78. Chapter Seventy-Eight
Chapter Seventy-Eight
Henry
Knock, knock, knock.
I wasn’t getting that. Nobody was home, today.
“Open the door, Henry,” came Milo’s frantic voice. But Milo was always frantic about something. I usually pitched in to help him become not frantic, but my ribs were telling me no today.
“It’s about Gatita,” he said desperately.
I wasn’t sure how it could be about Kat, when she’d only left a couple hours prior, and should be at the airport right about now. And she was fine when she left. Even though I’d wanted her to stay.
She’d stayed for me once already, it sounded like. That still made me smile every time I thought about it. But I got up to answer the door, because a frantic Milo plus something about Kat was more than enough to be upright for.
Even if standing made my head spin for a moment. I just held onto the wall for a moment, then shuffled toward the door.
“Open the DOOR, Henry,” he begged as I neared it. He sounded utterly desperate and despondent. I pulled it open, and he forced his way inside. I was only in sweatpants, so he could see my spongey upper half, but he still grazed me on his way by. I groaned softly.
“Hostia puta! Henry, your ribs!” he shouted. I waved his Spanish swearing off in favor of whatever was wrong with Kat. I grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Focus, Milo. What’s going on with Kat? She just left here a couple hours ago,” I refocused gently.
The panic that reentered his eyes had me starting to worry.
I unfortunately only got half the answer, because the other half was in Spanish.
I shook him slightly, especially when the English words settled into my slightly muddy brain.
Because those English words were terrifying.
They were ‘gone’, and ‘fired’, and ‘bad publicity’, and ‘morality clause’, and ‘stepped down’ and ‘Bex CEO’. Those were enough.
“MILO! English! PLEASE!” I begged him. He gulped.
“Corning fired Kat, tried to break her contract but she told him she was stepping down as CEO and handing over stake in her company. She begged him to keep the contract with some other dude coming out to finish the integration and he said yes,” he said without taking a breath. He gulped some air and continued.
“So, she’s leaving. And not coming back.
And she lost her company. She lost her job here, and her company, and her stake in her company, and someone on the internet threw soda on her, and it’s all because of bad publicity,” he said in what I could only assume was an accusing tone.
I didn’t blame him. This was starting to sound a lot like it was all my fault.
“A rumor got out that Blackstone was backing out of the contract due to her morality clause, and tons of other companies started backing out. She was going to lose half her current employees and all of the new ones in London. But if she completely erased herself from the company, the company could salvage most contracts and keep all of the employees,” he said sadly.
And of course, she would do that. Kat would do more than that for others. Especially tens of thousands of others.
“Milo, who told you all of this?” I asked, hoping he might be wrong, somehow. Kat certainly hadn’t said anything.
“Tim,” he said definitively. Tim wouldn’t be wrong or spread unfounded rumors. Bloody hell.
“Even after my press conference yesterday?” I asked.
I’d told the entire world that the documentary had fucking lied, and told them to fix it.
Re-edit the show. Tell the fucking TRUTH.
And if they didn’t, and until they did, I would not be giving them interviews.
It was in my contract that I had to let them follow me around and film me like little sycophants, but I didn’t have to give interviews.
And if I listened to Andrew about the internet, then I brought in a lot of views for them.
So, if the internet was going to cause damage, I’d use the internet to hopefully help fix the damage.
He was nodding.
“It wasn’t enough. It sounded too much like you trying to be a nice guy after someone broke your heart,” he said weakly, like he was quoting someone.
My head was swimming. I knew that my heart rate and blood pressure were too high.
And I was about to pass out. I scrambled to sit on my bed, my head in my hands. Milo sat next to me.
I’d much rather have the last person I’d had in my bed back.
“She was JUST here. Only a couple of hours ago. I can’t believe Corning managed to move that quickly,” I mused, trying to think of what to do. Only one thing kept circling to the front.
“Oh. Uh…” he trailed off. I looked up at him sharply.
“Spit it out Milo, I swear to God,” I said in a low voice, recognizing it sounded like I was about to rip his head off. It wasn’t his head I’d be ripping off.
“This happened yesterday. Before the race,” he said softly. Oh… FUCK.
So, while Kat’s entire world was falling apart, I was too busy being too much of a needy arsehole for her to feel like she could bring this to me.
Instead, she was busy taking care of me. Making sure I was okay. ME. While she lost… everything. Everything that mattered to her. EVERYTHING.
And she didn’t say a damn word.
She just took care of me. Held me. When I should’ve been holding HER. Helping HER. Figuring something out to help HER.
FUCK.
“Milo, can you help me put a shirt on? I need to go talk to a few people,” I asked determinedly. He looked up slightly hopeful. I hoped to God I could earn that. He nodded.
I needed to fucking fix this.
No matter what it took.
I wouldn’t leave her alone.