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“Fucking Geesha Riley! That’s what’s going on!” Cameron scoffs. “She put out a fucking hit piece on us! The same night the fucking album dropped!”
“…She did what?” Alyssa’s voice is low as she sits up on the couch. Her hands rake through her hair in a nervous gesture.
“This is all my fault, darling,” Rhys starts. He moves toward the couch, his arm hastily wrapping around her waist. “I’m so bloody sorry. I had no idea she was going to do something like this—”
“What did she say?” Alyssa asks, her eyes trained on Cameron. “What did she…tell everyone about me?”
“Fuck, okay,” Cameron continues scrolling through his phone. “Uh, she said…she said that she saw you with Rhys at that record label party? And…that’s when she knew that she needed to come forward and tell the truth.”
“Truth?” Rhys asks through gritted teeth. “And what fucking truth is that?”
“She says that everything with Alyssa coming on as a member of our band was orchestrated by you,” Cameron replies, his eyes still on his screen. “She says that…you were the one who showed her Alyssa’s songs online first…and that she should’ve known that you weren’t really interested in Alyssa for her music, that you were just looking for someone new to fuck.”
“Oh, so by telling the truth, she means telling a complete bloody lie.” Rhys’s laugh is bitter. “Of fucking course.”
“It gets worse.” Cameron frowns as he scrolls. “She says that you were playing mind games with her? That you were purposely…having sex with Alyssa…after inviting her over to your apartment. That you wanted her to beg for you back. And when she wouldn’t get on her knees and do what you wanted, you and Alyssa decided Alyssa would fuck her way to the top.”
Cameron pauses for a few seconds, before he finishes reading through the post. “Okay…fuck. She wraps it up by pretty much saying that Alyssa was in on the whole thing, too. That she knew you somehow in the past, like she was a wannabe singer who was hanging around the recording studio one day or something. And then, she…she calls Alyssa,” he holds up his hands in air quotes, “the ‘worst kind of woman.’ The kind of woman who would break another woman’s heart all for the sake of being a flash in the pan.”
“Fuck that!” I scoff, and stare over at Alyssa. “Don’t worry about this, princess. We’ll get Gregory right on it. All we need to do is release some PR statements of our own, and this whole thing should go away—”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Rhys replies, his voice sounding defeated. “Geesha’s fans…I mean, even if we put out a statement in the next five minutes, she’s already tried us in the court of public opinion, Van. And she found us guilty. Which means other people are going to find us guilty, too.”
“…And they’re going to read that same guilt into the album, too,” Cameron adds, his tone low. “Everything we put together…everyone’s going to think that Alyssa’s just singing about Rhys. Nothing she really has to say is going to even matter anymore.”
“…This is all my fault,” Alyssa says, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “I should’ve just…she told me to stay away from you, Rhys. I should’ve listened to her, for the sake of the band. For the sake of everything.” She breaks out into a sob as she goes on. “But I couldn’t stay away from you, Rhys. I…couldn’t stay away from any of you. And now, everything’s going to fucking pieces because I didn’t know how to just…keep my hands to myself.”
Tears are practically shooting out of her eyes. I’ve never seen anyone projectile cry before. Now my heart is breaking, seeing her like that.
“This isnotyour fault, darling.” Rhys tries his best to comfort her, even as her body shakes with another sob. “None of this is because of you. This is all because of Geesha, and her incessant fucking need to be the center of fucking attention. If anything, she was the one who used you. She wanted to make herself look better by plucking you out of the crowd. And then she wanted a narrative to keep everyone on her side, so you’d never have a chance to eclipse her.”
“Well, I guess she wins, then.” Alyssa lets out a pained laugh. “If that’s what she wanted, it looks like she got it.”
“…We need to get going,” I say as I nod toward Rhys’s front door. “That crowd downstairs isn’t going anywhere, and we need to fill Gregory in on all of this bullshit before it gets any worse.”
“You’re right.” Rhys nods right along with me, before a heavy sigh escapes his chest. “Fuck! How the fuck could this even get any more fucked up?”
Chapter 18
Alyssa
“Slut!”
“Homewrecker!”
“Backstabber!”
“Geesha was there for you! How could you?”
“I hope his cock was worth it, bitch! Because your career is over!”
“Don’t listen to them,” Rhys whispers. We navigate through the crowd, heading for the parking lot right across the street. “Don’t listen to a single word of their bullshit, okay, darling?”
I nod up at him, even though what he’s asking me to do is impossible. How can I not listen to what the people in the crowd have to say? Honestly, I’m not sure they’re even wrong about me, not if their assessment of me is based on what I’vedoneto Geesha Riley. I mean, it’s true, isn’t it?
Geesha was the one who discovered me, and I paid her back by sleeping with Rhys.
Again. And again. And again.
