Page 51 of I Did Something Bad
“Yes. I did. I said my name was Nita, and that I was a seventeen-year-old high school student in Yangon. Basically, I pretended to be Jess, but under a different name. I needed to make sure you were legit. And you responded almost immediately. And you were so compassionate and patient and just…kind.” He pauses, gauging my reaction for something. “You know… youhavemet her. In person.”
“What?” I shake my head. At no point in this conversation have I been able to predict what he was going to say next. “I’ve met your sister?”
“She’s my height but with a more athletic build,” he confirms, nodding. “When you met her, I think she had bangs and the tips of her hair were blue. Very chatty. Although she might not have been on that particular day.”
Oh shit. He’snotmaking this up. Because I remember that girl.
“That was your sister?” I ask. It had been less than a month after the article came out, when I was still handling incoming emails by myself. I had insisted on meeting the email sender in person to make sure it wasn’t some undercover cop trying to bust the clinic.
“Yes. And she told me everything. How you paid for lunch, that you let her pick the music when you drove her to the clinic the next day, that your husband called and you told him you were in the middle of a really important meeting, and that you told her that the fact that she didn’twanta child was enough reason to get an abortion. She said she felt so embarrassed and scared, but you never once made her feel judged. That’s pretty much the main reason she wants to go to med school and become an ob-gyn now. She wants to be specifically trained in abortion procedures.
“The planwasfor her to tell you herself at brunch, but—” Herolls his eyes. “Apparently, it’s not every day that Olivia Rodrigo is in Bangkok. Or that your boyfriend manages to score pit tickets. Teenagers,” he grumbles with a bemused shake of his head.
“Tyler—” I exhale. I would say I feel like I missed a step, but it feels more like I missed three steps. I slam into a wall of guilt as I remember what I’d yelled about the “real” reason he’d invited me to brunch, and how I had been so goddamn certain that he’d wanted me to meet Jess purely to promote his image.
“And I actually… have another secret,” he says. He doesn’t look away, as though he wants me to know that he’s telling the full truth. “I toldVoguethat I wantedyouto write this story.”
“What?!” Now it feels like I’ve missed the whole staircase and am plummeting through the air. “Tyler, what the hell are you talking about?”
He shrugs like he couldn’t have put it clearer. “When my publicist told me aboutVogue,I said I would only do it if I got to choose the reporter. Not just because I didn’t want some random white reporter who only asked me questions about ‘representation’ and had never spent a week in Yangon, but because I wanted to meet the person who was there for my sister on the scariest day of her life. And because you sounded like a damn good journalist who actuallycaredabout her subjects and wasn’t just hunting for clickbait.”
His words wash over me in a dizzying way. “You’rethe reason I got this job?”
He shakes his head, expression toughening. “No, absolutely not. Yes, I said I wanted you, but they didn’t give in immediately. But I insisted, and at last, Clarissa said that she’d look into your recent work. She must’ve seen what I did, because she emailed me back a week later to say she’d set up a lunch with you.”
“This doesn’t—” This doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. “Why didn’t you just, I dunno, send me a thank-you email?”
He surprises me with a laugh. “Because that felt abitunderwhelming given the situation. Believe me, I wanted to find a way to thank you immediately, but…” One corner of his mouth quirks like he’s holding back a joke.
“But what?”
He scans my face before answering, a spark of humor re-injected into his voice. “But Jess said you didn’t exactly seem like the kind of person who’d be, and I quote,swayed by a stupid pair of movie premiere tickets or an invite to Cannes like you do with all of the girls.I wanted to thank you in a way that would matter. Toyou. When we signed withVogue,I knew this was it.”
“You were…” My brain’s neurons fail to fire once more. “This whole time?”
“Khin.” The way he states my name with such conviction is what breaks me out of my spiral. “I know what it’s like to be really good at what you do, toknowthat you’re good at what you do, only to have to wait and wait around for someone else to give you just one big break. I didn’t keep the murder a secret solely because I wanted to protect the movie. Yes, cards on the table, you’d made a fair point about how this would impact everyone else on the team, including May and Yasmin—but that wasn’t the whole reason. I changed my mind because you pointed out thatyourcareer would be over, and I realized it would overwrite all of the amazing past work you’ve already done. You don’t deserve to have your whole career, your entire life, derailed because of one prick. Youaregood at what you do, Khin Haymar,” he says with a small smile. I’m tempted to cocoon myself in the blanket again, if only to cover up the goose bumps that have sprouted down my arms. “It didn’t make sense to throw that all away over the actions of one asshole.”
“You’re… telling the truth?” I ask, even though I know he is.
I can read you,I realize. This isn’t the secret that Clarissa is huntingfor, but he’s being honest, to the bone. And the way in which he’s allowed himself to be so vulnerable makes me feel like… like maybe, justmaybe,I can let myself do the same, too.
He nods. “I’m sorry I kept all of that from you. I wanted to tell you, but there was never a good time.”
“Why are you telling me all of this now?”
He studies me. “Because you were right. I couldn’t keep insisting you should trust me when I was keeping secrets from you. Although, it does kind of hurt that I’m not as good of an actor as everyone keeps telling me I am.”
My laugh is broken and messy, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, it makeshimlaugh.
“Do you want to know why those cops wanted to talk to just me on Monday?” I ask with a miserable smile. For once, the voice in my head that’s always on the offensive doesn’t chime in.
He nods. “If you want to tell me.”
“As shocking as it might be to hear, after that article came out, the authorities weren’t exactlythrilledabout the fact that an underground abortion clinic had gotten such publicity. My divorce was nearly final by then, but we hadn’t sold our house yet and they came by while Ben was there. Twice. Of course, they couldn’t exactly charge me with anything, and there was no way I was going to reveal any of my sources, but it… wasn’t easy for a while there.” I look down at my hands, pausing to catch my breath. “At one point, Ben suggested I leave town for a bit. Until things kind of died down. But I didn’t.”
“Because you don’t scare easy.” I look up from my hands to find Tyler smiling, and it’s small but genuine and gorgeous and I feel the most naked I ever have in front of him, but it’s not scary, not even a little. And maybethatshould scare me, but it… doesn’t.
“No, I certainly do not,” I say, returning his smile. “Butthat’swhythose cops wanted to get me alone. Apparently the target on my back never really went away.”
