Rumor Has It (Limelight) (35 page)

“No, he was clear he never laid a hand on her. Made some disgusting joke about how it wasn’t fun if they weren’t awake to fight you.”

“I knew he was a lot of things but even I didn’t think he was capable of something like this.”

“That’s not all,” she said.

“What the hell else could there be?”

Her lips pursed before she spoke. “He said Troy asked him to do it.”

“
Troy
?” I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying; it didn’t make any sense. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know…he just said that Troy told him to do whatever it took to lure her away from you.”

I didn’t know what to say. It was one thing to see how far a guy would go out of some misplaced sense of competitiveness, but why would Troy be in league with my biggest enemy?

“Is it possible he knew you were listening and only mentioned Troy’s name to cause more trouble?” I asked.

“I was behind a curtain. There’s no way he knew I was there. They’d just walked into the room.”

“Un-fucking-believable.”

“My success depends on my clients knowing I have discretion when I’m party to conversations I shouldn’t hear. I’ll be ruined.”

“Jas, relax. This’ll never come back to you. You have my word. You’ve risked a lot coming here. If Mac is bragging that openly then his buddy’s not the only one he’s told. He’s probably told anyone who’ll listen. I’ve always said the guy was out to get me but I never thought he’d go this far to do it.”

“I feel better now that you know. As soon as I heard it I knew I’d end up telling you. It took me a bit to work up the courage.”

“You’re a good friend.”

She got up from the couch and came over to give me a hug. “Good luck with Ellie. I hope it works out. She was good for you.”

At the mention of Ellie’s name, guilt for all the repulsive things I’d said to her came crashing down on me. She’d said someone had put something in her drink and I’d dismissed it as an excuse. How could she ever forgive me?

“Thanks. You should get going. Troy is on his way over.”

She hurried to the door of the suite, waved a quick good-bye in my direction and left the room.

She definitely needed to leave before Troy got here. I didn’t want any witnesses to what was about to go down.

By the time the next knock at the door came I knew what I had to do. I was primed and ready as I swung the door open to see Troy standing there in his suit.

“I wish they could film these bloody things at night instead of the middle of the afternoon. It’s killer wearing these suits in the California sun, man,” he said. I didn’t say a word but stepped back and swung the door wider so he could enter. “How come you’re not ready to go? You’re not wearing that are you?”

“Have a seat.” I directed him to the couch that Jas had sat on when she’d filled me in on what a duplicitous piece of shit the person in front of me was. The person I’d trusted to help build my career and look out for my best interests for more than five years.

“You’re going to need to get a move on if we’re going to make the red carpet,” he said glancing at his watch.

“I won’t be making the red carpet and neither will you.” He arched a brow. “Did you think I’d never find out? You got in bed with the wrong guy if you thought that fucker would ever be able to keep quiet about screwing me over.”

“What are you talking about, Mason?”

“I want to know why you did it.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here but you’re going to have to fill me in.” He sounded more agitated.

“That’s how we’re going to do this then? Okay, I’ll play.” I stood up and walked behind the chair, white-knuckling the back of it to contain the fury that consumed me. “You set Ellie up. Why?”

Troy stood from the couch with his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “Mason, please. I don’t know what you’ve heard but—”

“Stop lying to me! I know you got Mac to try to steal Ellie from me. What I want to know is what you said to him and why you did it.”

Troy’s face paled and a brief flicker of panic crossed his features. There. That’s what I was looking for. Any doubts or hopes I’d still harbored that the man I’d come to rely so much on hadn’t done such a terrible thing were erased.

He was silent for several long beats. “She would’ve ruined you in the end anyway.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I said low and menacing.

Gone was the ashen color, replaced by cheeks heated in anger and blazing eyes. “Please. You were so god damn pussy-whipped by that broad you were already doing her bidding. Joining social media when I’d been trying for years to get you to do it? Putting her on a track so she could collect royalties, turning down a TV show because it meant you two couldn’t get your cuddle time in for a few months. It was disgusting to watch you hand over control to her.”

“You sound like a jealous girlfriend.”

“I’ve worked hard to get you where you are today and I wasn’t about to watch you fuck everything up for some bitch.”

If I’d been any closer to him I would have punched him square in the jaw. “So you decided to get Mac involved.”

He shrugged. “He served a purpose. I knew if she was with Mac there’d be no chance of you taking her back or hearing her out.”

“Do you know what he did? He roofied her!”

Troy shook his head back and forth looking panicked. “I never told him to do that. I simply told him to—”

“What if he’d raped her?” My voice cracked at the end of the statement.

“He’s not a complete idiot. He never would’ve done that. He’d lose everything.”

“He still could. I don’t understand why he would’ve helped you anyway. I can see you’d hoped I’d take the TV show contract after Ellie was out of the picture. He was second in line for that, why would he help you make that happen for me?”

“You’re underestimating how much contempt he has for you. You’re like the bigger, smarter, more successful brother who gets all the attention from mommy and daddy to him. He feels like he’s always living in your shadow. I knew if I went to him with some story about how you and I were falling out and I wanted him to help me get revenge on you before I bailed, he’d go for it. Besides, he had no reason to think you wouldn’t take the show. It was just pay back to him.”

I’d gotten what I wanted from him. It was time to finish this. “You’re fired.”

“Nice try kid. You can’t fire me—we have a contract.”

“My lawyers are already working on a loophole to get me out of it. If you fight me on this I’ll drag it out in court so long it’ll take all your money to defend yourself. Not to mention what it would do to your name in this business if what you did gets out.”

