Finally, she sighs. “I assume that if you thought you could have another shot at Emma, you’d take it?”
What the hell? “Not really your business, Brooke.” I’m still staring straight up, counting the tiny lights in the track lighting while wondering what scheme has lodged itself in her head.
“Come on, Reid, it’s not like it’s a state secret.”
I chance looking at her. Her expression is serious, almost fierce. There’s definitely something she wants from me—and me only—because if she could get this from anyone else, there’s no way I’d be sitting here now. Playing along is the only way I’ll find out what this is about. “Okay, I’ll bite. Sure, I’d take another shot if I had it. Your turn.”
The only thing that betrays her is one finger, repeatedly scratching at the seam of her chair. She sits up. “I want Graham.”
I laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Fixing me with a mocking smile, she says, “Well apparently, they want each other.”
“What?” I knew it. I knew it.
She laughs, not humored. “He’s… reserved. It’s hard to tell what—or who—he wants. But they ran into each other in New York a few days ago—where she’s looking to go to school next fall and where he lives. Just the fact that he mentioned their little meet-up is enough to ring my alarm bells.”
I sit up, too, leaning my forearms on my knees. I still don’t fully comprehend what she has in mind, but I’m starting to get an idea of it. “If they decide to hook up, what are we supposed to do about it? Maybe you’re forgetting that thanks to you, Emma dumped me. She didn’t choose some other guy over me. She chose to be alone rather than be with me. You set that whole shit up, Brooke. I don’t know what you told her—”
“I didn’t tell her anything. She was in the bathroom stall.”
The silence is profound after she says this. She’s actually managed to shock me. Emma didn’t just get a second-hand account of what went down between Brooke and me, she heard the entire sordid conversation, along with all of the hostility I obviously still felt over Brooke’s betrayal years ago. I’d thought, before that night, that I was solidly recovered. Wrong.
Little wonder Emma disappeared that night. I slump back into the sofa. “Holy shit, Brooke. How could you do that? You, and you alone, are responsible for both of them knowing about that pregnancy. And that I bailed on you. But do they both know you were cheating on me? Do they know that f**king part of the story?”
She sits back, staring out the window for several minutes with her chin in her hand. “I didn’t.”
I stand up. This is bullshit. “I don’t know what kind of fantasy land you live in, where you can get two people to just forget the extremely dysfunctional shit they know about both of us—again, thanks to you—and fall into our arms. I don’t see it happening. If I’d known Emma overheard us that night—” I run a hand through my hair. I’m so pissed I want to smash my foot through her chrome and glass table or throw something across the room. “If I’d known she heard that conversation, I’d have given her the chance to calm down instead of being a complete dickwad and literally screwing the first girl who bumped into me.”
Brooke is silent, frowning and still staring out the window. “I can change her mind.” Her words are soft, spoken into her hand.
“How? Why would she listen to you—because she trusts you so much? She’s not that stupid,” I sneer, still standing.
Her eyes flash to me. “Wanna bet?”
I’ve thought about Emma several times in the past month, ever since my spontaneous apology that night in my hotel room. The one she rejected, soundly. The thing is—I don’t know if I’d have been willing, or able, to actually change for her. The only change I had in mind was attempting a monogamous hookup, for however long it lasted. I’m standing across from the only other girl who’s ever gotten that out of me. But Brooke and Emma are night and day, so it seemed likely that the outcome would be different with Emma. Not that she gave me the chance to find out.
I sit back down. “Let me get this straight—you’re proposing that we work together to either break up, or stop from forming, a relationship between Graham and Emma. And moreover, that we manage to seduce them for ourselves.”
Her chin comes up. “Yes. Are you in or not?”
We’re staring at each other across the expanse of glass table, the room impossibly bright. I can see every sliver of ice blue in her eyes, every perfect highlight altering her natural honey blonde hair to a streaked blonde not found in nature. Her nose, too, is a little more perfect than it was when we were younger, her brows flawlessly shaped and raised in silent question, waiting for my answer.
I nod once. “I’m in.”
Chapter 5
Emma
In the taxi between my hotel and the Hollywood studio where On the Air is recorded, I try to psyche myself up to see Reid. I have no idea what to expect. The last time I saw him, only a month ago, he’d apologized for what he put me through last fall. Forgive me, please.
I did forgive him, but not in the way he wanted.
He said he thought he could be different with me. That I could help him be something better. And I replied that I wanted someone who was already that, on his own, with or without me. Visions of Graham swam through my head as I said those words. I was so sure Graham belonged to Brooke. I was so sure he was impossible and unobtainable and not for me.