Page 77 of On the Beat

“Dressed as Spongebob Squarepants?” I say, holding in a laugh. “Yeah. That was an iconic moment in fashion history.”

“It was definitely… amoment.” He chuckles. “Answer my question.”

“The first thing I want to do when we get back to L.A. is eat at a food truck. My favourites are the ones outside Volume Records,” I say, remembering all the times Kaiden and I would snag a taco or hot dog in the food truck parking lot there, in our rare moments of spare time.

“I liked the ones there, too,” he says, but his tone is wistful. “Could do without the people there, though.”

I remember his breakup with Skye Holland that happened a few months before he started working for Volume. “I can’t say that, since I’ve never met any of them before. It’d be awfully biased of me to just take your side of the story.”

“I’m an impartial, factual, truth-teller,” he says, pointing at my Sudoku book. “For instance, I can tell you for a fact that you should put a 9 in that box, instead of a 5.”

I scratch out the number, feeling my heart sink deeper into my chest with each second that passes. He wants there to be anuswhen we get back to L.A. I have no idea how long that illusion will last, and I desperately want to hold on to every second of it.

But the tighter I hold onto things, the more they seem to slip from my grasp.

* * *

“Wake up.”

I jerk awake, wiping the hair from my face and snapping my mouth closed. I don’t make a habit of falling asleep on planes, but I guess my body makes an exception for private jets with luxury recliners. “What?”

Ryder’s blue eyes are cold, the planes of his face sharp and angular in the Los Angeles morning light that streams in through the windows. Palm trees and sunny California stare back at me, but I feel anything but happy.

“Good morning, Isla. Or should I call youIris Hart?” He holds up his phone like it’s a laser pointer, landing directly on his targets and it might as well be one. It marks me out for assassination. I am no longer the object of his affection.

I’m someone who betrayed him. And Ryder Black doesn’t take kindly to betrayal.

“I thought you figured out that I was in El Nido for my career.” I touch the bracelet he gave me only days ago, but he’s so focused on his fury that his eyes don’t catch the gesture. “I thought you knew.”

“I knew and like an idiot, I trusted you anyway. I said you were loyal and trustworthy, and you let me sit there and call you those things like I was telling the truth. I kissed you. I don’t kiss a lot of girls, but I kissed you because I thought I meant something to you, the way that you mean something to me. Do you even care? Do you even care about me as a person?”

“You didn’t even want us to be serious. You understand what it is to have a career.” I caress the cool stones again, needing the comfort even as the person who gave them to me will likely never talk to me again. “Don’t tell me you can’t understandthis.”

The last time I told a guy the truth about what I wanted, about my career… I lost everything. How could I be sure Ryder was different? It was even worse here, because my relationship with Ryder was so tangled with my job that I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to extricate them.

“No, I understand all too well. I understand that we’re the same. We both use people to get what we want. The only difference is, I would never have usedyou.”

“Ryder. Ryder, please. Let me explain.”

“It’s karma, isn’t it?” He shakes his head, scoffing. “Just when I thought I was turning my life around–you go and stab me in the back.”

“Ryder, please, it’s not like that,” I say, but all my words are an echo, a broken record, and I feel like I’m twenty-one again, telling him that I never meant to leave him, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Didn’t want to be a nurse. Didn’t want to live the picture-perfect life planned out for me. Rodrigo didn’t believe me then. Ryder won’t believe me now.

“Save your words for the Page Six headlines, Isla. You came here to further your career. I guess you got that goal, because this story you wrote about River already has thousands of shares and retweets. Your name will be up in lights for the next fifteen minutes before you go suck someone else’s soul dry for money. Try not to fall for that guy, or at least try not to pretend so well.”

“Ryder, it’s not what you think.”

“I can’t see how it could be anything else. Unless you want to tell me not to believe my lying eyes?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you! I wrote a financial story, telling the truth about your brother, and I sent that toFinancial Buzz L.A.”

“And that wasn’t supposed to hurt me? That you were using me for a story about my brother?”

“Did you even read the article?”

“I don’t need to read an article that you wrote about my family. People that I care about.”

And I don’t need to ask to know that I’m no longer on that list of people. “I’m sorry. But this wasn’t an article about you. It was about River. River and finances and corruption, not aboutyou.”

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