words caught Olivia off guard, as did the reference to their family history. Through the potent fear of succumbing to her parents’ fate, she’d only drawn parallels to the pain of being gossiped about in the press. Until this moment, she had not seen the similarity her grandmother had pointed out. That the infamous photo of her and her parents that initiated the scandal had been packaged in lies to fit the narrative. The truth behind it, she now knew, was something else entirely. The same could have been true about the photos of Chuck.
She didn’t know what to say, so instead, she sat there with a complicated well of remorse roiling inside her.
Ruby reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Olivia, I don’t mean to discount your feelings; the situation is upsetting for many reasons. But is it possible you are interpreting it as something it’s not because it will build another wall around your tender heart?”
Olivia blinked and suddenly felt naked. She glanced at Mansi, who gave her a knowing nod like she agreed with Ruby. “What?” she asked in surprise.
Ruby took a deep breath and came back in a gentle tone. “Olivia, I did my absolute best to raise you with all the love and care that you deserved, but I knew from the start that I would never replace your parents. You were going to have a hole in your heart no matter what. I wish I could have filled it for you—and I hoped from the time you were a little girl that you would someday find a way to fill it yourself. But as I watched you grow up, I saw you learn to protect it, to shield it instead of trying to fill it. And I can’t blame you for that; no one can. When you live with pain, you do everything you can to protect yourself from more pain, even if you don’t realize you’re doing it.” Her voice pinched up with tears, and Olivia felt her own throat constrict. “You’ve been protecting yourself with Chuck. Preventing yourself from truly allowing yourself to have feelings for him because you don’t want to get hurt. I’ve been around long enough to know that what couples argue over is never really what they are fighting about. Missing a dinner date? Not doing the dishes? Drinking the last of the coffee? Those are scabs to pick at because they are convenient and easy. You and Chuck use them as an excuse to keep your distance. With the way that boy looks at you, and the way you look at him—don’t think I don’t notice—I can guarantee you’ll like what you find when you let each other all the way in.”
Olivia was too stunned to respond. It was perhaps the most personal conversation she’d ever had with her grandmother, and Ruby was pulling no punches.
“These photos are another opportunity to push him away,” Ruby said. “I struggle to believe he would ever betray you like this. There must be an explanation, and I think you owe it to him, and yourself, to hear it.”
That reality weighed heavily. If there truly was more to the story, there was only one way to find out. She thought back to the desperate plea on Chuck’s face the last time she’d seen him. In that anguished moment before she’d ruined everything when he’d given her a look pained in more ways than one. She knew him well enough to trust there was something beyond the situation’s surface.
“I agree,” Mansi said astutely. “I think you should hear him out. There are obviously things he hasn’t told you, and Ruby’s right that you have to actually talk to him to find out what they are.” Mansi was never one to let emotion run over logic, so Olivia trusted her judgment that there was more worth considering. “Also,” Mansi added, “I hate to tell you, but she’s right on the other front too. Your track record with Chuck suggests that you want to fight for him more than with him.”
“Of course she does,” Ruby said. “Love is always worth fighting for.”
Love. The word sent tingles prickling Olivia’s skin and hollowed out her belly only to fill it with a floating feeling. It was something she and Chuck had never said to each other. In all their months of dating—all the lust, the passion, the fighting, the making up—the feeling that neither of them would name hummed at a frequency they chose not to hear. They’d come close but labeling it would have cracked open the superficial shell that allowed them to keep ignoring their problems and live from one tryst to the next. All along, they’d shielded themselves from the vulnerable pulse at the heart of their connection.
On some subconscious level, or perhaps a selectively ignorant one, Olivia had known it was there. And now she couldn’t deny it given just how exquisitely her heart hurt at the thought that things might be irreparable between them.
She loved Chuck Walsh. Horribly. For better or worse.
“This is all my fault,” she said, and buried her face in her hands. “I messed up so badly. I just…got scared. I don’t want to end up like my parents with my life picked apart in the media. I panicked, so I ran.” She looked up and took a shuddering breath. “You’re right, Grandma. I do protect my heart. To my own detriment sometimes. And now I’ve ruined everything.”
Ruby leaned forward to squeeze her hand. “You haven’t ruined anything, sweetheart. There’s still a chance to set things right.”
“Speaking of setting things right, and while we’re on the topic of tabloid photos,” Mansi said. “Liv, I got that contact you asked for.” She eyed Ruby and sipped her tea. “The, um, old movie star?”
It took a moment for Olivia to catch up. “Wait, Astrid Larsson? She’s willing to talk to me?”
She heard her grandmother suck in a sharp breath.
“No, Grandma, don’t worry. I only wanted to know if she’d be willing. I’m not going to—”
“She is willing,” Mansi said. “Eager, actually. Well, that’s what my guy who knows a guy who knows a guy said.”
“Oh my god,” Olivia blurted right as someone knocked on her door. She popped wide eyes at Mansi. “You didn’t invite her over, did you?”
