AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ryan!” she calls out to me and my eyes snap to hers.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I answer honestly.
Olivia lets out a deep breath.
“I want you to tell me why it seemed like a good idea to make out with Juliet in a public place, Ryan. I want you to make me understand why you would pursue her. Why would you choose to mess around and play your little games with someone who had the potential to be successful with us? Did you truly not realize what the ramifications of this would be or did you just not give a shit?”
As if the massive hole in my chest wasn’t painful enough already, the insinuation that I didn’t care about what our affair meant for Juliet multiplied that pain by a million.
“Of course I fucking care,” I grit out through closed teeth.
I have no right to be pissed at Olivia. How could she possibly understand how I’m feeling or what my time with Juliet meant to me? Nobody had any clue what was going on between the publicist and me, but hearing this, the accusation that it was just some fling? It was infuriating.
It may have begun that way, but things had changed. It wasn’t just one of my “little games” at all, things with Juliet were different.
My manager drops her head down and covers her face with one of hands before muttering something under her breath. She seems to be counting in her mind, as if she’s trying to get her anger in check before she rips my head off.
“Look, Ryan, we’ve known each other for a long time, and you’re like family to me. But that also means I know you. It means that I’ve seen how you operate, how you treat women. I’m sure it seemed like harmless fun but she was good. Juliet had so much potential, and I just had to fire her because you couldn’t keep it in your damn pants.” She smoothes out her skirt and leans back against the chair. “Not to mention the poor girl looked like a shell of herself when I dropped her off at the airport.
My chest heaves again.
“What did you say to her?” I ask, the accusatory tone in my voice unintentional but I can’t help but feel defensive over Juliet. I don’t want her getting slammed by this over and over while I sit here unable to help.
Olivia raises a brow. “Nothing she didn’t already know. She handled herself with poise. That only made me angrier though. Angry because I don’t want to let her go, and I sure as hell don’t want Valerie taking over.”
“How was—what did she say about it? About me?”
I don’t look at Olivia when I ask the question, instead leave my eyes trained at my feet.
“She explained how it happened, how you two met before the meeting. How you manipulated the situation to get their firm in front of me. Then she explained that she tried to resist it, but she failed. That she wished it was the truth to say if she could do it over again that it wouldn’t happen, but it wasn’t. She’d probably do it again. I, however, was very honest with her about how a scandal like this impacts someone like her as opposed to you. It isn’t the same. Your career thrives off being seen as the unapologetic womanizer who landed yet another conquest. But for her? This is the shit that kills a career for someone like her. She understands that.”
I can feel my heart rate speeding up as my mind processes her words.
“I asked if she was in love with you,” Olivia admits.
Now that gets my attention and my eyes snap back to hers. She can tell what I want to know without the words leaving my lips.
“She didn’t know if she was or not, but said that it didn’t matter. I believe her exact words were something along the lines of you being on an‘entirely different wavelength’than her, and that it wasn’t something that would change. She also mentioned that when confronted with that, you didn’t disagree.”
You fucking coward.
I replay the elevator doors closing, her tear stained face disappearing from my view.
“She’s wrong,” I whisper, and Olivia narrows her gaze.
“Wrong about what?”
I stand and make my way to the window.
“About shit not changing. She changed everything. I was just too fucking scared to admit it. I’m fucking terrified of messing up her life, of hurting her.” My fist connects with the wall to the left of the glass. “Fuck!”
“Ryan!” Olivia gasps at the impact.
“You don’t get it, I wasn’t toying with her. I didn’t just want to fuck her. I wanted to be with her all the goddamn time. To talk to her about shit, to just lay there and have her in my arms. I liked listening to her get all excited when a new idea would pop into her mind, and seeing the stars in her eyes when she ended up being right. Juliet isn’t like anyone else I’ve ever known, and when she looked at me, she fucking saw me. Not Ryan Knox the rock star. She saw the real me.”
Olivia stands and closes the space between us to place her hand on my shoulder.
“Ryan, I—”
