Hollywood Rebel by Misti Murphy

Chapter Thirty-Two

 

Summer

My ankle gives way as Ethan hurries me across the stone driveway. My knees buckle. I don’t know what happened tonight. Everything was so… promising. And now it’s all ruined. I finally told Rebel I love him… and it all goes to hell.

Ethan grasps both my elbows and lifts me up. “I need you to get in the car, Summer.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I insist.

“Yes, you are.” He grabs the handle of the black town car and yanks open the door. “I told Rebel I would get you out of here before the police come and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“He needs a lawyer,” I say. “He needs a publicist. He needs me. I can talk to the police. Handle the media when they show up.”

“And say what?” He sets his jaw. Ethan has always been friendly to me, even when Rebel and I hated each other, but tonight he looks at me with a cold indifference that speaks volumes of how hurt Rebel is because I didn’t tell him about Marty. “There were witnesses a lot closer to the action than you were who will swear Rebel lashed out for no reason.”

“Did he?” It hurts to ask. I hate that it sounds like I doubt him. There’s no way he wasn’t provoked. I’ve watched him get angry and walk away. I’ve watched him hold back…for me. He doesn’t turn violent for no reason. He just doesn’t. And peeing on the guy? That’s some seriously messed up stuff if he wasn’t provoked. “Something happened. What happened?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to hear.” Ethan lets out a long breath and tugs at the back of his hair. “I’ll find out. Right now you need to go. He needs you gone.”

My heart squeezes so tight. I feel like I’m cracking down the middle and any moment now all my insides will escape and I will never be able to put all the pieces back. “I need to explain. About Marty—”

I should have done what he asked and cut her off from the get go. No, no. He needed that interview. He needs it more than ever now. He needs Marty’s hard-hitting style of reporting to get the truth out there and save his reputation from whatever Alec Hawthorne plans to make the world believe.

I should have been like a bull at a gate about it. I should have been in his face, pushing him. That’s how we work. We push each other to be better and do better. Why didn’t I do that? Why did I go behind his back?

I was so scared of how he’d react when I told him he needed to work with Marty, I didn’t factor in how much worse it would be if he found out before I told him.

“Not tonight,” he says.

“Of course not. But I can help,” I plead. This is my fault. Rebel wouldn’t have lashed out at that creep tonight if I hadn’t hurt him first. Okay, he might have. Alec Hawthorne is a piece of work. Even from across the room I could tell he baited Rebel into hitting him. But if he hadn’t been so angry with me I would have been beside him. I could have stopped this from happening. “Please let me help him. He needs someone to deal with the media.”

“He has me.” He starts texting on his phone. “And his lawyer. And his brothers. He doesn’t need you to handle the situation. He never needed you to do your job. He needed you to be on his side.”

“I am on his side.” My voice comes out a little strangled. I didn’t even think about it like that. I just figured I’d have time to figure out how to protect him and all the work we’d done. Because I love him. I do.

I finally admit that I love him and the whole world crashes down on us. It’s like being kicked in the vagina. Only the pain is in my chest. And I’m pretty sure it’s my own foot that did the damage.

“I believe you.” Ethan’s voice softens. “But right now that doesn’t matter. You need to go home. You can’t be here for this. He doesn’t want you here. You have to go.”

He ushers me into the backseat before I can argue again.

Tapping the roof of the car, he orders the driver to take me to Rebel’s and closes the door.

I sink back into the leather seat, listening to the tires crunch on the gravel edge of the private road as we pull into traffic.

A few minutes later glittering blue and red lights fly past us as we turn in the direction of Rebel’s house. I dash away the wetness that is making it hard to see straight. I pull in a breath and hold it. My whole world is shattering around me and I don’t dare breathe out because I’ll break.

It’s over. We’re over. Rebel doesn’t trust me anymore and he doesn’t want me. Not as his publicist and not as his girlfriend. He thinks I betrayed him for Marty and my career. Maybe I did. But not in the way he thinks. I only wanted to help him.

