Page 136 of Under the Table

She charged out of the room.

Angelica stood there in the wake of Hope storming away. She sat down heavily on the couch against the far wall and breathed slowly. She couldn’t be blamed for this, could she? It wasn’t her fault if she was aware enough and smart enough to figure out what Rex had been planning all along. She just was. It was a fact.

It’d make filming next season a beast. But they only had one more season under their contracts, and then they could part ways like nothing had ever happened. Angelica brushed her fingers through her hair and blinked slowly.

What the hell was she doing?

That wall? Yeah, it wasn’t there. She needed one. She needed to protect herself against whatever the hell this was. She needed to stop playing the confidante to Hope’s messed-up and fucked-up life. Because it was only that way because of the decisions that she’d made.

Angelica breathed slowly, keeping herself together. Press this summer was going to be awful. She should try to change as much of it as she could, but there were some things that she couldn’t get out of. Licking her lips, she straightened her back.

She could do this. She could harden herself against Hope’s influences. She could prepare herself for the inevitable. She’dbeen in this situation before, and she knew exactly what to expect now, didn’t she?

Pain.

Hurt.

Awkwardness.

The wild card had always been Hope. Angelica hadn’t lied when she said they’d needed a hard break from each other. Their sneaking around hadn’t ended yet. And Angelica needed it to. She needed to find the separation and learn to live without Hope in her life like that.

It’d be hard.

But it was what would be best for both of them.

Sighing heavily, Angelica picked up her things and left the studio. Her heart hurt, but she wouldn’t let anyone know. She was the scorned woman, the home wrecker. Hope had told her time and time again that she wasn’t worth it.

It was time that she actually believed it.

Chapter

Forty-Six

“Hope.”

“Mary.” Hope dragged in a deep breath as she sat in her office on the couch, the phone pressed to her ear as she listened to her agent’s quick speech. It was such a contrast to the slowness she felt, to being curled up with a mug of coffee in her fingers. She sighed. She couldn’t be anywhere else in her house. It was too quiet.

“There’s been an adjustment in the press tour.”

Hope wasn’t surprised. While the morning show had been more her style than Angelica’s, putting them together in one space outside the confines of filming had been a risk. Social media had blown up over it, the way Hope had held Angelica’s hand when she’d whisked, the looks they’d shared during the question and answer time.

But what it really was, what no one else knew, was the argument at the end.

Angelica hadn’t talked to her since. Not that Hope had expected her to. And true to Angelica, she was retreating from everything that she didn’t want to feel. Hope sipped her coffee, still not sure what to say or even what she needed to do.

“Did she take me off all of it?” Hope asked. That’d be the best outcome. Then she could focus on this divorce and maybe finding Rex. Whom she still hadn’t heard from. No texts, no phone calls, nothing. And she’d tried. She’d tried desperately to get ahold of him, but he wouldn’t answer her.

“No. You’ll be doing press separately again like last season.” Mary hummed, and Hope could hear her clicking on her computer. “And the email said something about a YouTube show? That’s been cancelled as well.”

“Oh.” Hope had barely even remembered that. Not with everything that was going on right now. “Okay.”

“You don’t seem upset about this.” Mary’s voice was calm, but then she normally was.

“I’m not surprised by it.” She sighed heavily. “I have bigger issues going on right now.”

“What issues? Do you need to renegotiate the contract again?”

“No, these are personal issues.” Hope stared down at the rug in her office, making a mental note of the patterns in the colors. She couldn’t bring herself to leave the room and go out into the rest of the house. “Rex served me with divorce papers.”