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Jo closed her eyes. Breathed.

“Jo, you’ve had thirty years in Hollywood and forty-two on this bitch of an earth,” Evelyn said. “People are going to find any way they can to dismiss Emma the way they dismiss every woman. You know that.”

She did.

“This is a bad idea,” Jo said.

“So was calling out the show that made you famous, but you could do that when you were just a kid,” Evelyn said.

“That’s a low blow.”

Evelyn had read every draft of Jo’s essay forThe Johnson Dynasty’s ten-year anniversary. She’d never let Jo quit on it.

“What are you so afraid of now?”

Heartbreak.

Jo was afraid of hurting Emma. Afraid of hurting Emma’s career. But mostly she was afraid of Emma realizing Jo wasn’t worth it and breaking her heart.

She said none of this, but Evelyn seemed to know.

“Stop making excuses,” Evelyn said.

“I have to go,” Jo said.

23

EMMA

Emma called Avery as soon as she got home.

“So Phil was the leak,” she said instead of hello. “Phil was fucking leaking stuff to the tabloids, and he apparently gave our flight information to a photographer and so this guy was outside my apartment late at night when we got back, which means—”

Avery sucked in a breath.

“Yup,” Emma snapped. “There were pictures of us kissing.”

“What are you going to do?” Avery asked.

Emma waved her hand around vaguely. She was pacing her apartment. “Jo already bought them or whatever, so it’s fine.”

“Yeah?” Avery said. “And how did Jo feel about the kiss?”

A whole day at work, and Emma still wasn’t sure. Jo had said it meant something. Or maybe only the pictures of the kiss meant something.

“Whatever,” Emma grumbled. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Em.”

There was a knock on the door. It was probably Raegan, her neighbor who locked herself out on a regular basis. She was the only person who knocked on Emma’s door.

“One sec, my neighbor’s here,” Emma said as she grabbed Raegan’s spare key off the hook she kept it on and pulled her door open.

It wasn’t Raegan.

It was Jo.

“Hi,” Jo said, a coffee cup in each hand, shoulders curled in on herself.