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I typed:Sorry for the delay, I had no clue that the video was leaked to the press until I saw your messages. I had to call Derrick and my publicist to get right on it.
Three little dots rippled on the screen, and then more messages swiftly began to appear.
Izzy:My mum saw it before I did, she gave me a heads-up. Are you okay?
Cat:Wish I could give you a hug right now.
Briar:I don’t know who I’m more pissed at—Camila, or whoever leaked the video.
I could happily punch the piss out of who sold it, but my anger didn’t mostly lie with them.I’m fine, just want to cut a bitch up. I’m personally more pissed at Camila. If she’d kept her mouth shut, this wouldn’t have happened.
Izzy:What did she say?
I gave them a rundown of the conversation, adding:If our bodyguards weren’t so quick to intervene, she probably would have slapped me when she tried lunging for me.
Cat:That hoe. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a hand in making sure the footage found its way to the press. It would be a stupid move, but she’s petty that way.
No arguments there.
Briar:Is Kaiser pissed?
Chewing on my lip, I replied:Probably. I haven’t spoken to him. He isn’t taking my calls. I’m hoping he doesn’t think I’ve pulled a Peyton.
Briar:Shiiiiiiit yeah she had a scrap with one of his exes, I forgot about that.
I typed:It wasn’t a real fight. They staged it to drum up some publicity.
Cat:Seriously? I’d like to think he knows you better than to suspect you’d ever do something like that.
So would I, but it didn’t matter either way, did it? We had no future. And what wedidhave would fast come to an end.Even if he does, I’m thinking he’ll still choose to bow out of our arrangement now.
Izzy:Why?
I replied:The internet has blown up with news of the footage. He won’t want any part in all that media attention, but it’ll still touch him. He’ll resent that. He’ll pull away.No more coming to my house, no more even pausing his car outside my gates, no doing anything that could feed the fire.
Briar:You don’t know that for sure. Don’t be so quick to think he’ll walk.
Well if he didn’t, I would. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t even want to think about it, let alone discuss it. Plus, there was a chance that they’d convince me to stick it out; to give him time to come round to the idea of ‘more,’ and I didn’t trust that I’d be able to hold out against them.
After finishing my conversation with my friends, I made one last ditch attempt to call Kaiser. The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
He didn’t answer.
Well fuck you, too, asshole.
It was tempting to text those exact words to him, but I slung my phone on the mattress instead.
Right then, I recalled the first time I’d come across Camila. She’d turned up at his home when he’d refused to take her calls. What was it he’d told her?
“You’ve got nothing to say that I’d wanna hear.”
Apparently, that now also applied to me. And I didn’t believe it was purely because he was pissed. My guess was thathe didn’t want to talk on the phone because he’d decided to end our arrangement and wanted to do it face-to-face.
Fine. Whatever. It didn’t matter.
Okay, that was a barefaced lie. It totally mattered. But I wasn’t going to mope about it. No. I was a big girl. I could handle it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t always been braced for the moment when our arrangement would end—it had been an inevitability from day one.
I’d never let a man fuck me up before—physically, or emotionally. I wouldn’t do it now either. No. I was going to pour my mental energy into something else; I was going to concentrate on the very reason I was in London: The concert.
