Chapter 61
REED
I’m panting as I follow Georgina out of the garage and toward the house.
“Hey, Georgie!” Savage calls to her as she passes.
He’s at the ping pong table with Davey from Watch Party. And I swear to God, I’m this close to wringing his fucking neck.
“Hey there, handsome!” Georgina calls back to Savage. “I can’t wait for you to take me ATVing!”
Savage looks at me, and I shake my head, letting him know whatever they’ve planned is never going to happen.
“Let’s do dinner and drinks afterwards!” Georgie calls to Savage as she continues marching toward the house.
“Stop it, Georgie,” I whisper-shout to her. “You’re not going anywhere with Savage. Zasu is doing his interview.”
“I’m done taking orders from you, asshole. Ciao, stronzo. I’m not only going to interview Savage, I’m going to fuck him, too, and then lie to you and say I only ‘kissed him goodbye.’ But it won’t matter, right? As long as it meant nothing to me?”
She barrels into the house and, immediately, gets greeted by Kat and Hannah, who happen to be standing just inside the French doors. And the minute Kat sees Georgie’s tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes, she morphs into a grizzly bear protecting her cub.
“You’ve been crying,” Kat says, her face etched with concern. “What happened?”
“I haven’t been crying. I’m just drunk.”
“You don’t look drunk. You look devastated.” Kat’s blazing blue eyes dart to mine. “Why has she been crying?” Her eyes narrow to murderous slits. “What did you do?”
Georgina looks frantically around. “Have you seen Alessandra?”
“Not for a while.” Kat shoots me another death stare. “What happened, Reed?”
“We’ve had a disagreement.”
“A disagreement.” Georgina scoffs. She returns to Kat. “Have you seen Fish?”
As if on cue, Fish walks up, looking distraught. He shoots me a death stare that rivals Kat’s, before addressing Georgie. “Alessandra needs you. Reed told her she sucks, and that her music is bullshit, so she ran upstairs to your room to cry.”
Oh, for the love of fuck. “That’s not how it went down at all,” I blurt.
But nobody is listening to me, least of all Georgina. Indeed, suddenly, it feels like everyone around me is gathering up their pitchforks, and I’m the guy with a rather conspicuous hump on my back.
“I tried to comfort her,” Fish says, “but she said she preferred being alone, until you could come.”
“I was trying to help Alessandra,” I say lamely. “I was encouraging her.”
Fish flashes me a look that plainly says, Prick.
Kat shoots me one that says, I’ve seen your version of encouragement many times, Reed.
And it ain’t pretty. And Georgie doesn’t even look at me.
Indeed, her skin flushed and jaw tight, Georgina marches away from me, without so much as a glance at me, through the packed party, straight to the staircase, and up the entire flight of stairs, like a woman possessed.
Of course, I clamber after her, desperate to clear my name on this one thing, at least. “I told Alessandra she’s talented!” I shout from behind Georgie, matching her every bounding step. “I told her she has great vocal control. All I said was she’s trying to be someone she’s not and—”
“I told you not to say anything to Alessandra about her demo!”
Oh, shit. That’s right. She did.
“Are you capable of keeping one promise to me?” she shouts. “Why do you even bother pretending to make promises, if you’re literally never going to keep any of them?”
“I forgot you said that. I think I was stoned? I’m sorry.
I was just trying to help her, and I guess I just..
. forgot what you said about that. I don’t know.
” I run my hand through my hair. “Georgina, if you’d just let me tell you exactly what I said to her, you’d know I was actually doing her a favor. ”
But she doesn’t stop. She keeps bounding down the hallway toward her room.
“All I said was she needed to tell the truth in her art. That she shouldn’t try to mimic—”
She stops in front of her closed door and whirls around on a dime, making me nearly run into her.
“You told Alessandra to ‘tell the truth’ in her art? Oh, that’s rich, seeing as how you don’t even know the meaning of the fucking word.
” She turns and swings open the door to her room, and gasps at what she finds inside: her stepsister lying on the bed in tears.
“Ally!” she shouts as she runs into the room, leaving me in the doorway, like a vampire who hasn’t been invited inside.
Georgina takes her beloved stepsister into her arms, while I stand watching helplessly from the doorway.
After a moment, though, when she notices me, she gets up, marches to me, and slams the door in my face.
And that’s when I know: all hope is lost. If Georgie were standing over my Bugatti now, holding a golf club raised above her head, she’d smash it to Kingdom Come, even more so than she did to my Ferrari.
And no command or plea from me would stop her.
