Including Jackson?
I squeezed my eyes closed, not wanting to let that thought in. Jackson had quickly become one of the best parts of my life. It couldn’t have been a mistake, getting closer. Could it?
It gave Jim something else to be pissed about. When I was already on thin ice with him.
I shook my head, hating Jim so much in that moment that I could scream. What right did he have to control my decisions?
I needed to talk to someone. Since Jackson wasn’t here, I had to find someone else to talk me through this. My mind was too riddled with fear and guilt to figure this out. But who could I call? Lizzie? Sam? My parents? How could I tell them how stupid I had been since the moment I saw Jim in that bar?
I felt a sick swoop of guilt as I imagined telling Lizzie or any of the others. I’d promised them, had promised myself, that I was going to be professional with Jackson. And instead, I had done the exact opposite. And in the process, goaded Jim until he was willing to take this drastic step.
I fumbled for the landline on the table next to me. I had to call Jackson, had to call someone—but when I put the receiver to my ear, I heard someone else already on the phone.
“As far as I can tell, they’re happy with the performance,” a familiar, brisk voice was saying.
“The studio or Jenner?” a second voice asked.
I pulled the phone away, confused. Why was Erin on the phone—and then it hit me. She’d been working here when she wasn’t on the set with Jackson. She must be upstairs in her makeshift office, the room Jackson had once offered me, right then. It felt a little strange to know someone had been in the condo with me all this time and I hadn’t known it. I moved to hang up the phone but heard my name and quickly brought the receiver back to my ear, thinking Erin must have figured out I was on the line.
But she wasn’t talking to me. She was talking about me.
“—hasn’t given you any indication that Collins is unhappy?” a man’s voice was saying. It was different from the other voice. She must have been on a conference call.
“Sofie hasn’t given me any indication of anything,” Erin said, her voice bitter. “She’s determined not to play ball.”
So it hadn’t passed her notice that I wasn’t spying on Jackson, as she had asked me to. I felt a small stab of satisfaction before she continued.
“I think she’s trouble, honestly. We all saw what happened in New York.”
“He missed two meetings?” a female voice asked.
“Three,” the man corrected. “Including the meeting with Gillingham.”
“Which,” Erin said gravely, “is the biggest problem. And the reason I asked for this call.” She paused. “I don’t think he’s going to take the Desert Sun role.”
Desert Sun. The name rang a bell. Had Jackson mentioned it?
“He’d be insane not to take it,” the other woman was saying. She was starting to sound familiar to me, too. I thought she might be his L.A. agent, Darcy. “It cements his status as the go-to star for the genre.”
The trilogy, I presumed. The one shooting in Australia that he told me he didn’t want to take.
You shouldn’t be listening to this, I thought. You could get fired. This is none of your business.
But I couldn’t bring myself to hang up the phone.
“He’s flat out refusing to go to Sydney for the audition.”
“What?” Darcy practically yelped. “I thought it was all arranged!”
“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you, Darcy,” Erin snapped. “He’s not seeing things clearly. If nothing else, Jackson has always been incredibly wise about his career choices. All of a sudden, he’s losing sight of that.”
“It’s the girl?” the male voice asked. “The PA? I mean, we’ve seen this before.”
I felt a fresh wave of nausea to go along with the cocktail of fear and guilt already swirling in my stomach. When had they seen this before?
“The last girl made him miss a few nights of that shit play,” Erin said. “She didn’t prevent him from taking the most important role of his career.”
“I just can’t believe he wants to do television,” Darcy said. “It’s so far off base for him.”
“And that should indicate to you exactly how serious this is. I am telling you both right now—if we can’t pull his head out of the sand and get him to take this role, his career will be damaged beyond repair. We have to do something about the girl before she ruins everything.”
Feeling like I might throw up, I slipped the phone back onto its holder as silently as I could. I couldn’t listen to any more. I had to get out of there.
I made it as far as the front door. There was a jangle of keys in the lock, and then the door was swinging inward, revealing Jackson in the hallway. His entire face, tired from the long week of work, lit up at the sight of me. “Sofie!”
Instinctively, I took a step back. I knew he was going to hug me, and I didn’t think I could stand it right now. His confusion at my reaction was evident as he stepped into the foyer, but he didn’t try to hug me again.
“I didn’t know you would be here.”
“I was dropping off your dry cleaning.” Which I had left down in my car, too panicked and worked up when I arrived to remember.
“That was nice of you. Anything in there I could wear to dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“Didn’t you get my text? I got done early and thought we could get a bite to eat.”
“I left my phone at home.”
He stepped toward me, taking me by the arms. “I’ve barely had a moment alone with you since we got back.”
“Erin is upstairs,” I said in a strangled voice.
He released me, looking bewildered. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I should get going, though.”
“Hang on. I want to talk to you.” He ducked his head to peer into my face. “You’re not fine at all.”
“Please, Jackson.”
