All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

“And is that what you need legal advice for? Your . . . skin color?”

I chuckled nervously. “No, no, I was just trying to clear the air. Make it all a bit less awkward.”

“And do you feel less awkward now?”

Not even slightly. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes briefly, his lips curving. “Good, well I’m glad we settled that.”

“So . . .” I began, grappling for something I could create a natural conversational transition with. “You just came from your parents’ house? Do you go there often? Were Jake and Clara there, too? I’m sure there is a lot of wedding talk to discuss, seeing as—”

“Molly, what can I help you with?”

I clamped my lips closed as sweat dampened my palms. This was a mistake. I hardly even knew Silas. One long phone call didn’t suddenly make him my life coach. He probably thought I was some kind of mentally unstable hot mess of a woman. And at the moment, I couldn’t exactly blame him for that assumption. All of this was wrong. What if I’d just committed career suicide? Worse, what if I was about to get sued by Sophia Richards? I had a comfortable savings account and several investments in my name, yes, but my 401K plan was pennies on the dollar to what Sophia Richards and her husband brought in. I only needed to look as far as the inside of her bathroom cabinets to figure that out.

“This is probably a huge waste of your time. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking to ask you to come here and get involved in this.” I squeezed my eyes closed in renewed humiliation; then I felt his hand touch mine.

I opened my eyes and stared down at it, taking in the long corded scar curling up his right forearm.

“I’d like to help you, if I can. Do you mind if I view the digital contract from your phone? Or do you have it printed out?”

I eyed him cautiously. “You’re sure?”

“I never extend offers I don’t intend to follow through on.”

My throat tightened. “Thank you. I’ll pay you for your time, Silas.”

“Let’s worry about that later, shall we?”

I slipped the paperwork I’d printed off at home from the inside pocket of my purse and slid it across the table to him. “I suppose you’ll need to know what I could be in breach of, right?”

“That would be helpful, yes,” he said with a comforting smile. And I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same expression he wore when he first sat across from his new house residents at The Bridge. If these were the same kind eyes they saw when Silas told them they were safe, provided for, and welcomed into a home they could call their own for however long they needed.

Unlike what I’d planned to do when I arrived—skip all the self-incriminating details regarding my foolishness and use only vague terms when it came to certain unmentionable tanning wear—in actuality, I laid it all out for him. The whole ugly saga. With one minor exception: I didn’t tell him about Project New You. Or about Sophia’s connection to a producer. There simply wasn’t a good way to share that part without Silas figuring out why I’d volunteered at The Bridge in the first place, and I couldn’t lose whatever ground I’d finally gained with him in these last few weeks.

“So this Tubee top . . .” Silas seemed at a loss for words after that. Like he’d attempted to start a sentence and then quickly realized he had no direction to go with it. Understandable. Expecting him to wrap his mind around a grown woman fleeing a photo shoot in a beach sarong, dripping orange sweat while fighting with her manager in the driveway of a Malibu mansion was certainly not the easiest of stories to process.

“You’re concerned about the repercussions of refusing to wear the tanning garment they provided and then fleeing the shoot before it was finished.”

“My ex said I’d be sued for breach of contract if I left the way I did,” I said, trying out Ethan’s new title for the first time.

A brief yet quizzical look crossed his features. “I thought you said your manager told you that?”

So I supposed I’d left that little detail out, too, then. “They’re actually two in one.”

“Who is?”

“My manager is my boyfriend. Well, now he’s my ex-boyfriend.”

Silas said nothing, but I didn’t miss the slight hitch in his eyebrows as he read through the first two pages of legal jargon.

“And yes, I do realize how that sounds,” I said.

“How what sounds?”

“How dating my talent manager must sound.”

“I’m not asking you to defend anything to me.”

Yet I wanted to do just that. I wanted to explain that while Ethan had called me his girlfriend for several months, these last several hours of being single had brought more clarity than I’d had in the entire time we were a couple. Because that was the thing—we hadn’t ever really been a couple, at least, not in the ways that mattered most. There was always something more pressing, more urgent, more engaging to tend to than the health or growth of our relationship. And I had told myself to be okay with that. To be okay with playing the arm-candy role at every social event. To be okay with engaging in the shallowest of small talk with colleagues and sponsors who spoke to me like my brain was filled with helium. To be okay with being labeled a progressive power couple who didn’t need romantic expectations or emotional connection to fulfill them.

But as it turned out, I wasn’t nearly as progressive as I thought I was.

I reached for the salt and pepper shakers on the table and spun them around each other like dance partners, dipping one and then dipping the other. It was a game I used to play with Miles as we waited for our food to arrive after enduring never-ending church meetings as kids. Whoever invented the most creative dance routine for the bride