Page 116 of Under the Table

“Oh, uh… no?” Hope barely made out those words, her voice struggling to be anything above a whisper.

“I’m in a meeting. I can’t talk right now.”

“A meeting?” Hope stopped. “We’re supposed to be filming the last episode of our show.”

“Yes.” Angelica’s voice was terse, hard, as if she couldn’t really speak wherever she was at. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“In the morning?” Hope’s shoulders went rigid. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? Why didn’t you tell me about Annalise?”

“Hope, I really can’t talk about this right now.” Angelica’s words were clipped. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

And then she was gone. Hope stared down at her phone, thumbing over Angelica’s name. The urge to call her right back and demand a conversation was strong, but she couldn’t. Something held her back. Something that she wasn’t sure she wanted to name just yet.

She leaned back into the bench and crossed her ankle over her knee. The sun was still bright, warming her skin, but she felt anything but happy. All that gloss and shiny newness of her relationship with Angelica had vanished way too fast, and she’d been left with a pit of questions, doubts, and fears all mingling together.

Open relationships were hard.

But they weren’t impossible. Yet perhaps Angelica had been right all along. This time, with all of them involved, it just wouldn’t work. Because Angelica didn’t seem to want to make it work. Rex said he did, but the small comments here and there told Hope that he wasn’t sure about it anymore.

And Rachel.

God, Hope hated Rachel right now.

Not because she was doing anything that was too much or that Hope couldn’t handle, because maybe she was right. Maybe Hope was doing way more harm than good. But she didn’t want to give up on this yet. She wasn’t ready to let the dream of this possibility go. Perhaps it’d all be different once they finished filming. Perhaps, with more time and less stress, they could all find some kind of balance.

With a renewed purpose, Hope stood up and brushed herself off.

That was it exactly. They just had to get through this season, which was fast coming to an end, and then they could sort everything out together. Just a few more days at most and they’d have it in their hand.

Hope’s lips pulled up into a half smile.

They could do this.

Because she loved both of them deeply.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

“Ange, you got a minute?” Sy asked nervously.

Angelica paused in her quick walk from the bathroom where she’d barely managed to get a second to herself, toward the back offices. She was on a mission to finish what she’d started nearly two days ago, which was to beef up the policies for safety.

“Is this important?” she asked, trying to gauge just how necessary it was for her to take time out of her day for it.

“It’s about the hotel, so yes.” Sy wrung his hands together. “And I think it should be filmed.”

Angelica furrowed her brow, cocking her head to the side. “All right then.”

She followed Sy back toward the office behind the main reception desk. He shut the door, turned the camera on, and then sat across from her in the chairs. No one else was in there. Angelica crossed her legs and waited for some kind of explanation from him, but he didn’t immediately jump into the conversation.

“Last night, well yesterday, well, the night before?—”

“Sy, I need some context about what we’re discussing.”

“Right, sorry.” His face was pale, his cheeks slack. What the hell could he be so nervous about? “I was curious if this was an issue this hotel has had before, safety and kids, whatever. So I went on a deep dive through the internet to see if the golf cart incident was something that had happened before.”

Angelica’s shoulders dropped, no longer tense. “And has it?”