Wright that Got Away, page 27
“Nate, tell me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth. Why the fuck would I tell someone something that you’d told me in confidence?”
“I don’t know. Because you still like me?”
His eyes rounded, and then he laughed softly. “Don’t flatter yourself, Blaire. I’m not some besotted ex-lover. We had a good time. You ended it, and it was mutual. I’m not suddenly heartbroken and going to ruin your life. If that were the case, why would I work with your publicist?”
“I don’t know, Nate. But someone told the press. Someone who knew. You met Campbell and didn’t like him. Maybe you were looking for a quick payday.”
He gestured around him. “Does it look like I need a quick payday?”
I bit my lip as I looked around at the house I’d just been admiring. It did in fact not look like he needed money. That was for sure.
“No,” I admitted.
“And I liked Campbell just fine. But I can be jealous of what y’all have.” His eyes darted away from mine. “Not that I wanted it for us, but just in general.”
“Oh.”
I hadn’t considered any of this. I’d been so set on it being Nate. He was the only other person who knew about us from back then besides my friends, and they certainly hadn’t told.
“Well, someone leaked it. And no one else knew,” I finally said on a frustrated sigh.
“How did they find out about the abortion?”
I flinched at that word. “Miscarriage.”
His face dropped. “Fuck, Blaire.”
“Yeah, that’s why I crumpled on the red carpet. I didn’t even know the hospital had listed the miscarriage as an abortion in my file. It brought back a slew of terrible memories.”
“I’m so sorry. Fuck the press.”
I shot him a sad smile. “Yeah. Well, we need them, but the shit they do to celebrities is not cool. And it was a Campbell Soup girl who found out about the miscarriage.”
“Isn’t that illegal? Accessing and sharing someone’s medical files?”
“Definitely,” I agreed. “But it still happened.”
“So, maybe they just snooped.”
“It’s possible, but if they didn’t find it throughout the years that Campbell has been in the spotlight and everyone was looking for who the song is about, I don’t think that they’d just find it on their own. I think someone told them.”
Nate shrugged. “What about your assistant?”
“Honey doesn’t know either.”
Nate’s silence was louder than anything he could have said.
I stilled. “What? She didn’t know. I never told her.”
“She was there the day that you told me.”
“She was?” I racked my brain to go back to that day.
Had Honey been in earshot of that? The picture that had been leaked was from that day. It showed Campbell and me standing close together. I’d assumed someone had seen us and not that it was someone from my team. Someone likely following Campbell. Not this.
“She definitely was.”
“No way,” I said, my voice shaky.
Nate shot me a look. “Maybe she’s in love with Campbell.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
“I thought she was kind of normal until he showed up.”
“Yeah, but…” I trailed off as the past few months came back to me.
Her being a die-hard Cosmere fan, the way she’d overstepped my bounds to get Campbell to do the video, the fringe bangs and dye job, her borrowing my clothes, and all the messages from her when I’d been in LA asking if I was with Campbell. Had she been doing all of that to try to get Campbell to notice her? Had she been turning into me to try to get him?
Had she done something to make sure we broke up?
I suddenly felt sick. “Oh my God.”
“I would never do that to you, Blaire. I don’t need the money, and I want to see you happy and successful.”
“God, Nate, I’m sorry that I accused you. I just…couldn’t think of who else would do something like this.”
“I understand. I probably would have accused me, too,” he said with a laugh. “But I’m here, looking out for you, Blaire. Are you sure that Honey is, too?”
Ten minutes ago, I would have said yes.
And now, I didn’t know.
40
Blaire
“Wait, Nate thinks Honey outed you to the press?” Piper asked when we were back on the highway, heading home.
“It was the only other answer we could think of.”
“And you’re sure it’s not him?”
“Pretty sure,” I said. “He wasn’t acting like someone who was guilty. I came all the way out here, so I could look him in the eye when I asked him. I know when he’s trying to be charming to get away with shit. I’ve seen it on him before. He wasn’t doing any of that with this.”
Piper blew out heavily. “Okay. Wow. But why would she do it?”
I bit my lip. “He thinks it’s about Campbell. Like…she started to borrow my clothes and dye her hair to look like me. She changed when he showed up. Like she was trying to get his attention.”
“Whoa,” Piper said with wide eyes. “I hadn’t considered any of that, but she has been twice as clingy as normal. You think she did it to break you two up?”
“I have no idea. But if Nate didn’t do it and Honey has been acting increasingly strange…it makes sense. She’s in love with Cosmere. It’s not a stretch for her to be in love with Campbell, too.”
“Jesus,” Piper said. “Well…what are you going to do?”
“I have no idea.”
“Say Honey leaked the info and she’s in love with Campbell. What’s the first thing you’d do if that was all true?”
“Fire her,” I said automatically.
“No, before that. You’d have to protect yourself first. Change all your passwords and freeze your accounts. What does she have access to?”
“Fuck, I hadn’t gotten that far,” I spat. “Everything. She has access to everything. She even has a key to our place.”
