Page 68 of Worth Every Moment (Hawkston Billionaires #4)

ERICA

F ive days after the wedding, I got my period. I’ve never been so upset to see the blood. I felt so stupid, feeling sadness over a streak of red on a tissue. Did I really want to carry Seb’s child and raise it alone? Without him?

I want to say no. My head says no. But my heart…

it ached the week of my period as though I was losing something precious…

some last piece of him and me. Which, of course, I wasn’t.

I’d never been pregnant. There was no child to lose, but that tiny flicker of hope that maybe I’d taken some part of him with me—that some lasting piece of me and him existed within me—was dashed with that first spot of blood the week after I got home.

It signified that it was really, truly , over between us. There was nothing left at all. Nothing but tormented dreams where he kissed me on the beach and tossed me aside, leaving me lying in the sand.

I sent him one message that read, I’m not pregnant, in case you were wondering.

His reply came instantly. I was. I’m sorry.

I don’t know if he meant he was sorry about everything that happened, or sorry that I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t send anything else.

I cried for two weeks straight. Didn’t leave the house. Cancelled all my appointments and photo shoots. I pissed a lot of people off.

Even now, on day sixteen, I still feel like shit as I curl up on my sofa with a tub of dairy ice cream.

Bang .

The thump on the door is so loud that the spoon I’m holding clatters to the floor.

“Erica! Let me in.” Mum’s shrieks sail through the apartment, and my hackles rise. I’ve ignored every message she’s sent to me since the wedding, deleting them all without reading them. I don’t need to hear her say I told you so .

Bang .

But I can’t avoid her any longer. I slop off the sofa like I’m made of jelly and slouch to the door, peeling it open.

Mum stalks in, doing her usual scan of my appearance, which brings her up short. “I was going to tell you that you need to leave the house, but if you look this bad, perhaps it’s wise that you don’t.”

My heart is broken. Can’t you see? Don’t you care?

I shuffle back towards the kitchen without granting her a response, but Mum is quick to follow.

“I told you he’d destroy you. I knew it. If only you’d listened to me.” She dumps her huge designer handbag on the island as though she’s moving in. “What are we going to do now?”

We ?

There is no more fucking we here.

“ We are going to do nothing,” I say. “I’m going to get up tomorrow and go to work. They’re expecting me on set.”

Mum bristles. “You’re still doing this movie thing then?”

“I am. And I don’t care what your opinion is on the matter. It’s no longer relevant. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

She presses a hand against her décolletage. “Erica. How can you say such a thing? We have the business to think about. The company. The—”

“I don’t want to be in business with you.

I’m going to sell my half.” I haven’t thought this through, but my body is vibrating with rage.

I put my heart and soul into that company.

I don’t want to give it up, but to extricate myself from Mum and sever all ties feels like the right thing.

Without the company, she has no hold over me.

Freedom . As much as it would break my heart to do it, I will.

“I’ll ring up Arthur Knatchbull and make him an offer—”

“You think a man like that will have time for you?”

Irritation sparks behind my ribs. “The way he had time for you? When you took him my portfolio? When you orchestrated my big break?” Mum’s expression turns wary.

“Oh, yeah. I know it wasn’t you. I met him at the wedding and he told me he’d never met you.

And you know what else? He told me it was Seb who convinced him to choose me.

Seb . Not you. You lied to me. All this time, you claimed it was your doing, when it was him.

You said Seb was awful, too dreadful to be seen with in public, and really, he’s the only reason I’ve got this far.

And he never tried to claim the glory. He did it quietly, without making a fuss.

In all the years he’s been my friend, he never once tried to take any of my success from me or claim it as his own.

Not one time did he throw that in my face. And he could have. He—”

“Erica, wake up. He doesn’t care about you. If he did, he wouldn’t have humiliated you the way he did. You’re nothing to him.” She sighs. “At least you didn’t sleep with him. That’s one blessing, I suppose.”

The air fills with an energetic charge that raises the hair on my arms.

“Why do you think I didn’t?”

“Because that’s not something we’d ever do.”

“Who the fuck is this ‘ we ’ you keep referring to?” My voice trembles, my rage barely controlled.

“There is no ‘ we ’. There is you, and there is me. Separate. And I did sleep with him. He popped my hymen like a fucking cherry. Blood everywhere. And after that, we did it again. And again. I had a lot of sex with Seb. And I enjoyed it.”

Mum pulls herself up tall, sneering down at me. “Good for you.” Her voice is like ice. “But that doesn’t mean he cares. I have no idea why you’re still defending him.”

Because I love him. I will always love him. “ I know you think men are animals and all they want is sex, but they aren’t. They’re human beings with thoughts and feelings and a history that explains why they do what they do. And Seb is a good man. At his core, he is good. His heart—”

“He dragged your name through the mud.” Mum glares at me. “Why did he do that? What explanation could he possibly give?”

My throat chokes up. I don't know why he did it . If Mum were a different mother, I could fall into her arms and weep for everything I’ve lost. For Seb, and for our imagined child that I wiped away on a piece of tissue.

For the humiliation. For the fact I hate him as much as I love him, and part of me agrees with her and now it feels like I have nothing at all.

