Chapter Fifteen
Jack: Is this payback?
Jack: Are you trying to make me worry?
Jack: What's happening?
GUY SAT ALONE AT A corner table in the on-set cafeteria, his untouched sandwich curling at the edges under the harsh fluorescent lights, the scent of overcooked burgers and stale coffee filling the air around him.
He’d been sitting here for an hour, staring at nothing while his mind waited for his heart to catch up—
And maybe, just maybe...
He would finally derive joy from the plan he had orchestrated, and all so he could save face when she inevitably came to tell him she wanted a divorce.
"Mr. de la Rocq?"
Guy stiffened. That voice was the last thing he wanted to hear, and the man who suddenly stood in front of him was also the last face he wanted to see.
Damn him.
Had this man come here to gloat?
"Why aren't you with Jilly?"
And now, the jerk even had the gall to join him in his table.
What the fuck was this man's problem?
Jack frowned as he studied the actor's face.
How peculiar.
"Why are you jealous of me?"
Guy just fucking had it with this guy. He reached over the table, intending to grab him by the collar—
"It's not like Jilly to explain things properly," Jack said disapprovingly. "But perhaps I should make exceptions. You are, after all, the man she had dreamed of marrying for sixteen years."
So he could plant his fucking fist—
"I'm the older brother of America, her best friend," Jack explained.
"A drunk driver killed my parents and sister.
The driver lived, though. And since I wasn't them at that time, so did I.
" Jack shrugged then, saying matter-of-factly, "Some of our relatives think I should have been the one who died instead of them.
I think so, too. But I also know it's wrong to think that, so I don't let the thought linger. "
Fuck.
"Since no one wanted to take me in, Jilly unilaterally decided we were a family. And that I was her responsibility. Because I have Asperger's."
Guy pulled his fists back in time while bile rose to his throat.
"That's why I said we're endgame."
No. Fuck. No.
Jack watched Guy shoot to his feet so fast his chair scraped against the concrete floor with a harsh screech.
How peculiar.
Guy could hardly breathe as he tore through the set in search for his wife.
Jilly unilaterally decided we were a family. I was her responsibility. Because I have Asperger's.
The words crashed through his mind like a wrecking ball that destroyed his every doubt, every cynical and undeserved assumption he had harbored against his wife, and all because he had been preparing himself to be betrayed from the start.
How could he have gotten everything wrong?
Desperation seized him when she was nowhere to be found, and he called for Darwin to pick him up. "Drive," he ordered the other man as soon as he slid into the backseat. "We need to find my wife."
The GPS tracking he had discreetly installed in her ring showed his wife moving through the city, and they eventually found her walking near a small park.
Guy was out of the car before it fully stopped, the sound of his dress shoes hitting pavement echoing in the late afternoon air.
"Jillian..."
Jilly jerked in shock upon hearing her husband's voice.
How did he—
Guy was suddenly standing in front of her, and oh God, it hurt.
So, so much.
“Please get in the car,” Guy said tautly.
The expression on her husband's face spoke volumes, and she just didn't have it in her to argue with him.
Once they were both inside his car, Guy waited for the privacy window to slide into place behind his driver before turning to his wife.
She was staring straight ahead, not looking his way, but it was still too damn easy to tell by the way her shoulders were shaking...
His wife was crying.
Because of him.
"I'm sorry," Guy said hoarsely. "I thought you were going to leave me. I...thought you were going to choose him again."
He knew she could only be hearing all of this for the first time, and yet she didn't even say a word.
"I saw Jack's text. I didn't mean to read it, but I...I misunderstood."
Jillian finally turned to him, and his entire world disintegrated at the way she was crying so, so hard...she couldn't even make herself speak.
"It started...when I met Jack at a party for Preyer. It was a week after we met. He kept calling you his Jilly. Said that you two were endgame. And it got me so fucking mad. I thought you were using me as your rebound, and that's why..."
"Is that..." Jilly could hardly believe what she was hearing. "Is that h-how I ended up working for you?"
"Yes."
"You wanted...to hurt me?"
The pain on her face made Guy want to put his fist through the window.
"That was the plan...until you told me you were a virgin. And that was when I...I thought I still had a chance. I wanted to believe that I could make you choose me—"
“I did choose you,” Jilly said brokenly.
"That's what I wanted to believe," Guy said rawly. "What I did believe...until his text this morning. And that's why I hired one of our actresses—"
Jilly's body involuntarily jerked, her heart recoiling as she was forced to remember—
Another woman's heels. The shower in the background. The scrap of black lace.
"It's all made up," Guy said tautly, "and I...I can prove it to you. The trailer, I have a surveillance camera, and—"
"Did you tell her to mistake me for your older sister?"
Guy whitened.
And it was all she needed to see.
"Jillian—"
"You r-really wanted to d-destroy me that much?"
"Forgive me." He tried to reach for her hands, but stopped when she reared back like his touch would burn her alive. "Jillian, please..."
But all she could do was look at him and cry.
"You c-could've just asked me," Jilly choked out.
"I'm sorry," Guy said desperately. "I'm so damn sorry—"
But even without his wife saying a word, he could already feel her drifting farther and farther away from him.
"I love you, Jillian. I—just please tell me what I can do."
God, help me.
It was his first time to pray, and the words came instinctively, desperately, like a drowning man grasping for air.
“Give me another chance,” he said hoarsely. “I love you—”
God please.
It was all he could do, all he could think of that could save him from losing her.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, and his heart stopped. “I’m just so, so sorry...”