“No!” Mansi said with a laugh. “Are you kidding? I’m sure that woman has strict requirements for any face-to-faces. You’ll probably have to get on a waiting list and pass a background check. I have no idea who is knocking at your door, but I hope it is a certain B-lister coming to win you back.” She winked, and Olivia frowned as she climbed from under her pile of blankets. Her body had grown stiff from two days on the couch. Her joints popped in protest.
“ I lost, remember? In multiple ways…” she muttered as she made her way to the door. For a fleeting second, she truly hoped it was Chuck. Rather than looking out the peephole to confirm and give herself an opportunity to hesitate, she threw the lock and swung open the door.
It was not Chuck, but rather, his sister. And a familiar-looking blond girl in jeans and a tee shirt standing behind her.
“Chelsea?” Olivia said, blinking in surprise. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Hi, Olivia. We need to talk to you. Can we come in?” Chelsea stood shorter than her brother but was still lanky and fair. Her pale hair hung over her shoulder in a thick braid dyed pink at the bottom. She wore sage green overalls and combat boots and had gained a new nose piercing since the last time Olivia saw her. She stepped inside before Olivia answered her question and left the other girl awkwardly hesitating in the hall.
Although all the pieces were staring her in the face, Olivia could not connect why Chuck’s younger sister had shown up on her doorstep and why Madison Bilton was standing in her hallway blinking at her like a terrified animal.
“This is Maddy,” Chelsea said, and waved her in.
When Madison didn’t move, Chelsea clucked her tongue and clomped back over to grab her and pull her inside. “Maddy, chill. She’s not mad at you. Well, she won’t be in a minute.”
Madison still looked unsure as Chelsea hauled her over the threshold.
Olivia shut her front door and turned in a slow daze, still trying to make sense of things. “Chelsea, aren’t you supposed to be at art camp?”
“Yes, but Chuck told me what happened at the house, and you’re not answering any of our texts, so I figured a face-to-face conversation was the best move here. Hello,” she said, and awkwardly waved at Mansi and Grandma Ruby.
“Oh, um, this is my grandma Ruby and my best friend Mansi,” Olivia said. “This is Chuck’s sister, and um…Sorry, why are you here?”
“Nice to meet you both,” Chelsea said, not deterred in the least and still in command. “Olivia, we should sit down.” She directed Olivia to her own couch and pushed her down. She and Madison then stood in front of her on the other side of her coffee table like they were going to stage a living room skit.
“Chels, what’s going on?” Olivia asked.
She wrung her hands and shot Maddy a look. Maddy looked back, biting her bottom lip, and nodded in some kind of final consent. “Okay, so, bit of a story, but here goes—and I have to be the one to tell you because Maddy and my brother had to sign NDAs. Fortunately, Maddy told me the whole story as it was happening and before there was any paperwork in place, so I don’t think we’re breaking any rules, but don’t quote me on that.”
Olivia flinched in surprise, shocked to learn there truly was a legal barrier withholding the truth. She glanced at Mansi, who shrugged with wide eyes. Olivia took it as permission to allow Chelsea to continue.
“Okay,” Olivia said.
Chelsea took a big breath and dove in. “Maddy and I are roommates at school. She’s my best friend. I’m an art major, she’s a film major; we are kind of peanut butter and jelly. Anyway, she wanted experience in the film industry, and I was like, ‘Hey, my brother is an actor. Let me help you out.’ So I asked Chuck for a favor. He was working on Safe Gamble and was willing to lend a hand because he’s awesome like that. So, he hooks her up with a PA job on set, and it was great, right, Maddy?”
Now that Olivia could see Madison in person and not a grainy tabloid photo, she could see how young she was. Both of them were. Mere girls living in a world that wanted them to be women. Maddy swallowed hard and looked like it took great strength to speak. “Yeah, it was great,” she said, and tucked a strand of her silky mermaid hair behind her ear. Something brittle and fragile hovered over her surface. Cracks that exposed a faded light glowing underneath.
Chelsea nodded and reached out for her hand as if to infuse her with more strength. The power of their friendship was on full, shimmering display. Olivia could feel it in her bones. “It was great until it wasn’t. Turns out Richard Sykes is an assface and started hitting on Maddy during the first week.”
Maddy’s face hardened, and Olivia felt her heart drop.
“Chuck became like a big brother to me,” Maddy said quietly. “I don’t have any siblings, and I’ve never really had anyone to…” Her voice trailed off in a pained pinch that Olivia knew well. She was almost certain her sentence ended with look out for me . Maddy sniffed.
Chelsea continued. “He noticed she was struggling on set. She was spending so much time avoiding Richard that she kept messing up. Forgetting things, missing meetings, making mistakes. She accidentally brought Duncan Miles a regular latte instead of a soy latte one day, and he almost had a stroke.”
Olivia had heard rumors that Duncan Miles, Sexiest Man Alive three times over and costar of Safe Gamble , was a bit of a diva, so she could believe it.
