One Last Time(82)

I splash water on my face and chug the coffee sitting on the table.

“Ready?” she asks when I swing the door open.

“Sure.” I’m ready for bed, that’s about it. “What’s your name?”

“Elisa.”

I smile the best I can. “Nice to meet you. So, Elisa, what scene are we filming first?”

She sighs, and I can practically read her thoughts . . . shouldn’t you know this? “It’s the scene where your character, Alexander, meets Autumn’s character, Kiersten at a party.”

My alcohol fog evaporates at the name of my character’s love interest.

“Kiersten? The script read her name as Hailey.”

Again, Elisa gives me a look, telling me I’m clearly a fucking idiot. “You got a revised script in your hotel the day you arrived. Did you not see all the changes?”

I would’ve if I read something other than the Surgeon General’s warning on the back of the bottle. “I’ve had a rough few days. My girlfriend kind of sold me out, I fucked her entire life up by saving my own ass, and I drank enough to forget. I’m clearly not on my game.”

Elisa opens her mouth to say something, but I hear someone shouting at me. “Noah!”

My eyes are definitely playing tricks on me. “Tristan?”

Why the hell is my publicist in France?

“Oh, so you do know who I am? Good to know since you refuse to answer your phone.” He glares at me.

“Can’t answer a phone that’s not turned on.”

He rolls his eyes and then smiles at Elisa. “Honey, can you give me a few minutes with my client?”

Elisa looks at me, and I nod. “Sure. Not like I have a job to do or anything. This will be a new record for people getting fired on set,” she grumbles as she walks away.

“I’ll make sure she’s fine,” Tristan says. “I’ve been calling you nonstop.”

Once I landed in France, I felt no need to talk to anyone. My self-restraint isn’t strong enough not to call her, text her, or get right back on a plane if I heard her voice, so I chose to shut down.

There’s no point in explaining that to him. Tristan doesn’t understand any of my apprehension. He’s pretty much heartless and thinks I should’ve went after her the second I had confirmation that Kristin betrayed me.

Funny thing about love, it makes you a fool who can’t purposely put the other person in pain. I would rather spend the rest of my life miserable than see her suffer for a single second.

“Why are you here?”

“There’s something I need to tell you, and I was instructed that it had to be in person.”

My mind spins worse than it was before, I can’t handle another bomb dropping. If he’s here, this can’t be good. “Just handle whatever it is,” I say and start to walk away. “I’m not in the mood for bad news.”

“Kristin didn’t do it,” Tristan says, and my feet stop moving.

I clench my fists, trying to keep myself steady. I don’t want to hope what I heard is true. There’s a possibility that I might still be drunk and be dreaming this conversation. My stomach twists as I turn to face him. “What?”

“She wasn’t the one who sent that email, Noah. We had the IP address traced, and it didn’t come from her house or yours. It came from someone else.”

Please, let this be real. Please, let this be true.

“Who, then? How do you know any of this?”

“I can’t say much more than that at this point. I need to have plausible deniability in case this gets out. There’s a lot of legalities that she’d prefer me to be in the dark about, but Catherine is one hundred percent sure that it wasn’t Kristin. She wouldn’t give me more than that before demanding I get on a plane and get to you.”

I shake my head while looking at the sky. I want to believe this more than anything. Losing Kristin has been agonizing.

“You’re sure?” I press harder.

“Look, Catherine was ready to do what she had to, but she has proof that there was no way Kristin could have sent it.”

The guilt I feel crumbles on top of me, making it hard to breathe. I didn’t believe her. She told me, begged me to listen to her, and I walked away. Even after I hurt her, she sent a text to tell me she loves me.

I hate myself.

I should’ve stayed, trusted her, and found a way to prove she didn’t write it.

How the hell could I have known, though? All the signs pointed to her, and I just accepted it. Deep down, I never believed it, but I’ve learned that people you love can do horrible things. People I’ve trusted have betrayed me, and I didn’t want to be a fucking fool again.

Too late for that.

“So I was wrong?”

“Yes, we all were.”

No, I was wrong. I’m the person who she needed to trust her. This is on me.

“Goddamn it!” I slam my fist into the wall. “I’m such a fucking idiot. I threw her away so easily.”

Tristan places his hand on my shoulder. “What were you supposed to think, man? You had an article with her name on it, on her blog, sent from her email address. It was more than coincidental.”

“I fucked up, Tristan. I fucked up, and she’s never going to forgive me.”