At that moment, Erin descended the stairs. “Jackson, darling, you’re done early.”
I stared down at his feet, unable to make eye contact with her after what I’d just heard. Jackson looked from her to me and back again. “Hello, Erin. How are you?”
“Wonderful. Just finishing up some calls. We really should talk about your schedule for next week. Let me take you to dinner.”
“I’m having dinner with Sofie,” he said, still glancing between the two of us.
“No, Jackson—”
“Erin, we can talk tomorrow.” His voice was firm. “Why don’t you give Sofie and me some privacy?”
“Jackson, this is extremely important. We must talk.”
“Tomorrow. I have plans right now.”
When she didn’t move from the bottom of the steps, he walked to the door and opened it. “I’m sure you have plenty of work to do. Your hotel has Wi-Fi, yes?”
She walked briskly to the door, her chin raised. “I’m very concerned about this situation,” she said, voice flat. “I will be on the set first thing in the morning. Good night.”
And then she was gone. The condo, which only moments ago had felt like a safe respite, now seemed claustrophobic, the open, silent spaces weighing down on me.
“What’s going on with you?”
When I didn’t answer, he took my arm, an action far too close to what I had experienced with Jim earlier. Without thinking, I yanked my arm away. Jackson’s face filled with hurt. “You’re worrying me.”
The sheer number of things I had to be worried about in that moment were suffocating me. I grasped onto the first solid thought I could find in my confused, frightened mind.
“Why didn’t you tell me that they want you to go to Australia next week?”
He frowned. “Because I’m not going.”
“Erin said you were.”
His eyes snapped back to the door, as if he expected her to be there to focus his annoyance on. “Erin was mistaken.”
“How’s that po
ssible? She’s your manager. She sets your schedule.”
“I set my schedule, Sofie. And I have no desire, no intention, of going to Australia next week for an audition I do not want to give.”
I sank down into the nearest barstool, burying my head in my hands. What in the hell was I doing here? Worrying about Jackson’s career, worrying about the affect I was apparently having on it—this wasn’t my problem right now. I should be focusing on Beth. I had to figure out what to do about Beth.
“Sofie, please. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“Erin said… She said if you didn’t take Desert Sun, you’d be hurting your career.”
His eyes flashed. “She said that to you?”
“I…overheard. She was on a conference call when I got here.”
His eyes were narrowed, his brows knitted together in anger or concern, I couldn’t tell. “Who was she talking to?”
“I’m not sure. I just… She said taking a television role over the movie would do you irreparable harm.”
“All right, first of all—that’s bullshit. Second of all, I hired her to help me make my own choices. Not to make them for me. If I don’t want to go to Australia for six months, I’m not doing it.”
“And why don’t you want to go?” I asked.
He stared at me for a long time. “You know why, Sofie.”
We have to do something about the girl before she ruins everything.
I stood on shaky legs, knocking the barstool over. “I can’t let you do that.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I can’t let you hurt your career just to be…what? Closer to me?”
“Sofie, listen.” He took my arms again, and this time I let him, wanting, more than anything, for his touch to take away the pain and fear that was swelling within me. “I have it all figured out, love. The show I’ve been looking at—it shoots in New York. I could get a place there, a real place that I would actually live in. And my schedule wouldn’t be so crazy. I could move my companies to the East Coast and insist my endorsement obligations happen there, as well.” He laughed a little. “I would say that I could sell the jet, but I’ll be using that to come back and forth to Detroit.”
“Jackson—”
“I know I told you that you to take all the time you needed,” he said. “I meant that. You don’t have to decide anything right now. I just want to make sure that I’m close enough that I get to see you.”
“We can’t do this.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, so maybe moving to New York is kind of the grandest of grand gestures, but I don’t care, Sofie. It’s what I want—”
“I don’t want it.”
He froze.
“I’m sorry, Jackson. This is too much. There’s too much happening in my life right now and—”
“I want to help you with the things happening in your life.” There was so much pain in his voice. All I wanted to do was wrap him up in my arms and take it away.
“I don’t think you can.”
“That’s ridiculous. What could possibly be going on that I can’t help you with?”
Beth’s father hates you. He hates me being with you. He’s going to try to take my baby because he’s jealous and angry and awful. And having you around will only make it worse.
“I’m not going to be the one who hurts your career.”
He laughed, relieved. “Sofie, it’s not hurting my career. I don’t care what you overheard. Erin is terribly overdramatic. There’s nothing wrong with slowing down for a few years. Lots of film stars do television when they need some stability. I’m still contracted for two more Darkness films. It’s not like I’m going to disappear—”
“Who was the girl that you were dating when you were in that play in London?”
He cocked his head, bewildered. “What girl?”
“Who were you dating during Curtain and the Window?”
“What in the hell does that have to do with—”
“Erin mentioned it. She said the last time you got involved with a girl like…” I gestured between the two of us. “Like this, it made you miss a few performances. She said our relationship would hurt you much more than that.”
