Jenn sat on the couch in the living room, phone clutched in her hand. The headline on her screen read “Colton Nix’s New Bride: Professional Parasite.” The accompanying article accused her of clinging to every celebrity she could get her hands on, using them to try to get her break as a songwriter. Ever since the Modern Rock article—which had been very tastefully done—the celebrity gossip bloggers had become obsessed with her songwriting aspirations.
“Jennifer MacDonald has been trying unsuccessfully for years to get her big break,” the article stated. “Our source tells us that she repeatedly begged Katherine Hayes to record one of her songs. Apparently, Katherine didn’t feel her ambitious assistant had what it took, but Jennifer seized every opportunity to lobby for her own success.”
A photo gallery followed, showing Jenn with various powerful players in the business—most of them men—and alleging that she’d tried to use her connections through Kate to push her agenda as a songwriter. That she’d tried to sleep her way to the top. That she’d finally succeeded when she married Cole.
Tears pricked behind her eyes.
How dare they…
A key jingled in the back door, and she lurched to her feet. Cole walked in, looking so ridiculously sexy in his dark-wash jeans and fitted T-shirt that her stomach tingled for a whole different reason. But the article…and there were more. Her phone kept dinging with notifications.
“Have you seen?” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat to cover it.
“That I’m the King of Tiny Dix again?” he asked, an ugly sneer on his face. “Yeah, Jorja just texted it to me.”
“What?” She looked down at her phone. A new article had just popped in, alleging that Cole had cut a deal with Jenn: she’d pose as his wife to hide his impotence problem if he helped launch her songwriting career. “No, that’s not what I—”
“It was all for nothing, then, right?” he said, heading for the bar to pour himself a drink. “All the good press we managed to generate over the past few months, and poof…I’m the King of Tiny Dix again. It just never ends.” He stared into the amber depths of his glass before tipping it up and downing it in a single gulp.
“This isn’t about you,” she said, her voice gone raw and hoarse. “Did you read the other articles? Did you see what they called me?”
He poured himself another drink. “No.”
“They called me a parasite and a slut. They said…they said I slept with every famous face they could find a photo of me with, that I kept at it until I finally found a man willing to sing one of my songs.” Her voice cracked again, and her grip tightened on the phone in her hand. It was all she could do not to fling it across the room, not to run at him kicking and screaming for being such a selfish jerk.
He turned toward her, the expression on his face one of regret. “Jenn—”
“Just don’t,” she said, blinking past the tears that blurred her vision. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to get involved with someone like you. You chose this life where the press gets to pick you to pieces day in and day out, but I didn’t, and I never wanted it. Now my reputation is ruined before I even got a chance to put my name on a song.”
“Nothing’s ruined.” He walked toward her, arms extended as if to hold her.
She threw her hands out in front of herself, warding him off. “It’s all tainted now. I hate the way celebrity works. I hate everything about it.”
He stopped a few feet away from her, his expression pained. “It sucks right now, but they loved us yesterday, and they’ll love us again next week. You just have to—”
“Don’t tell me what I have to do!” Her phone sailed through the air, landing with a dull thump on the couch. “I’m being slut-shamed, and all you care about is the size of your dick!”
His jaw clenched. “That’s a hell of a thing to say, Jenn.”
“I’m just…I don’t know what to do.”
He bowed his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” Her voice faded to a whisper. “If anyone’s at fault, it’s me. I agreed to this whole mess when I knew it would probably blow up in our faces in the end. I’m the idiot who fell in love with you.”
The silence that followed her words was so deep, it seemed to echo through the room. Cole’s jaw had gone slack, and he stared at her out of eyes as deep and fathomless as the universe outside the window.
“Obviously you didn’t make the same mistake,” she managed finally.
“I—” He swallowed hard.
“Just don’t say anything, please,” she whispered, desperate to get out of his house before she broke down in front of him. “It’ll only make it worse. I’m going…I’m leaving. I’ll send someone to get the rest of my things.”