I place my palms flush against the closed door, my heart feeling like it’s physically bleeding onto the wood. Let me in, Georgie. Please, please, let me in.
After what feels like forever, the door swings open, making me lurch back into the hallway, and Georgie and Alessandra barge out of the room.
Georgie’s wheeling her suitcase behind her, her regal head held even higher than when she wore that ruby necklace.
Alessandra’s wearing a backpack on her back, and holding the cardboard box Georgie doesn’t know I know about.
The one containing the documents from Stephanie Moreland’s lawsuit, plus, God knows what else.
“Where are you going?” I choke out.
“None of your business,” Georgie tosses over her shoulder.
I follow the girls down the hallway. “Alessandra, you misunderstood me. I’m sorry if my words seemed harsh, but—”
“Don’t speak to her,” Georgie hisses. “And don’t speak to me, either. Ever again.”
Down the stairs they go, with me following behind like a stray dog.
A new “super-group” is performing onstage now, which means, thankfully, everyone at the party is crowded in the main area, blissfully dancing and cheering with their backs to us.
It’s the perfect time for the girls to make a getaway, completely unnoticed.
Which is exactly what they do. Indeed, they walk straight out my front door, past security, and into the cool night, without anyone noticing a damned thing.
I follow the girls, of course, talking the entire time.
Explaining. Apologizing. Defending. Rationalizing.
Fixing, convincing, begging. Yes, fuck it.
I’m begging Georgina to stay. To listen.
To forgive. It’s something I swore I’d never do with Georgina again.
But now isn’t the time to be proud. Now is the time to make her understand.
To fix this mess I’ve gotten myself into. To make her forgive me.
But Georgina isn’t having any of it. And Alessandra follows her lead, looking straight ahead like she can’t hear my pathetic pleas.
The girls march down my circular drive toward my iron gate, where four security guards greet us.
“Hello, Mr. Rivers,” one of the guards says. “Ladies.”
“Hello,” Georgina says brightly, her tone oozing with sex appeal. “My, you look handsome tonight, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“We’re here to wait for our Uber,” Georgina explains.
“That’s fine.”
“Are you wearing cologne? You smell amazing.”
“It’s just soap.
“Well, whatever it is, it smells good enough to eat.”
“Georgie, that’s enough,” I say calmly. “Come inside, so I can explain—”
“No, thank you, Mr. Rivers. I think you’ve explained more than enough.”
Fuck. Begrudgingly, I shut up. If I don’t, it’s quite possible she’ll offer to suck a security guard’s dick, just to watch me commit murder and go to prison for it.
Headlights.
They’re shining on the guards’ faces. And then on the girls’. And then on mine. They’re shining in my eyes. Illuminating the blackness of my fucking soul.
The car stops. The girls pile into its backseat and slam their doors, without looking back or saying a word to me. And off they go, just like that, into the night. Leaving me standing at my gate in the cool night with stinging eyes and a lump in my throat.
I stand frozen as Georgina’s car drives away, watching its retreating taillights and holding my breath. Turn around, Georgina. Flip me off through the back window, so I know you still care. Flip me off, baby. Please. Hate me, if you must. Just care enough to flip me off.
It’s my last hope—that Georgina will grace me with the tiniest flicker from her glorious flame.
But, no.
The car is gone now.
And Georgina never turned around.
She never met my eyes, so they could tell her how sorry I am.
She never met my eyes, so they could beg her to come back to me.
She never met my eyes so I could tell her I’m fucked up in ways I don’t understand.
Ways I can’t help. Ways I can’t fix. She never turned around so my eyes could tell her I’ve never felt the way I do with her.
She never turned around so my eyes could explain I don’t know how to do this.
I don’t know how to feel this. I simply don’t know.
“Is everything okay, Mr. Rivers?” one of the guards asks.
I look down at the ground for a long beat.
If any other girl had left me standing here, I’d look directly at the guard, smile, and say, “Yes, everything is great. Everything is perfect. I’m on top of the world, motherfucker. The Man with the Midas Touch.”
But I can’t say any of it now. Not when the girl who’s left me is Georgina.
Not when the girl I betrayed, the girl I hurt, is the same girl I’d move heaven and earth to protect.
I can’t say it now, when it’s Georgina who thinks I’m a liar.
Even though, I swear, a solid three quarters of what I said to her was the God’s truth.
I look up and meet the guard’s eyes. “No. Everything’s not okay.” I drag my palm across my jaw and take a deep breath. “In fact, Jeremy. To be honest with you, everything just turned to total fucking shit.”