Page 85 of Y'allywood Billionaire

“I hear you.” Sophie takes a sip. “Oh, this is good, thank you.” After a drag of silence, she says, “I think you should talk to him. He’s had a lot of time to think about what he did.”

I cock my head. “What did he say to you?”

She puts up a palm. “I’m not getting in the middle. Well, anymorein the middle. He’s my brother.”

“He’s not my brother, and I think you should talk to him too,” Eva cuts in. “I saw what he left you in the comments section of your cast. It was so sweet. He wants to take you to funky tacos.”

“You two are unbelievable!” I’m saying one thing, but my heart is fluttering. I’ve been so upset at Maddox, but at the same time, I know he and I were both hurting so much. As much as I hated all of it, we needed time away with everything that happened. I groan. “Fine. I’ll take it under consideration.”

“Good.” Sophie lifts her chin.

“So, I’ve started jogging again. There are some nice trails here.” I nod outside. “Do you want to come with me?”

Sophie says, “You’re obviously talking to Eva.”

“Let’s do it.” Eva smiles.

# # #

I had such an outpouring of support from my first video, I decided to have a guest speaker on today’s stream. The woman’s name is Casey Whitter, and she emailed me her story, which was utterly heartbreaking.

I have her on one Zoom window and me on another when I go live. I say, “Welcome, everyone. I want to thank you all so much for all the support you’ve given me over the last couple of days. In fact, I was so taken by the flood of stories that were shared, I decided to bring a special guest on my cast with me today.” I take a deep breath and say, “Casey, please. Share your story with us.”

She smiles, but the twitch in her cheek shows her nerves. “Thanks so much for having me on your cast, Riley. It means the absolute world to me. It’s amazing you’re using your platform for voices like mine, people who have stories that can hopefully help somebody else.” She looks away, blinking back the mist in her eyes before she steels herself. “I had my dream job. It was at a tech company, and I loved the fact that as product manager, I got to combine my tech ability with my creativity to bring exciting new products to the world.” She looks down, composing herself before she says, “Until one day, my boss invited me to lunch. I thought it was a work meeting, which happened a lot. The only difference was that it was just him and me, but that didn’t raise my antennas much. Anyway, the lunchdidstart as a work meeting, but after we got served food, my boss turned to me and said, ‘You know I love you, right?’”

I sigh. “Wow.”

“All I did was laugh because it had to be a joke. A terrible joke at that, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything more. So, I said, ‘Nice one,’ and kept talking about work-related stuff. But he kept pivoting back to how great it was to have me on his team. How much fun he’s had over the past year. Then he got to the kicker.He told me about his penis size and how it was designed for pleasure. I kid you not!” She stops and puts a hand over her face.

“You know, Casey, there was a time when that would’ve been shocking to me.” I shake my head. “But sadly, it’s common.”

“Right! I didn’t know what to do, so again, I laughed it off, in shock. Looking back, I didn’t handle it right, but this was myboss. I treated it as a joke and then pretended to get an emergency text telling me I had to return to work. He stopped me as I was leaving and said, ‘Blow it off. I’ve got a free voucher for the penthouse suite in the Omni down the street. Come with me.’”

I gasp.

She shakes her head. “I politely declined, explaining to him I’d recently started dating somebody, and that I was happy with my new boyfriend.” Casey closes her eyes. “Then he squeezed my wrist, too tight, and whispered, ‘This is your last chance. I urge you to reconsider.’ By his tone, it was clearly a threat. I took my other hand and knocked his drink into his lap. As I stormed away, he said, ‘Your promising career is finished.’”

“That’s a lot to unpack.”

“And that’s not even the bad part. Or should I say the worst part. The next week, he emailed me a poor performance review. I’d gotten nothing but glowing reviews since I started at the company, but now, suddenly, he’d noted items like I’d been late a few times, which was true. But my work wasn’t suffering. Anyway, he pointed out all the negative things I’d ever done—things that hadn’t been problems before, nor had ever interfered with my performance. He painted them in the worst light possible, then he fired me. His review got “anonymously” leaked onto LinkedIn. Sure enough, he was right. He finished my career. I couldn’t get hired anywhere else.”

“Oh, no.”

“And I had zero retribution. I had no proof of the conversation he’d had with me. I would’ve never thought to record it. He made sure to have it with me in person, and he couched it as a business lunch. I even contacted an employment lawyer, and there was nothing she could do.”

“That’s terrible, and all too familiar.” I shake my head.

“Well, you inspired me to tell my story, Riley. Don’t think we didn’t notice that you got fired from the show and nobody else did. Maddox Winter didn’t lose his job. Smith Cameron didn’t lose his job. The men who had a role in this didn’t lose their jobs. So why did you?”

I sit, blinking, with no answer for her—at least, not one that’s any good. I don’t want to throw the show under the bus. I don’t want to throw Maddox under the bus. But I promised my audience that from this point moving forward, I’d be genuine. So, after carefully choosing my words, I say, “Although I don’t think what happened to me was entirely fair, I had no permanent contract with the show. The others did.”

Casey lifts her chin. “Still. To me, it just sounds like your typical double standard. The media blasting you, the woman, but making the men out to be the heroes for saving the show.”

“There might be something to that.” I sigh, again, deciding to go with honesty. “But there’s more to the story that you all don’t know. What started out as fake between Maddox and me turned real. I’ve never had someone treat me the way he treated me, with kindness, empathy, and respect. He became a very important person to me, and I have nothing but amazing things to say about him. I care for him deeply, but I understand why things didn’t work out. We ended up in an impossible situation. And I only want the best for him.”

“Wow.” Casey goes wide-eyed. “Something tells me that therealthing between you two isn’t over.“ She winks at the camera.

“I don’t know about that.” A laugh slips out. “So, back to you—what are you doing now?”

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