Page 51 of The Mood Board

Had Bailey really broken up with me?

She hadn’t said the exact words, but her message had been clear: She couldn’t handle the situation. That she had to break up with me—I have to do this.

Why? Why did she have to? She had run away too fast for me to ask her the question. I hadn’t realized the press was hounding her so badly—she hadn’t said a word, and neither had my lawyer. How terrible did the paparazzi have to be to get Bailey to break up with me?

I have to do this. I hope you can forgive me.

As I lay back on my bunk, the pain was so terrible I curled in on myself, ignoring my cellmate’s incessant droning. How could I lose Bailey? How could she be gone from my life with barely a conversation? I couldn’t even run after her, sit her down, have a conversation with her. I was stuck in this hell hole that wasn’t even of my own making, and I had no idea when I could get out and talk to her.

I wanted to scream, shout, hit, and break things, but I could only curl my hands into my hair and tug until my scalp was on fire.

How had this happened? How had this all happened? How had my life changed so drastically, so horrifically?

Was this all some kind of terrible karma? Except I didn’t know what I could have possibly done to be falling so far without any sort of safety net. And now without the love of my life, my rock, my safe place.

I wasn’t sure I had ever felt so entirely alone, so completely despondent and hopeless. Even I couldn’t find the bright spot in all of this, the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead, everything felt dark and bleak and full of despair.

When I finally fell into an exhausted, miserable sleep, it was full of terrible dreams filled with screaming and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. I only crawled out of the cot the next day to speak with my lawyer, whose eyes widened when I shuffled into the small interview room.

He didn’t ask, but I could feel his gaze returning to me repeatedly.

“Do you think some of the investments were illegal, and I was just too naïve to realize?”

My lawyer had been talking about something else I hadn’t been listening to, but he stopped and stared before answering my question.

“Your team didn’t find anything, but I don’t have access to the prosecution’s case yet.” He watched me, his mouth a thin line. “You aren’t admitting to anything, are you?”

I shook my head but didn’t say anything else.

Was that the real reason Bailey had left me? She said she had believed me, but the case had taken such a turn I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. The other side had to have something big if the judge had denied me bail.

Nothing else my lawyer said made it into my head, and as I lay on my cot that night staring up at the ceiling, I tried to make sense of everything going on. But it was impossible—none of it made sense.

Unless, of course, I wasn’t as innocent as I thought, even if I had been too stupid to understand.

Maybe I did deserve all of this.