“You little shit! After everything I’ve done for you? You wouldn’t even be in this business if it weren’t for me.”

“And I couldn’t be more grateful to you for everything you did for me up until a couple of months ago. I can’t trust you not to go behind my back and try to orchestrate things to your liking. And if I can’t trust you—I can’t work with you.”

“We can get past this, Mason. We’ve had a difference of opinion on how to handle a situation, nothing more.”

“I’ve made my decision. I’m not changing my mind. Get out of here. I can’t stand to look at your face anymore.”

Troy stood and stalked towards the door with his fists balled at his sides. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”

“I expected no less. Now get out.”

He nearly swung the door off the hinges, but he walked out slamming it behind him.

That’d gone the way I expected. It seemed odd that I wouldn’t see him again…at least not while he was working for me. He’d gotten me into the business and guided me for years. Without his influence I knew I wouldn’t be the success that I was. I owed a lot to him. But knowing what he did…going behind my back to manipulate me…I could never believe anything he said again. I didn’t believe he’d ever meant Ellie harm—he likely had no idea how Mac had planned to break us up. But I could never forgive him for putting her in jeopardy like that. I still had one asshole to deal with, and I’d do it, in time.

As I left the room to head for the airport I had mixed emotions. On one hand it felt like a new start, on the other I was sad to see an end to what used to be. Only time would tell whether all the changes would be good ones.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Heartbreak had made me a masochist. That was the only explanation for why I’d turned on the music awards in a lame and pathetic effort to catch a glimpse of Mason on TV.

It’d been months since he’d kicked me out of his life and I still couldn’t make sense of all that had happened and how quickly it had fallen apart.

I’d gotten my first lesson in real love—it sticks around. Although I hadn’t seen Mason in fifty-eight days—not that I was counting—it hadn’t diminished my feelings at all. Love was like a beach made up of a million grains of sand. When a wave rolled in a single grain was washed away, but it would take an eternity before all my love for Mason ended up in the sea.

I still held anger toward him for all the terrible things he’d said to me. I also told myself that I did know him, and for him to have acted like that, he must have been in a great deal of pain.

It was a solid month before I started functioning again. For a time I’d only gone to work, come home and made my way through the throng of photographers then laid in bed staring at the ceiling night after night. Yes, the press had camped outside my house for a few days. They’d started doing it at work, too. It turned out that Jeff’s asshole tendencies came in handy when you needed them because he’d managed to get them to leave. After a few days without a Mason sighting they must have figured they wouldn’t be getting any income-producing shots from my boring life and so they left.

The girls invited me out over and over again but I always refused. I stopped applying for jobs. It’s like everything stopped, and I repeated the same day over and over again. Eventually Skye and Katie performed a mini-intervention. It was the wake-up call I’d needed. I realized life was still going to exist whether I participated or not. Since then I’d gone out a couple of times with the girls—my evening still consisting of me checking my watch repeatedly to see when I could leave, but it was a start. I’d even begun applying to jobs again.

That didn’t mean Mason wasn’t still on my mind every day. He’d blocked me on all social media so I’d taken the pathetic step of opening an anonymous account to follow him. It gave me a sad kind of comfort to see his career doing well. I was becoming adept at inflicting pain on myself.

I had the house to myself so I sprawled out on the couch, tucked under a blanket like a child, as the awards show started. Amber opened the show with a song that’d been nominated for an award. Seeing her on stage sent a small pang to my chest remembering how she’d welcomed me so completely.

An hour into the show and the award for Best Hip-Hop Album was being presented. I still hadn’t caught a camera shot of Mason yet, which seemed odd but I figured maybe he’d been backstage for some reason. I knew it was inevitable that they’d cut to him when they announced his name as a nominee. Nerves slammed into me. What if he’d brought a date? What if it was Becca? I realized at some point I’d see something online or in a magazine about him with someone new. He’d move on and forget all about the girl he thought had betrayed him. I didn’t know if I was prepared for that moment to happen tonight.

I held my breath as they called his name. A stock photo of Mason flashed on screen. Was he still backstage? Seconds later they announced Mason Nash as the winner of the year’s Best Hip-Hop Album.

I jumped off the couch, clapping my hands together. I was overjoyed. It took me a moment to realize that I had no right to be excited for him anymore. I sat back down and scolded myself mentally. I would’ve done anything at that moment to be able to pick up the phone and offer him my congratulations. To still have that connection to him, hell, any connection to him.

I focused my attention on the TV and watched as Amber went on stage to accept Mason’s award. I grabbed the controller and turned up the volume so I wouldn’t miss what she had to say.

“I’d like to accept this award on behalf of my friend. He couldn’t be here tonight. He had an urgent matter to deal with but he wanted to thank his fans most of all, without whom, none of this would be possible. He’d also like to thank everyone else along the way who helped him get where he is today. Thank you.”

There was only one reason Mason would’ve missed such a huge night. Something must’ve happened with his mother again. Before we’d split she’d been doing pretty well. My heart squeezed for him. I knew he struggled with his feelings for his mother and more issues would only complicate the matter.

It wasn’t my place to worry anymore. He had other people in his life to do that, but my damn stubborn heart refused to let him go.

The shrill ring of my cell phone from the kitchen counter interrupted my thoughts. I figured it was one of the girls who knew me well enough to know I’d be watching the show and was calling to check up on me. I was surprised to see Jeff’s number on the screen when I picked it up.

“Hello?”