“Yes, you do your jobverywell, it seems.” He leans over me further. “What would the players think if they knew their PR manager was sleeping with the captain?”
I blink once. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t think of that?” He pauses, a slow smirk spreading across his face. “What would Alan think?”
My skin prickles. “Are you blackmailing me?”
Matt has the audacity to look wounded by that accusation.
“I’m looking out for you.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Come on, Addison. Are you really going to tell me sleeping with a client isn’t against the rules in our job? I just want to keep you safe. You’re being reckless.”
Matt shakes his head slowly, pulling something from inside the pocket of his jacket. He drops a stack of tabloid photos onto my desk. Oliver. Different events. Different nights. Different women.
My stomach drops. Not even because Oliver has a past. He explained why he always had a different date to every event, and I’ve seen most of these photos before. What gives me pause is the fact that Matt has been holding onto this until the right moment. He’s been waiting. He’s a hunter, and I have been his prey.
“Do you really want to be another one added to the pile?” he asks, voice gentle but like a knife pressed against my throat. “Do you really want to be discarded once the season ends?”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” he counters. “I’ve been in this industry a long time. They say all the right things until they don’t.”
“You would know all about that,” I bite out. “I can make my own choices.”
He stares at me, jaw tight. He doesn’t know how to respond when I don’t shrink myself for him, when I don’t cower.
He turns and leaves without another word. And I sit here, heart hammering in my chest, proud of myself for standing tall, but terrified of what he’ll do next because there’s no way he’s just going to sit calmly with this information.
Pippa tops off my glass without asking, because, bless her heart. She must know I look even worse than I feel. I sink deeper into her couch as the Merlot starts to melt the sharpest edges of my anxiety.
“So, what did the fucker do now?” Pippa groans.
I hesitate. “He came to my office. Cornered me. Alone.”
Her eyes snap to mine, sharp and protective. “Addison.”
“No,” I say quickly. “He didn’t touch me. It’s just… after the gala. He knows.”
“About you and Oliver?”
I nod, swallowing hard. “Yeah. We let our guard down at the gala, and he figured it out. He came today and made these thinly veiled threats disguised as care. He showed me pictures of Oliver’s past. He said he didn’t want me to end up discarded too. It was classic Matt. Gaslight, manipulation, and blackmail. His patented three-step program to getting what he wants.”
“Fucking bellend,” Pippa says, looking like she’s about to throw her glass of wine across the room.
“I told him off,” I say. “Told him my choices are mine to make.”
Pippa is about to respond, but then the door creaks open and Luke steps into the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.
I freeze.
I don’t know how much he heard, if anything at all.
Luke raises an eyebrow, like he knows he walked into something. “What’d I miss?”
Pippa opens her mouth to cover, but I beat her to it. “Oh, I was just telling her—”