I grabbed my phone out of my purse and pulled up my emails. I never checked them anymore, except when Honey highlighted specific things for me. It was how she had gotten that email from Campbell and responded as if she were me. She had been doing that for so long that she hadn’t even stopped to think if it was right. Or she hadn’t cared because she wanted to get closer to Campbell.
I needed a shred of proof before I imploded the best working relationship I’d had in a long time. Yes, she was overly enthusiastic and sometimes crossed boundaries, but she got the job done. Fuck, it was hard to find a good assistant.
“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I admitted.
I frowned at the endless scroll of bullshit in my inbox. It reminded me why I never got in here. She hadn’t been lying when she said that I had a bunch of media requests. I should forward all of these to English to deal with, but I couldn’t focus on that right now.
“Do you have access to her email?”
“Yeah. It’s through Blaire Blush as my assistant. But she could have reached out on her personal email, too. I might never find anything.”
“Can you ask your publicist to ask around?”
I shook my head. “I already did. She’s looking into it. She said her contact wouldn’t tell her at first, and we all assumed it was someone snooping.”
“Hmm,” Piper said.
I searched relevant keywords to see if there were any emails to TMZ or something. There were a surprising number of those emails in my inbox, but none of them were what I was looking for. Just junk.
I sleuthed through my inbox for nearly the entire hour-and-a-half drive home and found nothing. Not a single thing out of place. I never would have suspected that Honey had done anything if there wasn’t a lot of circumstantial evidence.
My phone started ringing as we pulled into Lubbock. I answered, “Hey, English.”
“Hey, how are you doing?”
“Uh, well, I’ve been better.”
“Are you sitting down?”
I glanced at Piper and put English on speaker. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“It looks like…you outed yourself as the ‘I See the Real You’ girl.”
I swallowed. “What? No, I didn’t.”
“My contact said it came from your own email, including the photograph. That you just sent it over. Didn’t even ask for money. Does anyone else have access to your email? Otherwise, it looks like you’ve been hacked.”
“My assistant has access to my email. I…I think she did it. Do you have more info about when it was sent and to who?”
English rattled off some info, and then I searched the email address. My blood chilled as I found the deleted email still sitting in the Trash. She’d been so confident that I wouldn’t look at my email that she hadn’t even dumped the Trash. Wow.
“It’s here,” I said, feeling sick. “I found it.”
“Fuck,” English spat. “Why would she do that? Wouldn’t she have realized you’d fire her for this?”
“Yeah, I don’t think she expected to be caught. Plus, we think she was gunning for Campbell.”
English blew out a harsh breath. “I’m sorry, girl. Seriously. That’s twisted.”
“I’m going to secure all my stuff and then go see her.”
“Good luck. Let me know if you need anything.”
I hung up and sighed.
“Well, that’s all the proof we needed.” My hands shook as I stared down at the email that had snowballed into the destruction of my life.
I spent the next couple hours locking down my accounts. By the time I finished, I felt drained of all energy. I hadn’t realized how much access Honey had to my information. I’d trusted her and left myself vulnerable. Now, I needed to get this over with.
Piper had gone into work but told me to text her if I needed anything. Eve had gotten a job as a realtor for a different real estate agency and was gone at all hours of the day.
So, I was alone when the doorbell rang.
I jogged over to answer it, and Honey barreled inside.
“Sorry, I know that you’re not feeling well, Blaire, but something is really wrong,” Honey said without preamble.
I jerked backward as she tugged her laptop out of her bag and plopped it down on the dining room table.
“Come on in,” I muttered.
It was shocking to look at her with all this new information in my head. Her hair looked just like mine, and she was even in a coral athletic kit that I also owned. She had been turning into me, and I hadn’t even noticed. All because I’d agreed to introduce her to Campbell that one night? If I didn’t have the truth in my pocket, I would still have trouble believing it.
“Something is wrong with the Blaire Blush system,” Honey continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “I was logging in to make some website updates, and it won’t accept my password. So, I went to contact the web developer, but my email is also down. It’s so bizarre. Must be a server outage or something.”
“Honey, we need to talk.”
“Okay, sure. But we need to figure out this server problem. I don’t know what else to do. Should we contact the server host?”
“Honey,” I repeated.
My tone of voice must have rattled her because she finally turned to face me. “God, it’s just so good to see you. I really thought you’d never come back from LA.”
“But you made sure that I did.”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You outed me to the press. You found out that I was the girl from Campbell’s song, knowing that I never intended for that information to get out.”
Honey opened and closed her mouth. “I…I, uh…”
“And then when I got bombarded by the press, you acted scared for me. You kept telling me to come home. You wanted my relationship to fail.”
Honey straightened, as if realizing this was spiraling. “Blaire, I…it’s not what you think.”
“There is no server problem, Honey. I stripped your access from all of my accounts.”
“Blaire, oh my God, no, please. Don’t do this.”
