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Her gaze cut to the phone, which was now quiet, then back to him. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she finally said, “H-he told you? Didn’t he?”
As the shock began to ebb, betrayal hit him with the force of a boxer’s hook. He took a step back even though plenty of distance already separated them. Mickie’s face crumpled even further into misery.
“He told you,” she whispered to herself. “I…” She shook her head.
Suddenly the last thing Keith wanted to hear was a bullshit excuse or insincere apology from an Oscar-winning actress. God knows if any time he’d spent with her had been real.
“Yes, Scarlett,” he said. The name tasted bitter. “He told me.”
She shook her head back and forth. “Don’t call me that,” she whispered. “Please don’t call me that name. I’m not…I’m not her.”
“Anymore?”
“Anymore,” she agreed in a steady voice that betrayed the tears streaking down her beautiful face.
Were those tears real or a skill she’d perfected over the years?
Would he or his siblings’ lives end up dissected on social media once she got bored of this small-town, quiet life game?
Would he find his face splashed across tabloids and his family’s ugly history the talk of millions when she returned to the spotlight?
“But you were,” he said, voice flat. The sentence conveyed everything rolling through his mind that he couldn’t express. “You were the one who did all that shit the media loved. You ruined relationships, fought with colleagues, made a fool of yourself in public, what? Hundreds of times?” She’d been Scarlett. She’d committed countless acts he disapproved of, disagreed with, didn’t respect. Scarlett wasn’t just someone he rolled his eyes over when discussed. She was a woman he despised…loathed, as Ronnie said. She embodied everything he hated.
“I was,” she said. Her shoulders straightened, and she met his gaze.
As much as he hated every second of this encounter, a bit of pride filled him at the small return of backbone.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Keith, but I’ve chan—”
He lifted a hand before she could speak the words he’d heard his entire life. Empty words that meant nothing. “It’s not my business, Scarlett,” he said.
How many times had his father changed through his childhood? Countless. After every ugly fight with his mother, every missed obligation, every beating, he’d promised to change. Over and over, he and his siblings heard promises of extraordinary changes coming from both his parents: more money, better living conditions, sobriety.
It never happened.
People didn’t change.
They only pretended for a while. Sometimes not even a day had passed before his father would fall back on dysfunctional and destructive habits.
Change was an illusion. A seed of hope that only drove the knife deeper when it inevitably cut again.
“I can’t do this,” he said as he set her phone on the shiny new marble countertop she’d chosen.
She merely nodded with slumped shoulders and those damn tears.
He turned and made his way out of the kitchen.
“K-Keith?” she called when he reached the door.
He froze, hand on the knob, but didn’t turn. Another look at the agony on her face, and he’d cave. Pull her into his embrace and fall down that rabbit hole.
“P-please don’t tell anyone. I mean, outside your siblings.”
Unfuckingbelievable. Of course, all she gave a shit about was her own needs. “I wouldn’t. Unlike you, I have no desire to destroy anyone else’s life.”
Her sharp inhale indicated a direct hit, but instead of giving in to the instinct to turn and hurl her into his arms, he yanked the door open and stormed out of the house.
And if he happened to hear a choked sob before the door closed behind him, he ignored it.
It was just another bid for attention from a Hollywood superstar.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BANG, BANG, BANG.
Mickie groaned and flopped over for what had to be the thousandth time since she’d fallen into bed. She yanked the covers over her head as the pounding started up again.
What the hell was that?
When it wouldn’t let up after another few seconds, she forced herself to sit up. Blinking away the cobwebs in her brain, the noise finally registered.
Someone was at her front door.
Ronnie, probably. Come to grill her on yesterday’s embarrassing meltdown and what she’d learned from Keith.
“Ugh,” Mickie groaned aloud as she dragged herself from the bed and shuffled toward the stairs. Her head throbbed with each step, and her eyeballs felt as though someone had taken the coarsest sandpaper to them while she slept. A tidal wave of nausea rolled through her gut, and her tongue had adhered to the roof of her mouth. All in all, one of the worst hangovers of her life, and she’d earned it crying, not imbibing.
“I’m coming!” she hollered with a wince as the volume of her voice poked at her tender brain like needles. “Though I might die before I get there.” She made her way down the steps. Never had one staircase seemed like such a taxing journey, but her energy was at an all-time low. The sleepless night, hours of crying, and self-recrimination had done a fantastic job of wringing her out.
