Nicholas

 

 

"You've made such a huge fucking mess of your life." Cheyenne chews on the end of a blue plastic pen she pulled out of her purse. "Why did you bring her here, Nick? I thought you confined extracurricular activities to your office."

"She was different. Is different," I correct myself. "Sophia is different than other women I've known."

"You've got that right." She leans both hands on the edge of my desk. "She fucked her way to a million dollar payout and left you in her dust."

I'm the one who left her in my dust. I walked out of Hibiscus two nights ago without a glance back at Sophia. I couldn't look at her. I couldn't stand the thought of a woman I was falling in love with fucking me over that way.

"This is fixable," I say it even though I doubt like hell that it is. My agent, Steve, called me late last night to tell me that the book has been removed from the website that posted it, but excerpts had already gone viral. Erasing its existence from the internet isn't possible. At this point, the manuscript has no value beyond what I'll be awarded if I sue.

Cheyenne's already pointed that out to me. She was at my door at the break of dawn, ranting about how my publisher is primed to pull the plug on my contract. I avoided her calls yesterday and when she turned up in the lobby of my building, I didn't buzz her in. I needed the day to decompress and weigh my options. It turns out that ignoring my publicist was a monumental mistake.

Cheyenne, in her desperation to sweep this under the rug, told the attorney who called her from the publishing house yesterday that I'd given a copy of the book to my girlfriend. That's enough to not only void my contract but to take legal action against me for breach of contract. I'm screwed, and if I'm going down, I'm taking the person responsible for this fucking mess with me.

The problem is I don't know who the hell that is anymore.

Ever since I left Sophia standing in the restaurant, I haven't been able to forget the way she looked. She was shocked. She's either an Oscar-worthy actress or she was telling me the truth when she said she didn't sell the book. The memory of that innocent expression on her face has been gnawing at me ever since. I can't escape the regret I've been feeling about leaping to the conclusion that Sophia was involved in this.

"You're delusional." Cheyenne slams both palms against my desk. "Do you realize how bad this is, Nick? Your career is over."

I know it's bad, but my career isn't going down with this ship. I may lose my contract and all respect I've had in the publishing world, but my words are mine.

I can still write. I can find a new publisher, or I'll publish myself.

"Have you talked to Sophie?"

"Sophia," I enunciate every syllable of her name. "I already told you that I saw her and she denied doing it."

"Did you expect her to confess on the spot?" She shakes her head. "We're meeting our attorney in an hour. He's going to want to know everything you know about this woman. We'll make her pay for what she did to you."

I turn away. I'm not about to jeopardize Sophia's future. She may be the only person, other than me, who had access to that book, but it doesn't add up.

The woman I spent all that time with felt the same connection to me that I felt to her. I'd bet my life on that. She's not capable of doing this to me and in my rush to point the finger of blame at someone, Sophia landed square in my sights.

"Push the meeting back, Cheyenne." I hold up my hand to stop her as she opens her mouth to talk. "Don't fight me on this. I'll meet him later today or tomorrow. I need time to think and I can't do that with an attorney who is itching to file a lawsuit breathing down my neck."

 

 

***

 

An hour later I rake both of my hands through my hair. "This doesn’t make any fucking sense to me."

Cheyenne takes a seat on the couch next to Liam. My brother showed up twenty minutes ago with some choice words for me. Emails we shared six months ago popped up on one of the many social media accounts that my fans have created.

Someone tagged Liam and when he read the emails, he left his office and headed straight for me.  Who the hell could blame him? They're messages we'd exchanged regarding the woman he was dating at the time. He wanted out of the relationship, but she was emotionally fragile. The fact that she's been texting him non-stop since he got here isn't helping.

"How the hell am I supposed to calm Britney down?" Liam waves his phone at me. "She's a decent girl, Nick. Her dirty laundry is everywhere now."

"No one knows her last name," I point out. I know that for a fact because Wolf never offered it and I never asked. We don't go into details about the women we fuck because they're all temporary hook-ups. When I told him about Sophia a few weeks ago, that was the exception.

"Her friends and family know it's her." His voice is laced with anger. "She's humiliated."

He is too. I see it written all over his expression. Liam keeps to himself. He always has. Exposing him like this is going to damage what we have.

"I'm sorry," I offer even though it's minimal considering the circumstances. "I don't know how it happened, Liam."

"Sophia." Cheyenne reaches to tap Wolf's shoulder through his coat. "Nick's latest is selling his life to the highest bidder as we speak."

I lean back in the chair I'm sitting in. She's dead wrong. There's no way Sophia had access to those emails. When I handed her my laptop, my email program was closed. I use that same email address to send everything to my agent and my contact at the publishing house. I shut it down whenever I'm done using it and I have to enter the password each and every time I log in.

"Cha-ching." Cheyenne gazes down at her phone. "Sophia just added a few more dollars to her nest egg. Every email you've ever shared with Steve is currently being uploaded to one of those trashy gossip websites."

I reach to grab her phone, my eyes dropping to the screen. Email after email written by me to my agent and vice versa floods the screen. Details about my contracts, my future projects and my ongoing complaints about my editor and my contact at the publisher are on full display.

"What the hell?" I mutter under my breath. "Who the fuck is doing this?"

"You know who." Cheyenne yanks her phone from my hands. "I'm not pushing the meeting with the attorney back again, Nick. We're going down there now. Your lover is determined to ruin your life and if you don't put a stop to it, I will."

I curse under my breath. "Fine. I'll meet with him but Sophia's not responsible for these emails. There's no way in hell she'd do this. She didn't do any of this. She's not the one trying to ruin my life."

I absorb my own words as I grab my coat. I'm the one who ruined the best thing that ever happened to me and right now I don't give a shit about anything but talking to Sophia.