Chapter Ten: The Truth

I pushed the door open before I could talk myself out of it.

“Who’s going to find out you didn’t write it.”

Cole spun around, phone still in his hand, whatever color had been in his face draining out of it fast.

“Rhea.”

“Don’t Rhea me. I heard you. You said you didn’t write the article. You said someone else is going to want to know who did.” I crossed my arms, notebook still clutched against my chest like a shield. “So who wrote it, Cole. And who are you calling about it at midnight.”

He set the phone down on the dresser, slow, like sudden movements might make this worse than it already was. Whatever he’d been saying into it a moment ago hung unfinished in the air between us, and I could see him deciding, in real time, how much of it he was willing to let me hear the rest of.

“Sit down,” he said.

“I don’t want to sit down. I want an answer.”

“Then I’ll say it standing up.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked genuinely uncertain about where to start. “I lied to you. In your kitchen. When I told you I wrote it.”

“I gathered that much.”

“I didn’t write a single word of that article. Someone else did.”

“Then why take the blame for it?”

He sat down on the edge of the bed like his legs had stopped agreeing to hold him up, and for a long moment he just looked at his own hands.

“Because the person who wrote it didn’t have anywhere left to fall,” he said finally. “I did. Or I thought I did. Taking the blame was the only way I knew how to pay back what I owed her.”

“Her.”

“I’m not ready to say her name yet. Not because I don’t trust you. Because the second I say it, this stops being my story and starts being hers, and she doesn’t get a say in that from wherever she is right now.”

“That’s a very careful answer for someone who claims he’s done hiding things.”

“It’s the truest thing I can give you tonight without breaking a promise I made to somebody else a long time before I ever met you.” He looked up, and whatever calm he usually wore had slipped entirely. “I know how that sounds. Like another excuse. It’s not. It’s the only line I’m not willing to cross yet.”

“You let me hate you for five years for something you didn’t do.”

“Yes.”

“You let Gerald believe it. You let the whole industry believe it.”

“Yes.” His voice cracked on the word, just slightly, just enough that I heard how much it had cost him to hold this shape for so long. “I know I don’t deserve your trust. I’m not asking for it back all at once. I just want the chance to earn it, a little at a time, for as long as you’ll let me.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like, finding out the person you blamed for the worst year of your career didn’t actually do it? That the story I told myself for five years was wrong the whole time?”

“I imagine it’s not much better than finding out the person who did it was someone you’d never suspect.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“No. Nothing about tonight is supposed to comfort you. I just don’t have anything else to offer except the truth, and even that’s arriving five years late.”

I stood there in the doorway, arms still crossed, every instinct in me telling me to walk away from a man who’d lied to my face twice in one week. But underneath the anger there was something else, something that had been building since the stone in my pocket and the pencil marks in my notebook and the way he’d pulled back from kissing me because he thought I deserved better than whatever he was.

“Why should I believe you now, when the first version was a lie too.”

“Because this one costs me more to say, and I’m saying it anyway.”

I let that sit between us for a long moment. “You said her name’s coming eventually. When.”

“When it’s safe to say it. Which might not be soon.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I know.” He looked up at me then, and there was nothing rehearsed in his face at all, just tired and honest and afraid of what I’d do with what he’d handed me. “Ask me anything else. I’ll answer it. Just not that one. Not yet.”

I thought about walking out. I thought about a lot of things standing in that doorway. What came out instead surprised me more than it probably should have.

“Because you’re worth it,” I said quietly. “That’s the only reason I can think of for still standing here instead of packing your books back into those boxes.”

Something in his shoulders loosened, like he’d been braced for the opposite answer and hadn’t quite believed I’d give him this one.

“I won’t waste it,” he said, voice low. “Whatever this is you just gave me.”

“You’d better not. I don’t have an unlimited supply, and I’m not in the habit of handing out second chances to men who’ve already spent one lying to me.”

“Understood.”

We stood there a moment longer, neither of us quite sure what came next now that the anger had burned down to something quieter and harder to name.

My phone buzzed in my pocket before either of us could say anything else. A calendar invite, forwarded from Gerald’s assistant, details for an industry gala two weeks out, hosted by the label’s biggest donor.

Evening with Evelyn Cross, the subject line read. Wife of label president Gerald Cross. Black tie. Attendance mandatory.

I looked up at Cole. Every bit of color that had come back into his face over the last five minutes disappeared again, all at once.

“Cole.”

“That’s not,” he started, and then stopped himself, staring at my phone like it had personally betrayed him.

“That’s the name,” I said slowly. “That’s her. Isn’t it.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The look on his face already had.