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The day is, unsurprisingly, a shit show.
I’m on autopilot, unable to escape dissecting how this disaster happened. Where was that camera-toting bastard hiding? I checked and there was no one on Ashley’s street.
Kate’s statement about her dog backfires. Her fans go rabid, believing I was fucking my ex, while Kate was caring for her sick dog.
We get updates from our people throughout the day, and I can tell from David’s face that I do not want to see what’s being said about me online.
The dog is expected to make a full recovery, but Kate smiles through watery eyes and even the makeup people can’t hide that she’s been crying. Every single reporter gives her the softest look before giving me a cold glare. Not one asks us about it since the topic is off-limits, but I can see what they think.
By the end of the day, I’m easily the most hated man in Hollywood.
“Well, today was a total disaster,” David says, letting himself into my suite with a twelve-pack of beer and a pizza. I’m not willing to go out in public—not until this dies down a bit. “Have you talked to Ashley yet?”
I rub the back of my stiff neck. “No.” I need to call her. She’s blown up my phone.
David puts the pizza down on the table, opens the box—pepperoni and pineapple—and pushes it toward me. “You cannot tell your trainer I enabled you.”
“Fuck Jax and the studio,” I grumble, grabbing for the beer that also isn’t on the list of approved foods. They can deal with whatever one pizza and half a pack of beer is going to do to me.
David sits down and takes a beer for himself. He must drink half of it before he sets it down with a satisfied thump and asks the question he must know has been plaguing me all day. “Do you think Ashley set you up?”
“No.” I don’t, although the similarity to the day we met is impossible to ignore. But when I left her house she was happy, satisfied.
Except in the picture that dickhead captured. She looked sad.
“No,” I say again, louder. “She wouldn’t do that to me.” Except she did that to Nic, and she loved him. She doesn’t love me and right now, I fucking hate Nic.
David isn’t convinced, but he shrugs it off and grabs a piece of pizza. “So…how do you want to play this? You’re back with Ashley? Or—”
“I don’t know.”
He leans forward, elbows on the table, eyes on Michael’s watch still fastened around my wrist. “Can I be honest?”
I nod, although I doubt I want to hear this.
“You’re not Michael.”
It lands like a truck.
David opens his mouth to say more, and I cut him off. “I’d like to be alone, if you don’t mind. I have a phone call to make.”
Hurt crosses his face, but he shakes it off. “Call me if you need anything.” He takes his half-eaten slice of pizza and half-empty beer and walks out the door.
I push the pizza box away, drop the heavy watch on the table, and finish off my beer.
There’s a part of me that doesn’t believe any of this is real, and another part of me that knows this is the consequence of not thinking with my head. I shouldn’t have gone to her place. Probably shouldn’t be seeing her at all.
I pull out my phone and dial her number. I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I want to say it before the anger gluing me together fails.
“Hey,” Ash says softly, answering immediately, “I was getting worried.”
I glance at Michael’s watch. It’s nearly midnight here. Not so late in LA, but she’s been expecting me. “Did you do this?” I ask tightly.
“No.” That’s all she says, but there’s disappointment in that one word. She doesn’t need to say more. She’s hurt I had to ask.
And I believe her. She didn’t do this, but she’s also not dealing with the fallout like I am.
“You think I would do this to you?” she asks after a long stretch of silence.