“I want my key back.” I held my hand out. I was proud of myself for not shaking.
“What?” she gasped. “No, please.”
“Key,” I ground out.
She must have seen my resolve because she dug into her purse and pulled my key off her keychain. She held it in her hand as tears came to her eyes. Then, she dropped it into my hand.
“Second, you’re fired.”
Honey looked positively distraught. Like I’d kicked her puppy. Or broken up with her. She looked ready to collapse entirely.
“Blaire, no. This is the best job I’ve ever had.”
“You should have thought about that before you overstepped my boundaries. I told you if you ever did something like that again, I would fire you. And here we are. You did way worse. You sent my relationship with Campbell to the press. Did you locate and send the pregnancy too?”
“No,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “I didn’t know about that, Blaire. I swear. I’m so sorry.”
At least I believed her about that. I hadn’t found any evidence that that had been here. Just another psychopath out there digging for dirt to try to break me and Campbell up.
“I don’t even understand why you did it. I know that you love Cosmere, but did you really think changing yourself to look like me would get you closer to Campbell?”
My words were cutting and harsh. Her jaw dropped, and her lip quivered.
“Closer to Campbell?” she repeated in confusion. “I don’t like Campbell.”
“Then, why?” I gasped. “Why would you do this to me? Do you just hate me?”
“No! No, no, no,” she said fiercely. “I was trying to protect you!”
“Protect me?” I said dubiously.
“Yes, of course. Everything I do is for you, Blaire. You deserve so much better than the likes of Campbell Abbey. Have you not seen the pictures that came out from yesterday?”
I blinked at her in confusion. “What pictures?”
“He was seen out, drinking with Nini Verona. Do you think someone who loves and deserves you would be out, drinking with a supermodel a few days after you left? Do you think he really cares?”
My mind whirled with that new information. I hadn’t known that he’d been with Nini. Especially since he had just confirmed that they’d been together for a few weeks before he last toured.
But that wasn’t the matter at hand. It wasn’t like Campbell had done anything like that when we were together. In fact, he had seemed entirely besotted. I couldn’t even see what Honey thought she’d needed to protect me from.
“That’s beside the point. You sent that information out, and it’s unacceptable. That isn’t protecting me. That’s invading my privacy.”
“It’s exactly the point. Campbell is a rockstar. You think he’s going to be faithful to you when he’s gone on tour? You think it’s easier to find out now or later that he’s exactly who you think he is?”
“I believe that he would be faithful, but even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t be acceptable for you to interfere.”
“No one is good enough for you, Blaire,” she said. “It was why I vetted Nate when you were dating and why I’ll always look out for you.”
“Wait, you vetted Nate?”
“He’s a player. And I knew that he wasn’t as into you as he appeared. I made a fake account and tried to get him to agree to go out with me.”
My jaw clenched at those words. She seemed utterly sincere. As if she didn’t even realize how insane that sounded. And then I remembered Nate telling me about the crazy person who had hounded him to get more information about me. Had that been Honey all along?
I took a step backward. This had just gotten to be…too much. I’d thought it would be an easy firing. She was in love with my boyfriend. She’d overstepped. It was worse than that.
“And Campbell was going to take you away from me. I couldn’t have that,” Honey said frantically.
“Take me away from you? What does that even mean, Honey? You were my assistant. I wasn’t ever planning to leave Lubbock.”
“You say that now. But Campbell was planning it. I just know. And I couldn’t live without you.”
I took a step backward in fear at those words. I’d thought this had been about Campbell, but really it had been about me all along? She’d changed her appearance to look more like me. She’d borrowed my clothes because she wanted to be like me. She’d been trying to ruin my relationships so that she could have me all to herself.
Was she…in love with me?
“Honey, you should go,” I said, my voice shaking. “Whatever you did was wrong. With Nate and Campbell and how you’ve started to look like me, it’s too far. You need help.”
Honey’s face fell, and something dark entered her eyes. “I can’t…I can’t do this, Blaire. I had to get you back home. I needed you here. Not in LA. Please!”
She stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed the butcher knife from the block.
“You can’t do this, Blaire,” Honey said as tears ran down her cheeks. She held the knife and then brought it to her wrist.
My eyes widened. “Honey, what are you doing?”
“I can’t live without you.”
41
Campbell
Hollin dropped me off at my Range Rover with a half-smile. “Good luck.”
I tipped my head at him. “Hope I don’t need it. But thanks. For everything.”
It took me ten minutes to get to Blaire’s house. Nerves had eaten at me the whole drive. I tucked them safely away, where they belonged, and lifted my hand to knock on the door.
That was when I heard the first shout.
“Don’t do this! Honey, stop!”
I didn’t think; I just barged into Blaire’s house.
What I saw stopped me dead.
Blaire stood with a hand outstretched toward Honey. Her other hand was on her cell phone on the dining room table. Honey stood in the kitchen. A knife was poised on her wrist. Red blood dripped from the self-inflicted wound.
