Remember When 3: The Finale (Remember Trilogy #3) (22 page)

   “It’s not personal. It’s
The Backlot
, for godsakes. It’s what we do here.” He gave a chuckle at that, and that one, little, trivializing guffaw managed to make me feel like I was in way over my head. As if this was just the way things were done in that city, and
I
was the oddball for not adhering to their rules. What was wrong with these people?

   Devin didn’t notice my epiphany and just continued with his self-inflating commentary.
“I turned this magazine around. We went from relative obscurity to the third-highest-selling tabloid in the entire country. I turned this place into an empire, and you’re looking at the king, baby.”

  
“You’re sitting on a throne made of porcelain. It’s a kingdom of crap.”

  
He stammered a bit at that, caught off guard by my dig. “It pays the bills.”

  
“Destroying people? I can’t imagine any amount of money is worth that.”

  
He snickered, but I knew my words had gotten to him. “Always with your high ideals, Layla. You may want to join the real world sometime.”

  
If that was the real world, I didn’t need to be a part of it. I was much happier living in my delusional bubble, thank you very much. “You’ve changed, Devin. I mean, you were always ambitious, but I never knew you to be
cruel
before.”

  
I saw his face fall, but he quickly regained his composure as he shrugged and defended, “It’s just business, baby.”

  
“It always was with you.”

  
I paced a few steps around the room, ran a hand over my hair. “Okay, look. I didn’t come here to argue with you. I came here to offer you a deal.”

   I stood there
with my arms crossed, eyeing up the man I had almost married. I was pretty disappointed in myself at that moment for ever considering it and grateful that I’d finally woken up in time before I did. Granted, he wasn’t always this much of a jerk, but the signs had always been there.

   Moving out to a sink-or-swim place like Hollywood didn’t help matters any. That city
was like a drug in the way it amplified a person’s character. Like that Bill Cosby bit. During one of his standups, he made a joke about talking to some guy, asking what was so great about being on drugs. The guy said, “It intensifies your personality.” Cosby responded, “Yes. But what if you’re an asshole?”

   Ladies and gentlemen, please observe
Devin Fields overdosing on Hollywood.

   His ambition had been enlarged
to epic proportions and he was letting it dominate everything, destroying reputations just for a little extra cash in his pocket.

   Trip, on the other hand, had used that Hollywood drug to
become a mega-star. A generous philanthropist. 

   And I… well…
I found out my insecurities were alive and well, bigger than they ever were.

   Devin
was staring me down, trying to hide his intrigue. He mirrored my pose, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against his desk again, an incredulous look on his face, a lip snarling above his teeth.

  
“What kind of deal?”

Chapter
26

TWIST OF FAITH

  
“You’re letting your ex-fiancé publish my biography?! What the hell are you thinking?!”

   
Trip was feeling uneasy enough as it was that I’d gone to see Devin without telling him first. I’d told him the whole story, explained why I was there. But by the time I told him about the book, he just about blew his top.

  
“It’s a
memoir
, not a biography, and I was thinking I was arranging for our life together to be a little more private. I was thinking that you’d be grateful to have him off your back. I thought I was protecting you, protecting
us
.”

   “I already told you that the crap in those rags doesn’t bother me.”

   “Well, it bothers
me
! I’m sure it’s real easy for you to wash your hands of it when it wasn’t
your
ass on the cover of that thing!”

   Trip opened his mouth to respond, but must have thought better of it. He knew there was no way to excuse such an intrusion into our lives.

   “Are you even going to do anything about it? Can’t we call your lawyers or something?” I asked.

   “There’s no case, Layla. They covered up most of your body and they weren’t on my property when they took the picture.”

   “How can that be legal? How can
you
be okay with it?”

   “I’m not okay with it, but what do you expect me to do?
I’m also not okay with your
ex-fiancé
getting a book deal out of the situation.”

  
Was that…
jealousy
I was hearing? “Are you serious? He means absolutely nothing to me. To
us
. He can hit the lottery or get hit by a bus. It doesn’t matter. He’s on my pay-no-mind list. So, it shouldn’t really matter if he’s the one to turn this book into a raging success. If it does well, that will only mean that
we
benefit from it. Understand?”

   “I could give two shits about the money he’ll make off it.”

   “Then what’s the problem?”

   Trip raked a hand thr
ough his hair and looked at me, a line drawn between his brows, a muscle twitching in his jaw. I gave him a moment to gather his thoughts, but when he did nothing more than let out a breath through clenched teeth, I filled in the blank space.

