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“What’s going on?” Hunter asked.
Desperate as I was to tell Hunter everything, I couldn’t do it.
Everything I thought I knew about Isabelle seemed wrong. Like I’d misunderstood everything she ever said. I thought she’d always do the right thing, but instead, she was willing to let Leon walk around with Rohypnol in his pocket because she wasn’t brave enough to stand up to her sister.
“I want to be alone,” I said.
Isabelle’s lower lip wobbled. I had to look away because I didn’t want to see her cry again. But she made her choice, and I wouldn’t be the one to comfort her. Not this time.
Hunter looked from me to Isabelle but didn’t say a word. He put his arm around her shoulders, and they both left the room.
When I was finally alone, the whirlwind that had been my morning sped through my brain. Drugged, unconscious, hit a guy, wrecked my knee, found out Georgia’s dirty little secret, found my name in the paper for all the wrong reasons, lost Isabelle.
My chest tightened. I couldn’t decide which of all those things was hitting me the hardest, but all at once, they were killing me. I’d never felt more alone. There I was, in England, trying to show my parents that I wasn’t their little boy anymore by being strong and independent. Instead, I’d found myself in a hospital bed, crying and panicking about what Richard and my parents would say when everything came out.
Crap. I could already imagine Richard sternly telling me I was fired for bringing shame on the team. They’d only just been in England to promote themselves, and I’d ruined their reputation in a few short hours.
Leah. Talk to Leah.
The idea came to me out of nowhere, but it wasn’t such a bad one. Leah always knew the right thing to say to get my head straight again, and best of all, she was in the UK too. She’d helped me out so many times, but I had never needed her more than when my whole life was threatening to disappear before my eyes.
Just knowing I was going to connect with someone who would listen, someone who’d been with me at Westberg and knew what my career meant to me made the fear loosen its hold a little. The second I heard the ringtone, I said a silent prayer she would pick up.
“Jesse!” she said, “How are you? How are you enjoying England?”
I tried to get some words out, but the only thing that came out was a pathetic sob that I’d been trying to hold in.
“Jesse? What’s wrong?”
At the end of the line, Leah waited until I was ready, and I explained everything that had happened to her. She listened in stunned silence, only asking questions when I rushed ahead and got the story mixed up because my lips were moving faster than my brain. Her concern made me realise I’d called the right person.
“I can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?” she said when I was done, and I laughed for the first time all day.
“I don’t know what to do, Leah. I … I think I’m gonna lose everything.”
“You won’t lose everything. You just need some time to take in what’s happened and then you can figure out what to do next.”
“You make that sound easy.”
“It’s not, I know. But you need to deal with one thing at a time.”
“Where do I start?”
There was a long pause. “I don’t know, but I’ll help any way I can.”
“Leah can you … can you come up here? I know it’s a lot to ask but I-”
“Believe me, it was my first thought when you told me what was going on. But my brother and sister in law have taken my parents away to some Christmas fayre in Bristol and I’m at my brother’s house looking after the kids. They don’t get back until Tuesday, but … Jesse, can you hold on for a minute? I’ll be right back.”
“Sure.”
The disappointment that she couldn’t come hit me hard. I needed someone around who could support me, and the fact that she was a physiotherapist meant that she might be able to hurry the doctors along to see how much damage there was to my knee. I’d never been big on wallowing in self-pity, but everything seemed to be against me.
“Jesse, you still there?”
“Yup.”
“Good. I can’t come up, but Radleigh’s here, and … well, who is better at dealing with scandal than him? He says he’ll be on his way within the hour if you need him.”
