Rage filled my chest.
All week, it had been creeping closer and closer to the surface. I’d almost lost it on Michael at the studio. I’d almost come apart at the seams when Blaire was mobbed on Hollywood Boulevard. But now—now—it was here. A fire-breathing dragon like I hadn’t seen in years. Not since I had been in high school and taken it out on my dad for how everything had happened with my mom.
I slapped the camera away from Blaire even though that was breaking rule number one of dealing with the press. “Get the fuck out of her face!”
The reporter took a step back. I’d never made a scene with the press in all my years in the public eye. I’d kept it all carefully put together. The look of shock on her face said she hadn’t expected this to elicit that sort of reaction from me.
It would be the talk of the evening. Fuck if I cared. She was out of line, and she had to fucking know it.
“How dare you,” she began.
“No, how fucking dare you,” I snarled at her.
I turned my back on the rest of the interaction. There were cameras everywhere. And half of them faced the commotion I’d just made. Blaire stood frozen, as if she’d turned to stone at the very question. She’d lost all color in her cheeks, and fear crossed her face.
“Blaire?” I said tentatively, reaching for her.
She jerked backward out of my grasp. Sheer panic hit my stomach. She couldn’t look at me. She didn’t want me to touch her. What had that goddamn question triggered?
I needed to get her out of here. Even if we stayed at the event, I couldn’t have her here, in front of the cameras, a second longer.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I told her soothingly. “Do you want to stay?”
She shook her head. Yeah, I’d expected that.
“Okay. Okay. We’ll go. Let me text the driver to come back around.”
I gently touched her elbow. She flinched but let me direct her away from the rest of the cameras and inside the hotel. Security was tighter inside, and there were no cameras. I could already see everything spiraling out before us. This was going to be on TMZ in minutes.
The driver confirmed a new pickup location, and I shot off a message to English as well as my publicist, Barbara. No one was going to like this. I certainly fucking didn’t.
“The driver is coming around. There’s a side entrance we can take,” I assured her.
There was no response. She just stared off, as if she were caught in some nightmare. Her hands were around her stomach. Honestly, she looked sick.
“Blaire, are you okay?”
Her cerulean gaze met mine, and she swallowed before glancing away and muttering, “No.”
I gritted my teeth. I hated this. I couldn’t do anything to fix this. Everything was a mess. Here we’d thought we were going to control the narrative, and then, fucking somehow, the world had found out that she’d been pregnant. I hadn’t even thought about mentioning that to English. Fuck, we were so stupid.
A few minutes later, the limo pulled up to a side entrance, and I hustled a catatonic Blaire into the backseat. Luckily, no press had gotten wind of our retreat. So, we were in the clear as we drove through Beverly Hills.
English called once we were in the car. “Blaire isn’t answering.”
I glanced at my girlfriend. She’d scooted away from me in the car. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“She isn’t speaking.”
“Oh Christ. Is she okay?”
“No. No, she’s not.”
“Fuck. Okay, I’m heading to the hotel now. We’re about a half hour out. Just stay away from the press and the internet until then.”
“English, what the fuck happened?”
She sighed heavily. “Neither of you thought to tell me she’d been pregnant?”
“It was eight years ago. Only her mom knew. How could I have anticipated that the entire world would find out?” I huffed. “How did they find out?”
“Apparently, a Campbell Soup girl snooped through her medical records. There’s even an actual picture of her file that says she had an abortion roughly eight years ago. Which would have been when you were together or had just broken up.”
“A Campbell Soup girl?” I asked, low and furious.
“Yeah, you have some rabid, boundary-defying fans.”
“I’ll murder them.”
“Let’s not let that get on record.”
“I smacked a camera and cussed out a reporter. I’m already in shit.”
English was silent for a minute. “They must have really pissed you off. You always keep your cool.”
“I know,” I ground out. “Everyone crossed the line with this one.”
“Just take care of our girl, okay? I’ll be there soon to pick up the pieces.”
I said good-bye and then just kept an eye on Blaire as we veered through traffic to a back entrance of The Beverly Hills Hotel. She was still silent and looked like she was holding on by a thread.
We took the private elevator up to our suite, and she immediately swept to the window and stared out with her arms crossed.
“Blaire?”
Her shoulders heaved at the sound of my voice.
“Can we talk about this?”
A small, derisive laugh left her. “Now you want to talk about this?”
I bit my cheek to keep from saying anything stupid. Adrenaline still coursed through my veins. I would not take this out on Blaire. It was the rest of the stupid fucking world that deserved my wrath.
“Yes, I think we should talk about it.”
“Which part, Campbell? The pregnancy you didn’t want or the phone call you never returned?”
I froze at those words. The harsh reality of them. I hadn’t wanted a baby at eighteen. I didn’t know anyone who wanted a baby at eighteen. I’d been wrong to treat her the way I had to follow my dream, but the rest…
“What phone call?”
She choked. Her body tensed. “What phone call?”
