Dating Games(82)

I cover my mouth with my hand, shaking my head. I can’t even begin to comprehend what she’s been through. I never would have imagined it was something like this. She’s been dubbed America’s Sweetheart, a gorgeous woman who came from nothing and made a name for herself in an industry that’s notoriously exclusive. I may have complained about Trevor’s lack of attention, especially later on in our relationship, but he always treated me well, always respected me. I couldn’t imagine feeling so trapped, so degraded, so worthless.

“You’d think that would have been enough for me to leave.”

“It wasn’t?”

She shakes her head. “No. I stayed, mainly because I believed his threats that I’d never work again, that he’d use his sphere of influence to make sure no producer or director ever hired me again. Not only did he have a long history in the movie industry, his father was Theodore Price, owner of half the world, it seemed. It didn’t matter that his father had been gone several years. Ethan was still connected to many of his powerful friends. It wasn’t until the Red, White, and Blue Gala in the Hamptons last summer that something changed.”

“The gala?”

“Often, the household staffs from the surrounding homes work the event, as well. During the fireworks display, I politely excused myself, the weight of the lies I’d been forced to tell all night suffocating me. Every time someone else congratulated me on my latest role, all I heard were Ethan’s threats, all I felt was the burn of his body covering mine as he forced himself on me, destroying my soul.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“I didn’t think they’d believe me. Ethan had me so brainwashed that I honestly thought they’d dismiss me. I was his wife. I’m supposed to want to have sex with my husband.”

“But that wasn’t sex. Regardless of any marriage vows, consent is still required.”

“I know that now,” she says. “I knew it at the time, too. I was worried what he’d do if I said anything. Acting was all I had. I couldn’t lose that.”

“What happened at the gala?”

She straightens her spine. “I went to the ladies’ room. It was vacant, apart from one attendant.”

“Who?” I press, my gut telling me this woman might be integral to the story, someone I could potentially speak to this coming weekend.

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she considers what to tell me. “I’d rather not say. I don’t want to put anyone else in Ethan’s line of fire, so to speak. I’d never be able to live with myself.”

My shoulders fall as I blow out a breath. “I can understand that.”

“After I finished washing my hands and reapplying my makeup, she stopped me. Without saying a word, she carefully lifted the flutter sleeves of my gown, revealing the bruises on my biceps from where Ethan had restrained me the previous evening during one of his rage-filled moments. I could have said we were into the rough stuff, but there was no masking the fear in my eyes. Then she withdrew a business card from her back pocket. No name. No address. Nothing. All that was on it was a phone number. She said when I was done living in fear to call it. After that evening, I left the Hamptons and locked myself away, trying to figure out my next move. I didn’t call until February twenty-seventh.”

“Why did you wait so long?”

“I wish I had an answer,” she exhales, shaking her head. “There are times I wish I could go back and shake myself, force myself to wake up, but it’s not that easy. Ethan manipulated me to the point that I truly believed I’d be nothing without him, despite the fact I now had a career of my own. I never saw myself as this successful celebrity. I still saw myself as the struggling actress who would do anything just to get an audition.”

“What caused you to finally call?”

A blank look crosses her face as she stares straight ahead. “A photo of me from a movie I’d shot a few months earlier appeared on the front page of some tabloid with a headline about me leaving my husband for someone younger. Ethan saw it and flipped out. He wouldn’t listen to reason, didn’t care that the actor was gay or that it was a scene from the movie. He pulled out a knife, brought it up to my throat, and told me the only way he’d ever allow me to leave him was in a casket.

“The following day, after he’d apologized profusely and promised yet again to seek treatment for his anger issues, I kissed him goodbye, then called the number. In a matter of hours, I was on a plane to Vancouver where I spent the next two months with August Laurent.

“What did you tell Ethan? He had to notice you were gone? Did you tell him you’d had enough?”

She pinches her lips together, slowly shaking her head. “I told him I’d just gotten a project thrown into my lap and would be on location shooting for a few months. I offered to fly him out, knowing he’d never take me up on it. Once my star got bigger than his, he balked at the idea of joining me on set.”

I sit back, trying to wrap my head around the story she just shared with me. Whenever I saw Sonia and Ethan together on TV, I assumed they were the perfect couple, the one everyone aspired to be, that their love was what we all hoped to find. As with everything, appearances can be deceiving. I got my first taste of that earlier this summer when he came onto me. I figured he was just drunk. I suppose Sonia made the same excuse I did when, in reality, there’s no excuse for that behavior.