“All right, that’s it. I’m not going to have her put these idiotic ideas into your head.” He reached for his phone, but I grabbed his arm, stilling him.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“Her name was Jennifer,” he snapped. “We dated for three months.”
“And your relationship affected your work?”
“I missed a few shows to go on vacation, Sofie. It wasn’t the end of the world.”
I closed my eyes. Missed a few shows, missed a few meetings. Willing to give up a fantastic career opportunity so that he didn’t have to move to Australia.
“Did you love her?”
“No! How is any of this even relevant? It was years ago.”
“Because I’m seeing some patterns here,” I said, backing away a few more steps.
He closed the space between us. “What does that mean?”
“It means I think you latch onto relationships when you’re bored or unhappy with your life. The women you’ve dated are an escape for you.”
He looked like he’d been slapped. “You think that’s what you are to me?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. I can read the papers, Jackson.”
I knew I was hurting him. I could see it all over his face. But I also knew there was no way this was going to work, not now. It was pointless to continue to hide the things I had always been afraid of, the things about him that had always given me doubts.
When he spoke, his voice was low and tight, like he was barely managing to control it. “At what point in our relationship have I done anything to make you think what they write about me is true?”
“Jackson—”
“No, Sofie. I would like some examples. Because otherwise, you seem perfectly happy right now to believe some bullshit lies about me and ignore everything you’ve seen with your own eyes.”
“Tell me how this is going to work. You’re going to act on television, and I’m going to…what? Move to New York? Travel back and forth? With a baby? And what happens when you get bored? What happens when the novelty of hanging out with a regular girl from the Midwest wears off? Where does that leave me?”
“Why do you think I would do that? I mean it, Sofie. What have I done to you? To you—not in some damn tabloid—to make you think I could hurt you like that?”
I buried my head in my hands. Of course he had never done anything to me to make me think that he could hurt me. But I’d been afraid of it, all along.
“I can’t afford the risk,” I said into my palms. “Maybe if it was just me, but not for Beth.”
Especially not now.
“I would never hurt Beth! What are you even saying? Why won’t you look at me?”
I peeled my hands from my eyes to see his face looking unlike I had ever seen it before. He was angry and hurt and so scared, I couldn’t stand it. He probably looked just the way I did after Jim left.
Jim. The reason I had to do this, whether I wanted to or not.
“You need to go on that audition,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’m not going to be the reason you don’t get it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“And I don’t want this life.” He went very still in front of me. I wondered if he was even breathing. “I don’t want it.”
“Something happened,” he whispered. “You weren’t in this place a week ago. You weren’t in this place yesterday.”
“I told you, I heard Erin and—”
“This isn’t about Erin, and we both know it. What’s going on, Sofie?”
I was so close to telling him everything. I wanted to get it out, to free the dark and twisting panic clawing at my insides. But what could he do? How could he help me? Whether Australia or New York, this wasn’t his last stop. One way or another, he’d be moving o
n soon. And keeping this going for any longer was only going to make things worse with Jim.
“I changed my mind,” I whispered, backing toward the door. He reached for me, and I jerked away. “That’s what happened.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Go to the audition, Jackson.”
His eyes were panicked as my fingers closed around the doorknob. “If I go to this audition,” he said, his voice jerky and rushed. “If I give it a chance and keep an open mind, can we talk again when I get home?”
“What good will that—”
“Let me go and audition, talk to the director and the producers, and then make up my own mind. Give me the courtesy of talking to me about it when I’m done. That’s all I ask.”
I knew it was just delaying the inevitable. There was no way I could let him back in my life, not now. But maybe he would get to Australia and realize it was the right thing after all. Whatever he said, Jackson loved movies. His career was essential to him. Maybe all he needed was to get out of here for a little bit, then he would come to his senses.
“Fine,” I whispered. And because I couldn’t stand the look of raw relief on his face, I turned and left as quickly as I could.
Chapter Twenty-three
Sam was surprised when I called and told him he didn’t need to work over the weekend. “Why not? I thought this was the last push? I was expecting to pretty much stay over, since you’d be so busy.”
“I guess they finished up early,” I said, hoping he would accept the vagueness. But this was Sam.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit. What’s going on with Jackson?”
“He had an audition in Australia. It’s no big deal.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. I could tell he wasn’t buying my explanation. “Sofie.”
“Can we talk about it later, Sam? I just want to enjoy the weekend off with my girl. Okay?”
“Fine. But you’re going to tell me what’s going on eventually.”
I spent the weekend in a strange state of inertia. I knew I needed to come up with a plan to deal with Jim, but every time my mind tried to go there, I would shut down. Same as when I thought about Jackson. His face would flash through my mind occasionally, and I would feel a sharp stab of regret before the numbness would take over. All I seemed to be able to do was hold Beth constantly, to the point that she got squirmy and fussy and cried to be put down.
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