But I can’t tell her any of that, because she has no sympathy. She can’t see me in a way that means anything. I’m little more than a puppet to her, and when she can’t control my strings, I’m worthless.

I’m cutting those strings. She will never influence me again.

“Get out,” I say, pointing to the door. Mum lets out a little squeak. “I mean it,” I tell her. “And don’t come back. I don’t want your lectures or your I-told-you-sos. I don’t want your opinions or your criticisms. I don’t want to see you at all. Consider yourself exiled.”

She huffs and snatches up her bag, hiking it onto her shoulder. “Exiled? Who do you think you are? The Queen?”

“Of my little kingdom, yes. That’s exactly what I think.”

A nasty laugh huffs out of her. “Don’t come crying to me when it all goes wrong.”

“It already went wrong, and I didn’t come to you, did I? You came here. I will never come to you with my tears. You don’t deserve them.” Clenching my teeth, I nod at the door. “Get out.”

Mum strides towards the exit, back straight and head held high. I expect her to pause at the threshold and throw a snide comment at me, some parting gift to make me feel even worse. But she doesn’t. She passes out into the hall and the door gives a soft click as it closes behind her.

Silence engulfs me, and in Mum’s absence, loneliness sinks through my skin and corrodes my flesh.

Unable to bear it, I grab my phone from where it’s plugged in on the table by the sofa and flop back onto the cushions. My ice cream has melted, so I push it away and call Amy.

After she brought me back to London, she went straight to Paris for a series of intimate concerts in an old music hall, so she didn’t witness the way I fell apart. She saw enough on the journey back from the Caribbean, and I didn’t want to pester her with more of my tears, not when she was so busy.

“Babe,” she says when she answers. “How are you holding up?”

At the sound of her voice, I break, sobbing into the phone, and for several minutes I can’t get a word out as Amy purrs comforting platitudes down the line.

When I’ve composed myself, I tell her about Mum, and then she asks about Seb. I tell her I haven’t heard from him since I told him I wasn’t pregnant.

“I’m so sorry I’m not there,” she murmurs. “I hate that he did this to you. I’ll cut his fucking balls off and flay his dick if I see him. And I’ll do it with pleasure.”

I roll my eyes, even as sobs are still heaving my chest. The image she paints is so visceral.

So disgusting. So Amy . And yet the mention of Seb, even in this context, sends a fluttering thrill through me, as though his name alone could put me back together and make me whole. “Please don’t do that.”

“Sorry, babe,” she soothes, a hint of laughter in her apology. “I think he deserves it though.”

Me too .

“You need to go out,” Amy says. “Have you found someone to date yet?”

“No.”

“You have to. Get out there. Be seen. Show Seb that you’re moving on. He does not impact Erica Lefroy.”

“Okay,” I agree, but it sounds half-hearted.

“Promise me?”

I sniffle, wiping my tears on the sleeve of my hoody. “Yeah. I’ll go out with someone.”

“Someone high profile.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good. I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.”

When the line goes dead, I decide to change my phone number so Mum has no way to contact me. And then I eat ten cherry tomatoes in a row.

The following weeks drag by, but I stay focused. I set up a meeting to sell my half of the business to Arthur Knatchbull. He’s interested, but who knows if he’ll buy it or not. It’s small fry compared to what he normally deals with.

I hear nothing from Seb, but it’s hardly surprising given I changed my number.

If he had tried to contact me, which I doubt, I wouldn’t know.

It’s been hard, but it’s what I needed. A clean break.

As clean as it can be when the tabloids are continually looking for juicy gossip, and Seb ditching me for Diana Marchetti at his brother’s wedding is about as juicy as celebrity gossip gets.

Theories run wild. What happened between Seb and Erica? Was Seb seeing Diana all along? Was it a publicity stunt after all?

I keep my head down and get to work. Filming is a new experience, but I immediately know I’m going to love it.

I made a good choice . It keeps me busy, and even working with Michael Drayton isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.

He’s very talented, which makes my job easier, and he’s complimentary about my acting, which, as it turns out, isn’t nearly as wooden as Mum claimed.

Every day, when I wake to a world where Seb is no longer mine and my heart aches like a bruise from the loss, I pledge that I will not allow him to ruin me. This is not going to destroy me, and going forward, he will not factor in my decision making.

Seb Hawkston is not going to impact me at all, just like Amy said.

So when Michael Drayton asks me out, I say yes.

He ticks all the boxes. High profile. A Hollywood powerhouse.

One of the most famous men in the world with more clout on the other side of the Atlantic than Mike Tyson in a boxing ring.

I’m not a fool; I know he doesn’t care for me, and I feel nothing for him.

Well, nothing beyond the admiration for a decent colleague who’s brilliant at his job.

In terms of dating, he’s all about the image, and it’s good publicity for us to be seen together.

A real life relationship between the actors who play the main parts in a movie can do wonders for box office numbers.

So when he suggests the Hawkston Mayfair as the venue for our first dinner date, I say yes to that too. After all, I’m emotionally done with the Hawkstons, so what does it matter if I darken the door of one of their hotels?

It breaks my heart to even think it, but it doesn’t fucking matter at all.