Chapter 15 #3
The view from her camera swung to the floor as security escorted her out of the building.
The stream cut out, and shortly afterward she’d shown up on the Holli-ford family Zoom call looking shell-shocked.
That expression was why I told her to come to New Zealand—I just wanted to get that look off her face.
It was what I’d been trying to do every day since she’d gotten here.
When she wasn’t hunched over her phone, when she was teasing me or fixating on content creation, that look went away.
But it was back now as she confessed to me that her lover was married, and according to the internet, she was to blame for ruining his marriage.
“There was no point defending myself.” Lyssa sighed.
“No one believed that I didn’t know Paul had a wife after the way I’d acted.
But I didn’t, I swear I didn’t. He said they were separated.
And even if I did know— I’m not the married person.
Why couldn’t people save that anger for Paul? Or the Hollywood guy?”
“What Hollywood guy?”
She waved a hand. “Some celeb cheated on his wife, and the internet decided I was the problem.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
She gave me a look. “That’s the internet.”
“Why didn’t you say on your livestream that you two were”—I searched for the right word—“an item.”
“Firstly,” she listed on her fingers. “I was too hurt to think clearly. Secondly, what would be the point? He’d already made me look like a hysterical shrew. And I did exactly what he counted on. I was unhinged. I threw his Glamie Award at his head.”
If only it had been two inches lower. She would have scalped him.
“People have a hard enough time believing women when they have model behavior,” Lyssa continued miserably. “Let alone unlikable ones like me. The internet demands perfect victims.”
“You’re not unlikable.”
She shrugged. “Clearly you haven’t been reading the comments.”
“I like you.”
The words came too easily. I could have kicked myself.
“For now,” she said darkly. Then she sighed. “Did you hear what Paul said before security took me away?”
I shook my head. “Everyone was talking, and your phone was pointed at the floor.”
“Yes. But he gave me his pocket square, do you remember?”
“He said wipe your eyes? Or something like that?”
“No. He said, ‘For your beat .’”
It took me a second to put this together. Then I winced.
“Paul had watched my ‘Get Ready with Me,’” Lyssa confirmed. “He was expecting me. And because I wore my feelings on my sleeve and confided in the internet, he easily outmaneuvered me. Like it was nothing. It barely filled a ten-minute block in his calendar.”
“What a cruel piece of shit.” Words that should have stayed in my head tumbled out. “Why would you ever drop your knickers for him?”
Lyssa scowled. “It was different at first. He obviously didn’t introduce himself by saying, ‘Hi, I’m Paul. I’m a terrible lay, and I’m going to steal your work and ruin your career. And I’m married.’”
“Even so,” I grumbled. The man wasn’t even objectively good-looking. And I knew he sucked in bed.
“Villains never say they’re villains, Mike.
They pretend. Paul was so interested in my career.
I thought … I really thought he saw potential in me.
” Her voice broke and I white-knuckled the armchair.
“I thought I was his protégé and he was interested in me because he knew I was going to be successful. I thought he had respect for me. And he did. Kind of. But not respect the way I wanted—he respected me the way a carnivore respects a steak. As a consumable.”
Even though she knew this, I thought I should say it. “That guy sucks, Lyssa.”
“Yeah.”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Thanks.”
I could tell from the way she said it that she didn’t believe me.
A fat tear rolled down her cheek. A little part of me died when I saw that, and it wouldn’t come back to life until I got to sink my fist into that Manhattan fucker’s face.
It might take me a while. But sooner or later, I was going to fuck Paul up.
We sat in my lounge, lost in our thoughts. Lyssa pulled the fluffy blanket off the top of the couch and snuggled under it.
It was the middle of the afternoon on a gorgeous sunny day, and I had about a thousand things I should be doing—mending the hole in the fence down by the clothesline, fixing my horrific paint job on Mini M’s house, calling my Dad and groveling for losing a party booking.
There were also a million things I wanted to do but couldn’t, and all of them involved Lyssa.
She was going home soon, and she needed to. It would be better for her and better for me.
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to talk about the livestream or Bossi anymore.”
“Fair enough.”
“I did want to say…”
Her hesitation was shifty. I didn’t sit up, but I looked at her from the corner of my eye.
“Thank you. For inviting me here and letting me stay with you. And for… the thing in the tub.” Her cheeks were pink. “It meant a lot to me to finally do that. I wouldn’t have been able to without you.”