“Chuck asked her what was wrong one day, and the truth came spilling out,” Chelsea went on. “She told him everything.” She gave Maddy’s hand another squeeze. “Things had escalated with Richard by then. He wasn’t just hitting on her. He was following her, touching her, finding ways to be alone with her.” Her voice took on a protective anger that pierced Olivia right in the heart. “She didn’t know what to do—she didn’t want to lose the job. It was the first opportunity she’d ever had in the industry, and, I mean, he was Richard Sykes . She couldn’t be the girl who blew the whistle on him, not that anyone would have believed her anyway…” She bitterly trailed off, and Olivia could see where this story was going.
“You told Chuck all that?” She directed her question at Maddy.
Maddy nodded and gave her a knowing if not slightly guilty look.
“Yes, she did,” Chelsea confirmed.
The pieces sliding into place made Olivia feel foolish for her previous thoughts: her suspicions that Chuck had ever been anything but unflinchingly faithful—to her and to everyone he cared about. She cleared her throat and realized the young woman in front of her had been through hell and didn’t deserve even an ounce of her anger.
“And I assume Chuck confronted Richard?” Olivia asked with a grimace.
Maddy pursed her lips and nodded again.
Chelsea let go of her grip and gestured with her hands out. “But not like what you think, Liv. I mean, that jerk totally deserves to be punched in the face, let’s be honest, but Chuck just tried to talk to him. He was only standing up for Maddy, and Richard went on a power trip and told him he couldn’t work with someone trying to undermine him, and he fired him. Chuck tried to say he’d go to the press, but Richard told him if he did that, he’d tell everyone Maddy had come on to him.” She glanced over at her friend, who was tangling her fingers in knots.
Olivia’s heart was in a knot.
Chelsea rounded the coffee table to sit on the couch beside her. “Liv, that’s why Chuck got fired. He stood up for Maddy when it mattered, and Richard used his sway to cover it all up and make Chuck look like the bad guy. On top of that, he already felt awful for getting Maddy the job and exposing her to harassment—even though he had no idea it was going to happen—and he didn’t want to make things worse. So he just rolled over and took it. Richard paid them both not to say anything and made them sign NDAs as part of it. That’s why Chuck literally couldn’t tell you, and of course he wasn’t going to say it on camera at the house. Those asshole producers knew exactly what they were doing by showing you the photos and trying to make him talk about it, even if they didn’t know the truth either.”
Olivia gaped in shock, trying to wrap her mind around the key pieces. One piece jumped out at her. “Wait, Chuck was paid off? Then where’s the money?”
Chelsea and Maddy swapped a loaded look. “My college tuition,” Chelsea said.
Olivia reeled in awe of this man’s selflessness. He’d given up a career-defining movie for Maddy by trying to do the right thing, and he’d used the hush money he’d been forced to take to pay for his sister’s school when he himself was otherwise broke. How fortunate they all were to be in the small pocket of people he cared about.
Maddy came to sit on her other side. “I’m sorry it came out the way it did. You must have thought the worst. Those photos were from the set, but he was just comforting me. It was the day I told him about Richard. I don’t even know who took them, but they obviously sold them to start rumors.”
Olivia was ashamed to admit that she had thought the worst—and that she’d fallen victim to the folly of believing what she saw in the tabloids. Images of the photos had been burned in her mind, and she suddenly saw them in a new light. Of course Chuck had been comforting Maddy. He was giving her a hug and trying to cheer her up like any loving big brother would. “I wish he would have told me the truth from the start,” she said.
“He couldn’t,” Chelsea said. “He had to leave it at artistic differences , which is a load of crap. And Richard took advantage to ruin his reputation. But here’s the thing, Liv. He’s so in love with you. Like embarrassingly in love with you. That’s the whole reason he went on that ridiculous show: he wanted a chance to get you back. To prove to you that he could do better. He doesn’t care about the money. He did it for you . Everything is for you.”
Olivia’s breath was suddenly hard to catch. She was winded sitting down and felt like she’d been punched in the stomach at the same time her heart had lifted off to the heavens.
She knew Chuck loved her. She’d always known. But hearing Chelsea say it in such certain terms had her spinning.
She felt everyone in the room softly smiling at her.
“We have to go, but you should answer his calls, Liv.” Chelsea squeezed her hand and stood up from the couch. “It was nice to meet you both.” She waved at Mansi and Grandma Ruby.
Olivia stood up from the couch. She wasn’t exactly sure yet if she was ready to talk to Chuck or what she might say to him, but his sister’s visit had changed everything. “Thanks for coming over, Chelsea.” She turned to Maddy. “And I’m sorry for what happened to you. I hope that experience doesn’t deter you from working in the industry if it’s what you really want.”
Maddy gave her a soft smile. “Thanks. I don’t think it will. And I’m glad to know there are guys like Chuck around to make a difference. I just wish we could help him out somehow.” As Maddy stood to leave with Chelsea, her words landed on Olivia with a stirring sense of urgency.
Chuck had made a difference for Maddy personally, but the truth had remained private. No one knew the real reason why he had been fired. The ripples of his actions would stay limited to the small pond of her life.
Unless Olivia did something about it.
A plan unfolded in her mind, and she quickly stood to catch the girls before they left. “Actually, Maddy, I think there might be something we can do to help Chuck.”
Maddy turned back to her with a hopeful look in her eye, and she knew she could easily get her on board.