"Don't lie to me!" I cut her off, ignoring the pained grimace on her face when I shake her with an almost surreal and furious strength. "This must have been commissioned by someone!"
"No, it wasn't!" she insists, looking at me with fear in her eyes.
I bite my lips, trying so fucking hard to calm myself and not let the rage win over. We've been there. She has told me about her fear of encountering another uncontrollable thug, and I promised that I'm no such thing. Ever.
But she...
"You planned all of this from the beginning, didn't you?" I hiss, trembling with bitter exasperation. It's all there. The pain. The feeling of horrible betrayal. I vowed to never let it happen again. I saw the danger in her. From the beginning.
Yet here we are.
"It was all a set-up from the beginning, wasn't it? You, at the agency, allegedly running into me, making me fall for you, playing me, extracting intimate information..."
She's shaking her head the entire time I list all the things she's done to me, denying every single one of them, the tears pouring down her face. Fake tears, I'm sure. She's good at this, I have to give her that.
"Please, Jared, you have to trust me," she begs, her voice weak and as untrustworthy as they come. "You have to believe me. I didn't-"
"It was that guy, wasn't it?" I interrupt, as I suddenly remember her weird encounter at tonight’s event. The guy who came up to her, the press guy she spoke to and was reluctant to share any details of their conversation with me. She wasn't shocked because he said something to scare her, she was shocked because he approached her when she was in plain sight of me.
"How much?" I hiss through gritted teeth.
She stares at me, her face frozen in a horrified and tortured expression.
"He... I'm not going to do it," she whispers, and my heart sinks. "I was going to tell him no, and..."
Her voice breaks off as she sees my reaction to her words. I let go of her, bringing distance between us and glaring at her with utmost disgust.
So it's true. She just admitted it. She was offered money to sell her story about me, just as I suspected.
And now she's trying to calm me down by making me believe that she was going to say no? After all that work she's put into her work?
I shake my head and realize that I have to get out of here. I can't stay in the same room with her for one more second.
"Jared, please listen to me!"
Her pleas follow after me, but they're not holding me back. I head for the living room, hastily picking up the clothes I've left scattered on the floor when I fell for yet another one of her devilish seductions.
"Will you please listen to me?" she yells, standing at the top of the stairs. "Jared, you're misunderstanding-"
"Shut up!"
Even I am shocked at the volume of my voice, echoing through the living room in gloomy shock waves.
She freezes, watching in terror as I finish getting dressed, not wasting another second to look at her before I flee from this fucking nightmare.