Page 116 of The Rehoboth Retreat
He yanked it away anyway and stomped up the stairs. A second later:SLAM.
Ah. The universal punctuation mark for heartbreak.
I stared up the staircase like it had betrayed me. I then sighed and turned toward the living room, where Cecilia was nursing what looked like her first—well, knowing her, maybe second—Bloody Mary of the morning. Or maybe her third. Who was I to judge?
She didn’t say anything at first, just lifted a finely arched brow over the rim of her glass.
“Well,” I muttered, flopping dramatically onto a velvet armchair like a dead Victorian debutante. “That went fucking terribly.”
Cecilia let out a long sigh and sipped. “You really do know how to destroy a perfectly good weekend, don’t you?”
“Look, I wasn’ttryingto destroy it. I was aiming for… mild chaos. Controlled emotional combustion. Flirty existential spirals. Y’know, the usual.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you know about the plan? The one your agent and Miles’ assistant cooked up?”
I groaned. “Christ, you too?”
“That’s not a no,” she said, voice crisp enough to exfoliate skin.
“Okay, yes.Technically, I knew,” I admitted. “My agent told me it’d be best if I could convince Miles to go public with the divorce. Said it’d make us both look less like trash. Especially him.”
Cecilia’s silence was dagger-sharp. The ceiling fan above us kept spinning, like even it wanted to move on from this trainwreck.
“But Iswear,” I added quickly, sitting up, “I didn’t do it out of selfishness. I mean, yeah, I’m selfish. Have you met me? I use silk eye masks and call my publicist at midnight to do damage control from my 11:00 PM sordid decisions. But this time, I wasn’t being an asshole.”
She tilted her head like she was listening for bullshit.
“I did it because I knew people were already dragging him. Calling him a liar, a cheater, a fame-humping grifter. If he publicly said he was divorced, that’d change everything. It wouldn’t fix it completely, but it’dsoftenit. Reframe the story.”
Her silence continued.
“Like, yeah, they’d still say he had bad taste for dating me,” I continued. “But that’s better than people thinking he was two-timing his picture-perfect husband. Right?”
Cecilia blinked. “I hope you explained that to him better than you just explained it to me.”
I sighed and stood up, rubbing my temples. “I’m gonna try.”
“You’ve got about five minutes before his bedroom becomes Fort Knox and his tears start soaking into those $300 pillowcases.”
“Duly noted,” I muttered, heading toward the stairs.
I stood outside his bedroom door like a rejected Bachelor contestant about to deliver one final monologue.
I knocked.
“It’s me again…”
“I told you to go away,” came the muffled reply, sharp and fast and broken in the middle.
I leaned against the door. “Yeah, I know. You told me. And I get it, Miles. I fucked up.”
Silence.
“I should’ve told you about the plan. That my agent suggested that I try to get you to go public with the divorce. I should’ve told youeverything—but I didn’t. Because I panicked. I didn’t want you to think I was using you. I didn’t want you to walk away.”
Still silence.
I sighed. “But here’s the truth—I didn’t do it for selfish reasons. I did it because I knew it would helpyou. I saw the headlines. The comments. People calling you a liar. Accusing you of cheating. I couldn’t let your whole brand unravel just because you kissed a has-been drama demon with a TMZ file thicker than a deli sandwich.”
