“But it’s better than doing nothing. I’ll do however many interviews it takes to make them believe. We just need to figure out how to handle right now first.”
I look at him through tear-filled eyes and try to sound certain in my words. “There is no handling to be done. What will happen is I’ll go home to sort out the bakery, and you’ll go to New York because you have a table read tomorrow. I wouldn’t want you to lose the part because you missed it. I don’t need to be coddled, Hayes. I’ve lived my adult life without you, so I don’t need you holding my hand now.” I hate the flash of fury in his eyes from my comment, but it’s the truth. The sound of me closing the zipper on my suitcase in the quiet of the room reinforces my words. “I’m going to head to the airport now. Try and get an earlier flight back so I can get Sweet Cheeks back on track.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No.” I laugh but there is no amusement in the sound. “I want to go by myself. If you rush back with me, they’re going to think we’re upset and trying to cover something up. Someone will comment that you missed your reading. Assumptions will be made as to why. The last thing we need right now is to give them more fodder for their lies.”
“I don’t give a fuck about their lies.” His voice thunders into the room and echoes back to me. His rage is so raw, his emotion so real.
“I know you don’t, Hayes. But please . . . you may be used to this . . . but I’m not. Not any of this. Just let me go on my own. Let me be a nobody in the shadows a little longer. I need time to process. To sort through it all. To get home and be in my own space and—”
“Why are you making this sound like a goodbye, Saylor?” His hands on my cheeks don’t allow me to avert my gaze from his like I want to.
“It’s not. But I don’t know if I can survive in your world, Hayes.”
He presses a kiss to my lips. It’s tender and simple and yet loaded with so much feeling behind it that a single tear slips down my cheek. My heart aches. My mind is so confused. Every part of me is scared about walking away and never seeing Hayes again. Of never getting the feeling back that we had this weekend.
The love he feels for me is clear in his eyes. He rests his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling, our eyes closed, our hearts understanding they are about to break apart. “Please don’t do this, Say.”
A second tear slides down my cheek. I love you, Ships. My heart needs to hear him say the words. Give me something permanent to hold on to when I do what I need to do.
Walk away.
But he doesn’t say them.
“I need some time to decide if I can. Goodbye, Hayes.”
The plane ride home was an exercise in how to cry silently without anyone else on the plane knowing. The pictures and headlines of the tabloids littering the airport newsstands were horrible. The hurtful things they’d said replayed on a loop.
Image after image. Headline after headline. Lie after lie.
It was like the comments from the wedding reception on a loud speaker. On repeat. Each one worse than the last one.
And as much as I’d wanted to buy every single tabloid there—take them all so I could prevent others from seeing them, and read every single line to know what I’m up against, I didn’t. I resorted to sitting in a quiet corner obscured by a trashcan with my face shadowed beneath a baseball cap so I could read them all via the shoddy airport Wi-Fi on my phone.
It was lovely (insert sarcasm here) to see Mrs. Layton weigh in with her opinions about me in one of the articles. The jilted ex-fiancé Mitch as well, because who knew the timing of Hayes’s and my previous relationships and issues had both followed a similar timeline? So when Mitch said he suspected I was screwing around behind his back, he’s not surprised it turned out to be true.
Therefore, I’m not someone who broke up only Hayes and Jenna’s relationship, but my cheating ruined mine as well. And of course there was nothing about Hayes in their articles. The pitchforks previously aimed at him are now directed at me.
Fucking. Me.
And the stories, the headlines, just kept getting more creative, more slanderous from there. Painting me as a horrible person for breaking up the couple who the public had unceremoniously crowned Hollywood’s It Couple.
Sitting in the airport I felt so incredibly alone and vulnerable. I would have given anything to call my mom and hear her soothing voice tell me everything would be all right in the end. To have her order me to throw the tabloids into the trashcan I was sitting beside and reassure me that no one in the airport was staring at me. To wrap her arms around me, murmur that everything happens for a reason, and that sometimes it takes time to know what that reason might be. And then to have Dad take the phone from her and tell me one of his god-awful Dad jokes to cheer me up. Remind me that all men are idiots and that’s why God created women.
God, I missed them.