Page 102 of Most Eligible
I nod, proverbially very much shitting myself. A week—that’s all I have, until my name is tied to Rhett’s forever. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “Listen, I have to…” I stumble to my feet and gesture out of the bathroom. I run down the hall and skid downstairs to the kitchen, where Norbert is drinking a green juice.
“Georgia!” he says happily. “Want some? Best way to keep up your strength.” He holds out the green juice to me, but I shake my head.
“Norbert,” I start. I try to arrange my face into the most pleasant smile imaginable. “Can I use your phone? Today is my mom’s birthday and I really want to call her.”
It’s a thin lie, but he smiles fondly at me. “Well now, strictly speaking I shouldn’t, but… Why not bend the rules for your dear mum?” He reaches into a pocket of his cargo pants and hands the phone to me under the counter. “I’ll give you some privacy then. You best go outside, away from all the…” He gestures around to the cameras in the high corners of the room. Even if we’re not mic’d, you never know who’s watching. “And be back quick—don’t want Lainey to catch on.”
“Right. Thanks so much,” I say. I take the phone and start to leave the kitchen, but he calls after me.
“Ah—the password’s one, two, three, four!”
I chuckle and dart outside to the patio, then run down the steps to the beach. Collapsing in the sand, I fold my legs under me and watch surfers pop in and out of the waves for a minute before swiping open Norbert’s phone and typing in Serena’s number.
She picks up before the first dial tone ends. “Hello?”
“Serena, it’s me,” I say.
“So, did you like the piece?”
I ignore this, gritting my teeth. “How could you do this?”
“You lied to me,” she says silkily. “When I saw that picture of you and Rhett in Nashville I almost couldn’t believe it. But then it all made so much sense—what you said in Italy, about not publishing the stuff on him. And I know you tipped Roland off. Why else would he suddenly go public? You can’t expect me to give up the whole story—I had to go with the piece I still had.”
“So you just decided to ruin my life?”
She laughs. “Seriously? I’m hardly ruining your life. You’re going toblow upafter this.”
“Serena, just… just stop,” I say. I curl my toes in the sand and twist my hair around a finger, pulling tight. “I’m done. I’m done with this.”
“Seriously?” She scoffs, and it sounds so much like Addison that I wince. How could I not have realized what she was really like in all the years of our friendship? Maybe I’d been so caught up in her glow that I didn’t notice the shadows. “You’re choosing Rhett—aguy—over everything you’ve worked so hard for?”
“He’s not just a guy,” I snap, but my voice catches at the thought of Rhett. “Besides, that’s over now.” I’m reaching for a familiar comfort from her, one that I know now is not to be trusted. But something in me wants it all the same.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“What—of course I’m sure,” I say. Is she just trying to push the knife deeper?
“Because…” she trails off, her voice softening. I close my eyes in the silence, the sea spray brushing my eyelids. “I talked to him.”
My eyes fly open. “What?”
“I asked Rhett for a comment before I went live with the story.” I picture her flipping her dark hair over her shoulder, shrugging. “He told me to go to hell, so there was that.”
I laugh a little imagining it.
“He said to print all of it,” Serena continues. “But not the part about you.”
My mind flies back through everything that’s happened since I woke up in Italy to find the other side of the bed empty. It’s nearly impossible to believe that after everything, Rhett would still want to protect me, but my brain latches on to it and won’t let go.
“He said he didn’t want to get you involved in his mess,” Serena says. “He fought pretty hard, I’ll give him that. But how could I give up somethingthatjuicy?”
“So you’re about to expose me as some celebrity mistress?”
She pauses, and I can hear Presley mewing in the background. I can’t wait to see him when I’m home.
“It sounded like he really cares about you, G,” she sighs.