She was so fucking grateful it hurt my teeth.
I leaned back in my recliner. “No worries, mate.”
She recoiled with a blink. “Did you just call me mate?”
If she wanted to act like we were mates and all I was doing for her was a fucking favor, then: “Yeah, mate.”
“Well. Mate. Is that something you want to do again? Would you like to do other things? If we did it again, you could… you know, too.”
Yes —no.
Hell yeah —absolutely fucking not.
I want that more than I want air —it’s a terrible idea.
I couldn’t land on one answer. So, like a caveman, I grunted.
“What?”
I cast my mind around for an escape. My brain was screaming at me to pull the ripcord on the parachute I wasn’t wearing.
“Dunno,” I said eventually. “I’m not really a make plans kind of guy.”
“Bullshit.”
I pushed the footrest of the recliner down. “Sorry?”
“I said bullshit. You want to brush me off because you think you can’t be limited to one girl, never mind that I never asked you to be exclusive with me, Mike, I just wanted to do some more things that end in mutual orgasms”—I swallowed a grunt—“and now you’re being a jerk about it.
That’s fine. You can be a jerk if you want.
But I call bullshit on your no plans, good-time guy facade.
” She jabbed a finger at me. “You’re a very intelligent man, Mike Holliday.
You can do anything you put your mind to.
I know you’re working hard on your funding pitch for your business, even if you don’t like talking about it.
And if you think somehow that fooling around with me would be too much of a distraction for you, I promise you, it wouldn’t be. ”
She was climbing off the sofa now, and I didn’t have time to move before she was looming over me, clutching my hand.
“I’m so fucking excited for your pitch. I’ll help. Or if you want me to back off and support you silently, because I don’t know anything about ‘farms’?”—she made air quotes with her fingers, like farms weren’t real—“and I’m too eccentric for people here? Then I can do that too.”
I eyed her.
She corrected, “Okay, I probably can’t be silent. But I won’t interfere.”
Her earnest expression made me confess. “Lyss, I’m just really nervous about it. Fucking Hodges—you know the guy I milk for, Hodges?” She nodded and it seemed like the obvious thing to pull her onto my lap then, so I did. “Hodges is on the panel. That man gets my back up like no one else.”
She was warm and soft and it felt right holding her in my lap like this. She reached up and twisted a rogue mo’ hair back into place, nodding like I should keep talking.
“This business has been years in the making. I was planning it when I failed economics in high school. Maths too. I failed pretty much everything, actually. Every single skill that I am going to need for this venture?, there’s proof I don’t have it.
Worse, I have every personal shortcoming that will make it likely to fail. ”
The punching, the whoring, the fooling-around-with-my-sister’s-friend… ing.
Lyssa was still stroking my face. “?‘Cowards die many times before their deaths,’?” she recited. “?‘The valiant never taste of death but once.’? ”
“If you say so.”
“Caesar does.”
“And he lived a long and happy life, did he? Got everything he wanted?”
Her eyes slid from mine. “Forget about Caesar. I don’t know where you got such a poor sense of your skills when your confidence in most other areas is?—”
“Bulletproof.”
“Inspiring. But if you don’t believe it, I will. I’ll be your own personal cheerleader. Figuratively!” she added quickly. “Not literally. My cheer skirt is retired.”
That was a fucking shame. But I didn’t say so, because I didn’t need the conversation veering back onto dangerous ground.
“I don’t think you should be here, Lyssa.”
Hurt flashed across her face. I stopped her when she made to climb off me, putting one hand on her smooth thigh.
“I just mean don’t spend all your time here in Aotearoa in boring old Woodville.
Go travel the country. Be a proper American tourist—walk in the middle of the footpath and talk ten times louder than anyone else. ”
She elbowed me in the ribs and I pretended it hurt.
“At least people can hear what I’m saying,” she said. “ You should come with a slider bar, so I can turn the volume up and at least hear your jokes to decide if they’re funny.”
A laugh ripped out of me. “Fair shot, Princess.” I patted her thigh.
Two minutes ago I’d been calling her mate and swearing I wasn’t going to let the fact I knew what face she made when she came change things between us. Now look at me.
Not only was it a good idea for her to explore some of the country for her sake, it was quickly becoming essential for mine.