Chapter Twenty-Nine: Driven to Distraction

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The phone rang, and rang, and rang

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The phone rang, and rang, and rang. I didn't hang up, though. Either Becca answered, or she rejected my call. I wasn't going to be the one to stop the ringing.

She picked up.

"Soph, hey. Sorry, I was trying to find Gabby so we could talk to you together. Why are you giving Sammie fake articles?"

That threw me off and distracted me from my primary reason for calling. "Fake?"

"Yeah. Something about Lacey dating her co-star and carrying on with Teddy behind his back?"

It wasn't all fake, but neither was it completely true. Ed had mentioned the co-star's nickname during the phone conversation, and then a quick check of IMDB had helped me fill in the gaps. Anyone could have heard that and blabbed, but I wasn't about to tell Becca which parts were real and which were fabricated—I'd written that article before I'd learnt the truth about the night of the concert, and now my lips were sealed.

"You'd know all about fake stories, wouldn't you, Becca?" I said.

"Excuse me?" Her tone lifted at the end of her reply, like she couldn't understand my not-so-subtle taunt.

"You came up in conversation last night," I said, leaning back against the headboard and stretching my legs as I ramped up the courage to confront her. I wasn't sure if the nerves were through fear of her reaction or fear of her lies being confirmed once and for all.

"Me?" Becca asked.

"Yes, Teddy was saying how awful he felt about kissing you then kicking you out."

Silence stretched all the way from Paris to London. I'd not had the balls to do this via video, but I could imagine the expressions being exchanged between the two of them. Despite Gabby's knack for saying the wrong thing, her heart was always in the right place, so I knew she'd be just as blindsided as me.

"So he's playing it down, is he?" Gabby asked, sounding confused. "I don't get it."

"Me neither," I said. "Because to me it sounded less like playing it down and more like outrage."

"Outrage?" Becca repeated.

"I think I'd be pretty angry, too, if someone claimed I'd slept with them when I hadn't."

At first I expected her to deny it, but the lack of response dragged on far too long for any refusal to be believable. And when she did speak, her voice quivered.

"I'm sorry, Soph. But it doesn't change anything. He still treated me like shit. I just knew that if I said it was sex, you'd be less likely to let history repeat itself."

That poor excuse made me want to express my own outrage, but history truly had repeated itself, so I couldn't without being a hypocrite.

"History won't be repeating itself anymore, Becca. We're done."

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