After All(96)

Heat drums through my veins, my face growing hot. "How do you know we broke up?"

She shrugs. "I figured. Why would she stay with you after what she saw? You were thrown to the curb like garbage, weren't you?"

I jerk back, staring at Autumn with new eyes. There's something off here about all of this, something I can't put my finger on. An unwarranted viciousness. If only I could think faster.

"Whatever is between Alyssa and I stays between Alyssa and I."

"If you don't pay, you'll shame her all over the world. People will laugh at her. Do you really want that?"

Fucking hell. No. I don't. And that's the only thing that's been holding me back on all of this. I don't want her to be humiliated. But I've tried to get a hold of her ever since she left my place, I even stopped by her apartment but her roommate was adamant she wasn't home. I can't figure out what she would want me to do.

But I think I know what I have to do.

"Alyssa is tougher than you think. Far tougher than you. She'll handle it with grace. She's not the bad guy here anyway, I am."

Autumn's eyes narrow into slits. "If you do this, you void the contract. I'll make sure of that. And you'll still have to pay her."

"Fine with me. She earned it."


      ///
       
         
       
        

"And you'll have to pay me my bonus early. That's in the contract too."

I raise my brow. I'd forgotten that bit. It wasn't much, ten grand, but it's odd that she's reaching for it. Guess she knows what's coming next.

"That's fine."

"And then I'm no longer representing you as a client."

"That's fine too."

She stares at me in disbelief. "So just like that, you'll let me walk away?"

I frown, puzzled. "I guess so. Your services are no longer needed."

She shakes her head, a strange look of pain across her face. "You can't do this. You can't do this to me. You have to pay the fifty thousand and then you can walk but you can't … this isn't … "

Jesus Murphy. Is this what I think it is?

"Emmett … ," she whimpers, leaning across and putting her hand on my knee. "I've been a part of you since the beginning. I've helped you and you've helped me and I know you care, I know you do. You don't have to pretend anymore that I'm just your publicist, you can drop that act. You can walk away from her, but you can't walk away from me, you can't."

I stare down at her hand, frozen for a moment, until I move my legs to the side and slowly get to my feet. "It was you," I say softly as everything slides into place. "You got me drunk, you kissed me because you knew a photographer would be there. You knew because you hired him. You hired him because you are Kristoff Gantz, you wanted the money because you knew I'd leave you."

It feels like I'm reaching here. It feels like I'm just pulling this out by the seat of my pants and hoping for the best. But as crazy and ridiculous as it all sounds, I know it's the truth. You know the truth when you hear it, when you see it, and it's right in front of me.

She just shakes her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Emmett," she says, but she can't say anything else.

And that's the whole truth. For all I know, she probably arranged for the photos of me and Alyssa to be taken to begin with, a lucky guess I'd hook up with someone, who knows. Something to endear me to the public, to make her more important, to make me more important, to further the both of us at the expense of Alyssa.

But I don't have time to sit here and figure it out. In a way, this has made a shitty problem a little less shitty.

"Go ahead and post the photos," I tell her as I pause behind her chair on my way out. "Do whatever. But I'm not paying it, I'm not paying you. Everything between us, real and imagined, ends right here and right now." 

"I love you Emmett," she says through a quiet sob.

I let out a dry laugh. "No you don't. You love the role you think you play, that's all."

Then I step outside into the rain and leave that act of my life behind.



* * *



"Damn, son," Will says before taking a lazy sip of his drink. "You definitely need that after everything." He nods at the Manhattan in my hand.

I exhale, my breath causing ripples in the liquid. I'd just spent the last hour with Will at the bar, unloading everything single thing that happened over the weekend, including what happened with Autumn this morning. I know he probably heard Alyssa's side of things from Jackie, but I figured he should know the actual truth and the play-by-play from me.