Her words seemed to jar him to life. “Jenn, don’t leave. Please…”
“I can’t stay here. I’m moving back to my apartment. It’s up to you whether we announce our separation now or later. I just…I can’t think about that right now. I’ll be in touch, okay?” She forced her feet to move, to walk over to the couch and retrieve her phone. And then, with her broken heart lodged painfully in her throat, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
What the fuck just happened?
Cole stood there for a long time staring at the door, trying to reconcile the last thirty minutes of his life. The tabloids had resurrected his god-awful nickname. They’d said even worse things about Jenn. She’d told him that she loved him. She’d left him.
Fuck.
The look in her eyes… It would haunt him forever. She’d been hurt so badly, and he hadn’t done a damn thing to help. He hadn’t been there for her. He hadn’t backed her up. He hadn’t said a fucking word when she told him she loved him.
And now he’d lost her.
Which was absolutely ridiculous, because she’d never been his in the first place. This was all a mistake. They’d had a contract.
He didn’t know how long he stood there in the living room, just staring at the door she’d left through. His phone rang in his back pocket, and he let it go to voice mail. His notifications dinged again and again. His whole body felt numb except for the piercing pain in his chest, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.
By the time Jenn reached her apartment, the pain behind her eyes had dulled to an ache. It had been stupid to run out on Cole like that, without even packing a bag. She had plenty of things still at her apartment, but all her toiletries, her favorite clothes…
Well, it didn’t matter. She was here now, and there was no undoing anything that had happened. She’d been slowly dying inside for the last few weeks, ever since she realized she was in love with him because she knew he’d never love her back. Of course he had feelings for her. She didn’t believe for a moment that he’d faked anything when they were together, but he’d also never wavered in his insistence that they go their separate ways at the end of their contract. He thought marriage led to misery, and as long as he held that belief, it would poison their relationship no matter what.
But she’d told him she loved him, so if there was any chance that he wanted to fight for their relationship, the ball was in his court now. She sat on the couch by the window, feeling utterly lost. She needed to call someone, to talk through everything that had happened, but the only person who knew the truth was Kate, and she couldn’t call her about this. Not now. And the thought of trying to explain the entire situation to Farrah or Lucy was just too much. Her brain was already at capacity.
So she did the most un-Jenn-like thing imaginable: she set her phone to “do not disturb,” climbed into bed, turned on the TV, and curled up under the covers. She dozed, cried, and watched a marathon of The X-Files while eating her way through every snack food in her pantry (which wasn’t that much considering she hadn’t lived here in three months).
Eventually, Mulder and Scully made her even more depressed, though, because despite the fact they clearly loved each other, they just wouldn’t get it on. So she switched to House Hunters and watched people with way too much money losing their minds over open floor plans and crown molding. When her stomach began to growl for something more substantial than stale chips, she ordered Chinese for delivery without getting out of bed.
She slept restlessly that night, tormented by her stupid brain that refused to quit rehashing every moment of her argument with Cole. “I’m the idiot who fell in love with you.”
Her dreams filled the deafening silence that followed her confession with a variety of alternatives. In one, he’d been so busy yelling about the articles about his dick size, he hadn’t even heard her. Another dream had him quietly telling her how sorry he was that he didn’t love her back. Then she dreamed that he’d taken her into his arms and told her he loved her too. She woke with her arms clenched around her pillow, tears streaking her cheeks.
Then she chucked the pillow across the room.
Hoping to drown out the chaos in her brain, she turned the TV back on and dozed for the rest of the night to the tune of various infomercials. She woke the next morning feeling like complete crap. Her eyes were sore and puffy, and her head ached from too little sleep and too many tears. As awful as she felt, she wished she had to work today. As it was, the day stretched ahead of her, impossibly long and empty.
She couldn’t sit here in her apartment all day. She’d lose her mind.
