16. Marco

CHAPTER 16

MARCO

T here's almost no point in using the gym showers. You shower, you get clean, and you think you're all good, but your body stays in workout mode for a while after. It's still trying to cool itself, and you're still sweating. By the time you get home, you need to shower again. You might as well save water and just shower the once.

That's what I was thinking in the hotel lobby. My bag had been stolen while I worked out, my room key with it, and I was fuming. I was waiting for the concierge to find me a new one, my mind on the cool shower I'd soon be having, and that was when the commotion broke out behind me.

I didn't look at first, too tired to engage. Then, I heard Camille call out from the doorway.

"Eve, wait! Calm down."

I spun on my heel just as Eve hurried by, making a beeline for the elevator. I caught a glimpse of her face, a taut mask of fury, and then she was past me. She half-ran to the elevator and jabbed the call button.

"Eve, hey! What happened?"

She didn't turn around. The doors slid open and she got on. I went to chase after her, then I remembered Camille. She'd come up behind me, a bag in each hand.

"What happened?" I said again.

She pursed her lips. "Rafael."

"You guys ran into him?"

"Not exactly." She held out a bag to me. "Here, would you take this? You're going up, right?"

I took the bag. "Yeah, in a minute. I lost my room key. Is she okay?"

"She will be. We got waylaid by kids with phones. They swarmed all around us. They gave her a scare."

I frowned, still staring where Eve had vanished. "What does that have to do with Rafael?"

"There was a billboard— oh, well, she'll tell you." She stepped back as the concierge passed me my key. "It's you she needs now. Don't keep her waiting."

I dug out my phone on my way up — I'd brought it into the gym with me, so it hadn't been stolen — and sure enough, Eve was trending. She'd been photographed staring up at some billboard, a look on her face like she'd just been slapped. Someone had captioned it when ur fiancé dumps u then he's 50 ft tall . It wasn't that funny, at least to my eye, but it had already been shared more than eight thousand times. I blocked the idiot who'd posted it in a fit of pique, but three other versions popped up to replace it.

I knocked before I let myself into our hotel room, so I wouldn't scare Eve by barging in. I needn't have bothered. She didn't look up. She was sitting on the bed glued to her phone, her lips pressed together in a tight line.

"Your mother said to bring you this." I held up the bag.

She still didn't look at me. "Put it on the dresser."

I set the bag where she said and took a seat next to her. She leaned up against me and I took her phone from her.

"Don't look at that."

"I have to know what they're saying."

"Why, they got a solution to world hunger in there?" I stroked her back gently and hid her phone in my pocket. "You know the trick with socials? If you don't look, they don't exist."

Eve snorted. "I wish."

"No, really. It's true." I took out my own phone and unlocked the screen. "Count my notifications: one, two, and three. I turned all my socials off after San Gimignano. My publicist deals with them so I don't have to."

"But people still talk. They still post?—"

"So what? It's a whole other world, all that online stuff. Like if they made a TV show out of your life, and someone's there playing you, but that person's not you. They're a version of you for public consumption, but you don't have to watch it if you don't want to."

"What are you talking about?" She stood up. "Of course I have to watch it. It's the whole point."

"The whole point of what?"

"Us. What we're doing." She gestured at herself, then at me. "The point of all this was to show I'd moved on. To get all those voices to tell a different story. Now, I'm back where I started, a laughingstock."

"You're not," I said, but my chest had gone tight. The whole point — the whole point? The whole point of us? I'd been sure just this morning I'd seen something more. And last night at dinner. And before that. We'd been building toward something, or I'd thought we had. Or had it all been in my head?

Like socials. All fake.

"You want to know the stupidest part?" Eve went to the window and stood looking out. "I was over Rafael. I was over it all. I never wanted to marry him in the first place. If he'd left any other way, I'd have been relieved."

My heart skipped a beat, a sort of hopeful flutter. Eve leaned her head on the glass and she sighed.

"Through the whole thing, the courtship, the engagement, the wedding — the interviews, the photoshoots — I felt like some prop." She pushed off the window and paced up and down, not looking at me, but up at the ceiling. "Rafael was starting the next phase of his life. Taking on more royal duties. Diplomacy. I was this girl he picked for his bride. No one ever asked about the next phase of my life. And then when he dumped me just with a note… I never felt more like a toy, like an object. Like a thing to be pushed aside because it's in your way."

She stopped pacing and scowled at herself in the mirror. "I saw him today and it came rushing back, how it felt to be seen that way, like I didn't matter. Everyone thinks I was crying because I got dumped, because I miss him, because he broke my heart. That's what pisses me off, that they've got it so wrong. I'm sad because he hurt me, and because I let him. Because I let myself be treated that way."

I got off the bed and slid my arms around her. She stiffened at first, then relaxed against me. I rocked us both back and forth, swaying on my feet.

"You'll correct them," I said. "You'll show them the truth."

"How?"

I kissed the top of her head, trying to think of an answer. I wanted to rescue her, to be her hero. But what she needed was to shine on her own. She could do that. I'd seen her. If she'd just show the world…

She craned her head back. "No, really. How?"

"I don't know yet. But I know you can do it."

"Just me, by myself?"

I pulled her closer. "No. Of course not." I shuffled back to the bed and pulled her down with me, and let her rest against me while I ran my hand through her hair. "We're going to do something, something together. I don't know what yet, but it'll be huge. It'll be so huge it goes beyond socials. People will see it, and they'll have no doubt. They'll see you living your best life and go ‘Rafael who?'"

Eve laughed softly, a puff of breath on my chest. "You're confident," she said.

"Because I'm right. I always am about this type of thing."

"What type of thing?"

I shrugged. "Breaking through. Living your dreams. Like when I knew I wanted to race. I was bent over this cop car, burning my face on the metal?—"

"Wait, what? "

"Getting arrested for speeding, for reckless driving. Driving without a license. Stealing Ma's car. I was thirteen, a kid out on a joyride, but the cop slapped the cuffs on and said I should race, and I saw it right then. I saw my whole future. I knew in that moment I'd end up right here?—"

"In this hotel room?"

"Yeah. Here with you." I tilted her head up and planted a kiss on her lips. "Tease all you want, but I swear it's true. I knew I'd break through. I knew I'd be big-time. And I know you will too, and the whole world will see you."

Eve shivered against me. I kissed her again.

"You don't believe it right now. You don't see what I see. But I promise it's happening, you and me. Something huge. They're all going to see you, who you really are."

Eve looked up, eyes glistening, and I grinned, confident. I didn't know yet what I was going to do, but I could feel an idea taking slow shape.

We'd show them, all right.

And I'd be her hero.