“If I do that, they’ll think we fucked.”
He arched a brow. “I’m fine with them thinking that if you are.”
“Can we? Somehow being emotional feels …”
“Like too much to feed to the vultures? Yeah, I get it, Heywood. Don’t worry about it. Just tell everyone I was good if they ask, yeah?”
———
I was photographed in the club. I was photographed on the street. I was photographed in my ball gown once more, outside his Mayfair hotel the next morning as I got a taxi back to Richmond.
My room still bore remnants of the night before: my clothes kicked aside in favor of Joel’s tracksuit that I’d worn out the hotel, my shower plug was edged with red, turquoise necklace in a heap on the counter, and I had to sling my dress, slightly less beaded than it had been before my outing into London, over a chair because I no longer had the bag to hang it in.
I felt more tired than I had in my life. I’d managed a few hours of sleep and those only out of sheer exhaustion. All those feelings I’d expected to crash down upon me felt too much for my broken body to handle, and so it was shutting down instead.
I might never feel anything ever again.
I’d showered at Caleb’s, washing any lingering dirt andgrime away, but I showered again now because I still didn’t feel clean. I let the water run off me, just staring into the tiles and wondered if Harper had done the same as the blood ran from her.
We should be together right now. She was the only one who might understand this.
My phone was ringing when I finally emerged. The towels felt too soft against me. I wanted harshness. I wanted to feel like I fit in this world still.
“Hello?”
“Nadine Heywood,” Ruchi growled. “Care to talk to me about last night?”
I caught my breath. I wondered if she’d managed to have the CCTV wiped. If she hadn’t did I need to worry? We’d done nothing incriminating on it, but it was better to leave as many question marks as possible.
Something else I knew from movies: solving a crime is more like piecing together a story. The police just needed a coherent narrative. The defense would do the same.
The best story always won.
We just needed to fill theirs with plot holes.
“That depends on what’s currently in the papers.”
“You’re in the papers winning a damn BAFTA. Everything that came afterward is going to likely be in tomorrow’s. You told me that you were sneaking people in, not going out and certainly not sleeping with Caleb Krause.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not particularly, though I don’t appreciate finding out from my contacts on the cutting room floors. What happened?”
“The people I had coming over bailed, and I wanted to have fun. The rest was accidental.”
“Alright,” she said, drawing the word out. “Nadine, is there something you’re not telling me?”
Cold, unseeing eyes. Congealing blood. Teeth beneath a harsh metal edge.
But I knew that tone, felt it choke me because she had a way of asking questions, which always got the truth out of me. “I was drunk.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” I confirmed. I knew why she was asking—I’d have some questions too if my client turned up to a club alone in a ball gown.
“Okay. Thank you for being honest. To check, you’re aware the pictures tomorrow will be along theWild Night Out with Nadine HeywoodandIs Krausewood the Couple We’ve Been Waiting For?variety?”
I glanced at my clothes, still crumpled in a heap, still, around the edges, a little bloodstained. “Yes, that’s fine. I’ve faced worse.”