Instead, she showered and dressed, mentally organizing a checklist of things to be done. She would call the movers and schedule them to bring her stuff back from Cole’s, then she’d go shopping to restock her kitchen, and then maybe she’d call Farrah or Lucy and see if they were around. She needed to talk to someone because her brain was still churning, her heart still a big, broken mess.
Ugh. This was so not like her.
Her phone rang, and she lurched upright. Only two people were set to ring through when it was on “do not disturb,” which meant—
“Kate?” she answered in surprise, heart still in her throat over the thought of Cole calling. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Kate said, “but how are you?”
“Um…” She heard the waver in her voice. “Not great. How did you…?”
Kate sighed. “I saw the headlines about you and Cole. I’m so sorry.”
“They’re already reporting that we broke up?” Jenn leaped off the couch, one hand pressed to her forehead.
“What?” Kate’s voice rose. “Shit, no. I just saw the crap about you being a parasite, and Cole… You guys broke up?”
“We had a big fight yesterday after we saw the news.” Her heart was still beating too fast. Her whole body seemed to pulse with it. “I was upset about the things they’d said about me, and Cole seemed more preoccupied about his stupid Tiny Dix nickname.”
“Oh, Jenn,” Kate said. “I wish I were in New York so I could give you a big hug. So how did it get from shitty headlines to you guys breaking up?”
“Because I blurted out that I was in love with him,” she paused, “and he didn’t say it back.”
There was a beat of silence on the line.
“Whoa,” Kate said finally. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“But I’ve seen the way he looks at you. It’s impossible to be in the room with you guys and not see that you’re crazy about each other.”
“The thing is, he’s got it in his head that marriage ruins relationships. Both of his parents have been married multiple times, and I think he grew up in a really toxic environment because of it. I’m not sure he’ll ever change his thinking on that.”
“Hmm,” Kate said. “Well, as someone who was once as screwed up about love and marriage—maybe more so—I still think there’s a chance he might come to his senses.”
“I’m not holding my breath.” Her throat closed painfully, reducing her voice to a whisper.
“What are you doing in the meantime?”
She blew out a breath. “I guess…I guess I’ll just move on. It really pisses me off, you know? I finally take the first steps toward becoming a songwriter, and now it’s all tainted.” The very idea that she’d tried to sleep with powerful men to gain favors…
“Well, that part’s just not true,” Kate said firmly. “Those gossip blogs will say anything to drive traffic to their sites, but no one will remember any of it in a few days. And the people who matter aren’t reading it—or believing it—in the first place. You’ve met a lot of important people over the years, Jenn, and they all know that you’re as professional as they come.”
“I guess.”
“Just think of all the unflattering things that have been printed about me over the years,” Kate said. It was true. Kate had been called pretty much every disgusting thing that could be said about a woman, and then some. “I bet Cole will still record the songs you guys wrote together. He’d be crazy not to. And I want to work with you too. If the two of us sing your praises, you’ll have no trouble finding work. Trust me.”
“I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”
“Jenn, how long have you known me? If I tell you I want to work with you, it’s because I mean it. I’ve watched YouTube videos of Cole singing your songs. I’ve seen you up there onstage with him. You’re talented. So own it, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Is there anything I can do for you in the meantime?”
“No. I’ll be okay, but thanks for calling. I really needed to talk this out.”
“Any time. To be honest, I’m going a little stir-crazy here in Malibu,” Kate said with a laugh. “So feel free to call anytime you want to chat.”
“Thanks. Really.”
After she ended the call with Kate, she went out and did her shopping. Then she took a breath and waded through the notifications on her phone. There were more headlines today—including a rumor about their breakup. Apparently, some paparazzo had already spotted her back here at her apartment. Oh well, let them talk.
Her mom had called, along with two of her sisters, Farrah, and Lucy. There was only one person who hadn’t called, the only person she’d hoped would call. Because no matter what had happened and everything that had been said, she couldn’t stop thinking about him, wanting him, loving him.
How was she ever going to get over him?