Violet squeezes my hand in thanks and I’m surprised we’re getting all touchy-feely. Is she becoming a friend? After what she did for me today, I think she must be.
“You’ll write more stories, Stella,” she says with confidence. “Maybe I’ll get a freelance assignment that you can write?”
We descend the subway steps and run our Metro passes through the turnstile. She has to go north toward Midtown and I’m headed crosstown toward Tyler’s Chelsea loft, so it’s time to part ways.
“If you call me, I’ll do it,” I promise her. “Like I said, I’ve got a very long vacation ahead of me.” I give her a weak smile and a wave, then turn down the corridor that will take me to the closest thing I have to a home.
Home. I exit the subway and walk several blocks west, but when Tyler’s warehouse comes into view, there are too many people on the street. Most are on mobile phones, several have cameras, and one woman is sitting on the curb typing on her laptop.
Oh, shit.
I want to turn around and run, but they’ve already spotted me, two of them pointing and whispering. Should I pretend I don’t see them? Should I pretend I’m going somewhere else? I consider walking past the pack of reporters but a heavyset man blocks my path.
“Are you Stella Ramsey?” he asks. Two more reporters take his flank.
“She is.” A woman elbows her way around him. “Stella, what does Kim Archer’s baby mean for your relationship with Tyler Walsh?” She shoves a compact recorder beneath my chin and I take a step back.
I need Tyler here, right now. I need to lean on him the way I did at the premiere, but a camera is clicking fast in my face and my tears from the tattoo parlor probably left ugly streaks down my cheeks that are easily misinterpreted.
“Excuse me.” I push past the woman, digging in my purse for keys with my unbandaged hand.
The flock of reporters closes around me as I approach the warehouse door. “Do you live here, Stella? Are you Tyler’s girlfriend?”
I punch keys into the door locks frantically, trying to throw each bolt to escape this assault.
“Are you pregnant too? Did Tyler pressure you to have sex?”
I drop my keys and bite back a curse, snatching them from the ground before someone grabs them.
“Why is your wrist bandaged? Did Tyler hurt you? Did you hurt yourself?”
The questions grow louder and uglier but I hide my face, trying desperately to come up with something to make them go away.
Feeling the last lock click open, I turn and smile sweetly, summoning a lie with all the composure I can muster. “Tyler’s practicing with his band in Brooklyn today. Their new album is going to be amazing.”
I crack open the door and edge through it as cameras follow my movements and try to capture a look inside. I nearly crush some guy’s hand wrapped around his camera as I yank the door closed and throw the locks back into place.
My heart and head are pounding and I collapse in a puddle on the bottom step. This is too much. My gut seethes with hatred for the woman who exposed Tyler to the tabloids.
Being chased, harassed, and taunted with questions. Is this the way Tyler will have to live his life? And for how long?
TWENTY-EIGHT
The loft smells musty when I get inside and it’s quiet. I pour a glass of water in the kitchen and lean against the counter while I drink it down. Other than some dirty dishes in the sink and a pile of newspapers and magazines near the couches, I don’t see signs of life.
I check my phone. No texts. No voicemail. My e-mail shows nothing from so-called friends from work, and I’m not yet ready to post anything on Facebook. I need time to lick my wounds in peace.
Yoga. That’s what I should do to quell the angry buzz in my chest that can’t let go of the sting from today. You’re fired. As I change into a yoga outfit in my makeshift bedroom I hear something clatter above me.
“Tyler?” I take the stairs to Tyler’s bed loft two at a time and he’s sprawled on the bed in his boxers.
“Heh—hey,” Tyler says, “whatchu doin’ home?”
Home. There’s that word again. It speaks of promise and permanence and it makes me ache with want.
Tyler’s grin is watered down, his arms are floppy and his speech is slurred. Great. He’s drunk. I imagine his day has been far worse than mine, and after this morning, I can’t judge.
“There are a bunch of reporters downstairs. And fucking Kim Archer is everywhere, all over the news.”
“Fuckin’ Kim Arsha,” Tyler repeats, slurring her name. “Everywhere.”
“Did you—is that baby is really yours, Tyler? I mean, if it is, if she is, why don’t you take responsibility for her?”
“I gave her ten thousan’ dollas,” he says, his eyes rolling up to the ceiling. “I jus’ wan’ her to have a good life.”
The admission punches me in the gut. Ten thousand dollars. More money than any normal person has lying around, and he gives it to a woman who dragged his name through the mud and made his life hell in the last twenty-four hours. Shit.
“Why are you hiding from this, then? If the baby is yours, why don’t you just say so and let the media have its day? They’ll move on to another story if you just tell them the truth.” Tears sting my eyes, angry that Tyler hid the truth from me.
He didn’t trust me enough to tell me. That hurts. Ire stirs in my gut and I clench my teeth against words I’ll regret.
“I can’t tell ’em the truth. I don’ even know what it is.” Tyler looks like he might cry, but his body is leaden and he makes no move to reach for me.
And that’s what I want so desperately right now, someone to hold and comfort me after my hellacious day. I’m so distraught I can hardly look at him.
“Fine. Then just hide up here and pretend it’s not happening.”
“It’s not …” he trails off.
“It is, Tyler. That woman made you look like you abandoned your child and you just gave her thousands of dollars? You didn’t trust me enough to tell me about it, but when it’s all over Twitter, you expect me to step up and defend you. Like you said, Tyler, you’re either all in or you’re not. Because you can’t have it both ways!”
I pound down the stairs and the tabloids on the coffee table scream at me. It’s worse than I thought—Kim Archer is everywhere, her fluffy blonde hair shining around her face as she cradles her toothless baby girl.
Tyler’s baby.
Bold quotes blare from the edges of the story, accusations that Tyler is shirking his responsibilities, that he’s a deadbeat dad.
But these barbs don’t mesh with the Tyler I know, the sweet, kind man who would do anything for his friends. Hell, he’d do anything for me: open his home, pluck gravel from my knees, hang curtains—orange, because it’s my favorite color—and even rescue me from some stupid Lothario in a bar.
He’d do anything but tell me the truth.
And that’s when I realize this sweet little charade of playing house is over. It has to be. If I’m going to rescue any shred of my dignity, I’ve got to get on with my life. I can’t keep freeloading, letting him rescue me, settling for the scraps Tyler’s willing to share.
I have to fly with my own wings.
I pack my clothes in a rush, desperate to leave this place before weakness and want overtake me. Dixon’s texts from last night haunt me—Tyler’s willing to drag me through hell to protect himself.
The evidence is there at the door to his warehouse, a media feeding frenzy that paints me as the other woman and already cost me my job. When this story is over, what will Tyler do?