The room was quicksand, and I felt myself sinking. I had missed something vital here. And I had no clue what it was.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You left Lubbock, and I called you. You were at work. You promised to call me back.”
I shook my head, trying to remember this. It had been eight years ago, and the details of my first few months in LA were fuzzy. I’d worked in a bar, and they’d had me up at all hours of the day. Not to mention the fact that I’d been drunk a lot. I had no recollection of Blaire ever calling me. I’d thought she had completely cut me off after I left. I’d deserved it.
“I don’t remember that.”
She turned to face me, and tears tracked down her perfectly done makeup. “You don’t remember?”
“No.”
“Great. Just great.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I remembered. Those first few months in LA are a blur. I don’t remember much, except exhaustion and alcohol.”
I was the dick who hadn’t called her when she’d been pregnant. I’d been young and so fucking stupid. I wished that I could take it back. When I checked in on her again and saw that she’d never had the baby, I’d known she’d gone through with an abortion after all. I’d been…relieved…and disappointed. I hadn’t known how to reconcile those reactions and figured reaching out would only make things worse.
“But this isn’t about a phone call, Blaire. You’re upset about the abortion. I didn’t know the reporter would bring that up.”
She took a step backward at the word. “That’s what you think I’m upset about?”
I held my hands out to her. “I know it’s upsetting, but it’s not like what the reporter said wasn’t true.”
Her jaw dropped at my words. Then, a split second later, she snapped her jaw shut and looked ready to erupt. Before she even opened her mouth, I realized that I’d said the wrong thing. The absolute wrong thing.
“I did not have an abortion,” she snarled. “I went in for my ten-week checkup, and the doctor said the baby had no heartbeat. I’d had a miscarriage, and the baby hadn’t left naturally yet. The doctor sent me home with pills to speed up the process.”
“Fuck,” I said.
“And I called you that day to tell you what happened. You answered and then promised to call me back. Then, you never did.”
“Blaire, I—”
She held up her hand. “You have absolutely no fucking clue what I went through. You weren’t there, Campbell. You weren’t there when I told my mom about the baby. When she tried to convince me to get an abortion and I yelled at her that I wanted to keep it. She thought I was insane. I only had her. My mom was the only person who knew and who was there for me. And you know she’s the worst person alive with these sorts of things. So, the day when it all happened, she was happy. It was the worst day of my life, and she was happy for me. She told me I could have my life back now.
“But all I knew was that you were gone.” Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she could barely breathe as she told me all about her hurt. “You were gone, and the baby—the only piece I had left of you—was gone, too. I wanted that baby, Campbell. I wanted to have that piece of you. And on the worst day of my life, you couldn’t even call me back.”
I felt sick. She’d had to go through all of that alone. All of that without me. And even when she’d reached out, I’d fucked it all up.
“Blaire, I’m sorry. I know I can’t make up for it.”
She whirled away from me. “No, you can’t.”
“I wish I could change it.”
Her shoulders shook. “I was prepared for everything with you. I was ready to talk about our past. To be the ‘I See the Real You’ girl after years of avoiding it. I was ready for people looking into my business and past relationships. I was ready for all of that. I would have been okay with it all. But…not this.”
I swallowed hard, my throat closing at her words.
“This was too far. This was…over the line. I don’t know if I want this level of fame if people can dredge up an eight-year-old miscarriage and then feel okay, bringing it up as a talking point on the red carpet. I don’t think I can have that life.”
And how could I blame her? I’d wanted to shield her from the worst of it. It was why I had never told anyone who she really was. I’d respected her privacy. And then this had all gone down, and I didn’t know how to make the spotlight any easier for her.
“Blaire…”
“I want to go home,” she said softly with a sniffle.
“Okay. We can change and head into the Hills.”
“No,” she said abruptly. “No. I want to go back to Lubbock.”
“Okay. We’ll get a flight back together.”
“I want to go…alone.” She met my eyes as she said it and swiped at her tears.
This wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted her here. I wanted us to work it out. Had I been living in a dream the last couple weeks? Had everyone been right when they warned me about our relationship? Was it too much to hope that we could make this work when my life was in LA and it was this hellscape for her?
“We can fix this…”
“Please,” she said. Her shoulders slumped forward in on herself. “I just want to go home. I can’t do this.”
“This?”
Her eyes finally met mine. “Us.”
My body went hollow. “Us.”
I was an echo, but there was nothing else for me to say. My life was not all glitz and glamour. And she’d seen the dark side of it. Could I blame her for wanting to bail? Because I didn’t.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded.
“Don’t, Campbell. Please. It’s too much. You don’t know what it was like.”
“I don’t want to let you go,” I said, reaching out for her.
She took a step backward and shook her head. “I need time. Just…just give me some time.”
And her face was so crushing that I couldn’t do anything else. If she needed time, how could I deny it to her? She deserved it after everything I’d done in the past to fuck us up. I was the asshole here. Even if I’d do anything to fix it.
“Okay,” I said hollowly. “If that’s what you want.”