“We’re here,” the driver announces when we reach the house.

“Thanks.” I slide out of the backseat and the car rolls on.

My feet are so heavy as I take the steps. My heart weighs a million pounds. I want to sink to the ground and not get up again.

“I fell in love, momma,” I whisper as I collapse on the steps and stare up at that bright little cheese ball moon. And now my heart is breaking. I thought he’d leave me if I let myself be vulnerable. And I was right. But it wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I should have handled it better. I should have been braver.

I’ve never felt as helpless as I do now.

The door crashes open behind me. Burke drops down on the steps beside me. “Are you okay, Little? Rogue got a text. Said Rebel was arrested. He and Riot went to the police station.”

I nod and gulp and sob. My cheeks are wet. These pesky tears won’t seem to let up. “He was.”

“What happened?”

“He broke up with me. He was so angry.” It’s not what he was asking and it’s not important right now. Rebel is in jail. That’s what I need to concentrate on. My phone is blowing up in my purse. Bernadette. Marty. Every journalist I’d been negotiating interviews with is probably calling to get the scoop on what happened this evening.

Just right now though, I need a moment to fall apart.

“Come here.” The aroma of hay and dust and saddle wax fills my senses as Burke crushes me to his chest. I gulp and want to tell him not to touch me. I’m porcelain. Highly breakable. One touch is enough to push me over the edge. He smells like my brother and home and comfort I do not want and can barely stomach right now. It sets off a whole new slew of waterworks.

He holds me while I sob and leave my mascara and snot all over his T-shirt. I don’t know how long we sit like that. With me crying and crying and crying like I’ll never stop.

I didn’t even do this after the attack when I was sixteen. Or when my friendship with Bray fell apart. Sure I shed a few angry tears but it was nothing compared to the way my heart wrings itself out over losing Rebel. I always thought I had my emotions under control. I was proud of my ability to hold it all together. That was my superpower. Tonight, crying might as well be an Olympic sport and I am going for gold.

“Rebel’s so angry at me and I don’t know how to fix it,” I say eventually as I wipe my face. “And I don’t know what happened tonight so I don’t know how I’m supposed to handle it from a publicity position.”

“You’ll talk to him and figure it out,” Burke says, like it’s so easy.

“I don’t think you understand. He broke up with me. He fired me. He doesn’t want to see me. He won’t talk to me.” I bite my thumb when my eyes start to water again. “I knew it couldn’t last, that’s why I didn’t want to fall in love with him in the first place. I tried so damn hard not to.”

“Little, you’ve been obsessed with controlling the narrative for so long. Somehow you convinced yourself that everything would go right as long as you kept an iron grip on it, but we both know that’s not how life works.”

“I wish it did.” Then my mom would still be here and my dad never would have walked out. Owen wouldn’t be all up in my business every chance he gets, and Bray wouldn’t have turned out to be a sleaze. And I could have lost my heart to a man who would have kept it forever no matter what mistakes I might make along the way.

Instead everything is a mess.

But perhaps that’s the point. Life is heartbreakingly messy and brilliant all at the same time, and if you always hold on so tight to what you can control you miss all the parts that really, really matter. Like falling in love with the most disagreeable but loyal man I could possibly have hoped to give my heart.

And he is loyal. To a fault. To his family. His friends. Me.

Until I broke his trust. This mess is mine. Because I was afraid to believe that he would stick with me for some reason that makes no sense at all now.

Mom was right about heartbreak too. I needed to experience this moment because until now I didn’t realize how far I would go for the man I love. No matter what happens between us—whether I ever get a chance to explain myself and apologize—I’m going to find a way to fix what happened tonight.

Burke kisses my head and stands up. “I’m going to make some coffee. Then I’ll call Rogue and find out what is happening.”

“I’m going to call Bernadette.” I open my purse to retrieve my phone. I need her vast knowledge and experience to get us out of this mess. Even if it means I might lose my job. “We need to work out how to get them to drop the charges against him. There has to be something we can do.”