26. Nate
NATE
Jasmine sat on the arm of the sofa with her phone in her lap and her face blank. She looked like she was in shock.
“The studio fired me,” she said, her words flat. “They said I’m too much of a liability now.”
Nate’s chest tightened, and his hands balled into fists. Anger filled him — anger at Graham, at all the people who were reporting on this story and feeding into it. He was pissed that it was harming his name, but he was doubly pissed over what it was doing to Jasmine.
He was the one who’d made the bet. And he understood now that she’d accepted the deal as a backup in case her health meant she had to quit acting. Now everything was falling apart.
“They’ll reverse it,” he’d said. “Once this settles, once we put out a statement and the story shifts, they’ll—”
“They won’t.” She said it quietly. No heat in it. “That’s not how it works. The studio has moved on. They’ll recast inside a week, and the new person will have already signed by the time any statement we put out lands.”
“You don’t know that.”
She looked at him with an expression that was patient and exhausted in equal measure. “I know this industry.”
He’d tried a different angle. “I overheard some of it. Marco said you’re still one of the most respected—”
“Marco is paid to say things like that.”
“It’s also true.”
“Nate.” She stood up from the sofa arm. “Please stop.”
He stopped. He stood in the middle of the living room and watched her move to the window and look out at the courtyard.
He felt the fundamental gap between their two situations.
His name was everywhere, yes. The coverage was unflattering, yes.
There would be meetings and statements and a period of managing the narrative.
But Nate would be fine. He knew he would be fine.
His company was not contingent on his personal reputation in the way that her career was contingent on hers.
He was a tech billionaire who’d made a reckless bet.
The world would shake its head and move on, and someone would probably make a podcast about it.
In six months it would be a story he could tell at dinners with a self-deprecating laugh, and people would find it charming.
Jasmine was an actress who had agreed to marry a man for money. The world wasn’t going to shake its head and move on from that one. Not quickly. Not without cost.
“I’ll make it right,” he said. “I’ll put out a statement today. I’ll take full responsibility. I’ll—”
She turned from the window. “How? What statement fixes this?” There was something in her voice now, a thinness to it, the first crack in the composure. “What do you say that makes the studio un-drop me? What do you say that changes what every journalist out there is writing about me right now?”
“I’ll tell the truth. The whole story.”
“The truth is that I agreed to a fake marriage for a hundred million dollars.” She looked at him steadily. “That’s the truth. People are saying I’m a gold digger. Some of them probably that I’m a prostitute. No version of the truth helps me.”
He had nothing for that. Because she was right, and he knew she was right. People did not forgive women easily for things like this. In fact, they relished the witch hunt.
The meeting with Marco and her publicist happened at three, moved to a video call.
Nate was not invited, which was appropriate and which he understood entirely.
He sat in his own wing, worked through his emails, answered his lawyers, spoke to Dove, and did all the things there were to do.
And every hour or so he looked at the door to Jasmine’s wing and thought about knocking.
He didn’t knock.
She came out at six. She’d changed into jeans, a plain shirt, her hair down. She had her phone in one hand and a look on her face that told him the meeting hadn’t produced the outcome anyone had hoped for.
“How did it go?” he asked.
“About how you’d expect.” She went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water, then stood at the counter with it.
“The publicist thinks we can reshape the narrative over time. Marco thinks the same. Nobody’s saying it out loud, but what they mean is that it’ll take a year at minimum and a lot of carefully managed appearances, and I’ll probably have to take a smaller project to start with to show I’m still working and haven’t disappeared. ”
“That’s manageable.”
She looked at him over the rim of the glass. “I had a franchise, Nate.”
“I know.”
“And it wasn’t about the fame or the money that came with it. It was a chance to live out my dream.” She set the glass down. “I don’t have that anymore.”
“You have the money,” he said. “I’m sorry about the franchise. That sucks. I know it was your dream. But Graham and I didn’t make any deal about how I got you to marry me. The deal was that you had to marry me and he gave me a hundred million, that’s all.”
Her face did something complicated. “The money that everyone in the world now knows about. The money that has a story attached to it that follows my name forever.” She shook her head slowly.
“You know what the difference is between you and me in this? You’ve lost some pride.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing you’ve lost.”
The words found the mark. He didn’t show it because he was very good at not showing things, but they landed.
“That’s not entirely fair,” he said, keeping his voice even.
“Isn’t it?” She wasn’t shouting. That was somehow worse.
She was very calm. “Your company is fine. Your reputation takes a knock and recovers. Men at your level can get away with all kinds of things. This isn’t even remotely close to the worst things they’ve done that society has forgiven them for.
” She picked up her glass again. “I started from nothing. I worked for fifteen years. I bought my mother a home. I had a body that was failing me and found a way around it, and I got the part I wanted most in my entire career. And now all of it — the part, the reputation, all of it — is gone.”
“You agreed to the arrangement,” Nate said. He said it quietly, but he said it.
Her chin lifted. “I did. And I’d like to think I made the best decision I could with the information I had. The information I had did not include ‘your emails are going to be leaked, and your career is going to be destroyed.’”
“I didn’t leak them.”
“I know you didn’t.” She set the glass down again, harder this time.
“But you created the situation where they existed to be leaked. You made the bet. You came to that party. You found me in that hallway, and you put a number on a year of my life. At the time, I was scared enough to say yes.” She stopped.
Steadied herself. “I’m not saying you’re a bad person.
I’m saying you have a habit of making decisions that feel manageable to you and are catastrophic to everyone else.
And then you’re surprised when they don’t see it the same way. ”
“You knew the risks,” he said. “We both knew the risks. You walked into that boardroom and negotiated every term of that contract. You knew—”
“Don’t.” The word came out sharp and final. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not dismissing what you lost—”
“You just told me I knew the risks.” She looked at him across the kitchen with something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen there since the restaurant opening the very first night. The thing from before the boardroom and the beach house and the sand dollar. “That’s dismissing it.”
He closed his mouth.
She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, the sharp edge had gone out of her voice, replaced by something flat and decided. “I need to go home.”
“Jasmine—”
“My house.” She was already moving toward her wing. “I need to be in my own space. I need to not be here right now.”
He stood in the kitchen and let her go, because what else was there to do? She was right that she needed space and possibly right about more than that, and he’d run out of the right words.
She came back twenty minutes later with her two suitcases, the same two modest ones she’d arrived with.
Marisol appeared from somewhere and Jasmine thanked her warmly, and the warmth she gave Marisol and the look she gave Nate were so different that he felt the distance between them like a physical thing.
At the door, she stopped.
“The bet’s over,” she said. She wasn’t cruel about it. That was almost the worst part. “Graham has what he needs to prove it was fake. Whatever was owed, it’s done.” She looked at him steadily. “We never have to speak again.”
Nate opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say. So that was it? Because of their disagreement, the two of them were completely done?
He was still trying to collect his thoughts, trying to tamp down his anger, when she walked out the front door.
He stood in the doorway and watched her car go down the drive. The gate opened, and then she was gone.
Just like that.