  
“Look, Trip. Don’t you see how this makes everything work out? Diana still gets the fiction novel to auction off to the highest bidder
and
she gets to option the built-in deal for the memoir. Devin calls off the dogs because he won’t want any bad press leading up to the release.
The Backlot
is the only magazine writing all that negative stuff, and now they won’t do that anymore. You go back to being Golden Boy in the tabloids. I sell lots of books. Everyone wins.”

  
Trip finally found his voice. “Especially Fields!”

   “What?”

   “Oh, I’m
so sure
he’ll hate every moment of working so closely with his ex-fiancée.”

  
That wasn’t the case at all. And wow, yeah, I guessed Trip actually
was
jealous. It was kind of strange to see him getting so angry just from the mere mention of Devin’s name. I didn’t do anything that would warrant suspicion on Trip’s part. And where did he get off being such a hypocrite? “He’s not my agent. He’s not my editor. He won’t be working with his
ex-fiancée
at all!” I should have just shut up after that. I should have just let the comment stand on its own. But in true brain-vomit fashion, I had to go and add, “Unlike
some
people.”

  
“Oh, Jesus. Don’t start in with this again.”

  
“Are you going to do this movie with her?”

  
“Stop changing the subject.”

   “Are you?”

   “I haven’t decided yet.”

   “
What’s to think about?”

  
He paced a few steps, ran a hand over his face. “Why don’t you trust me? I’m not that same guy anymore, Lay.”

  
Knowing that didn’t make the situation any less outrageous. And besides, he was getting all bent out of shape because of a
meeting
with Devin. I wasn’t the one that would be rolling around naked with my ex in front of dozens of people for some movie that the whole world would see.
I thought I was content to let Trip make his own decision about it, but obviously, I was fooling myself. So was he. “I
do
trust you, but why would you even want to do it? You hate Bert; you want nothing to do with Jenna. It just feels like you’re trying to punish me somehow by even considering this role. I’ve already apologized for the mixup five years ago; the fact of the matter is that I’m here with you
now
. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  
Aaand get ready for some more inappropriate brain-vomit in three… two… one…

  
“Your mother was right. You don’t know how to forgive. Maybe I deserve a little of that, but this is going too far. I’m not your father.”

  
The look Trip shot me froze me in my tracks.
“Now you’re bringing my
father
into this? Way to go for the trifecta, there, Lay.”

  
I knew I was opening a whole new can of worms at what was most likely not the most opportune moment. But screw it. I didn’t want to waste a good argument. We weren’t normally fighters. It wasn’t every day that we had a big blowout to hash out all our crap. Well, prior to the past few days, anyway.

  
May as well lay
everything
out on the table.

  
“You say you can’t forgive your father even though you know what it must have been like for him. You know what it’s like to have that weakness. But I think that wake was a really good first step. You made sure that it was beautiful.”

   “
I did that for my mother.”

   “
You did that for
you
. To say goodbye properly. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s cathartic.”

  
He stopped pacing around the room and looked at me like I’d just shat in his Corn Flakes. “You know what? Don’t go standing there psycho-analyzing me, Lay. That’s a shitty thing to do. I could toss out a ton of jargon to describe your fucked-upness, but I’m not doing that to you. I don’t try talking you into forgiving your mother; why is it so important to you that I forgive my father? Why can’t you just let it be what it is? Why can’t you just let it go?”

   “
Why can’t
you
? Stop shutting me out. Stop treating me like I’m constantly
betraying
you. Stop
punishing
me!”

  
“Stop.
Pushing.
Me!” He turned and stomped a few steps away, tearing at his hair with his fists. He flung his hands out to his sides and threw his head toward the ceiling as he let out with a screaming, frustrated, “
Fuuuuuck
!”

   He
bent in half, braced his hands against his knees and took a cleansing breath, coming down, refocusing. It was enough of a tantrum to wipe him out, and I watched his torso slump in fatigue. He was trying to keep his rage in check as he turned back to me and said in a measured voice, “Just think about it. We can’t change the stuff we have no control over, remember?”

  
“What do you mean?”

   “It means that I can’t change the fact that my father was an asshole. You can’t change the fact that your mother left. I can’t control what the tabloids say about me—or
you
—and it shouldn’t matter what they say anyway. I can’t control who gets cast in a movie and I can’t change the list of women that I’ve slept with. I can’t stop the fans from asking for autographs. I can’t stop a photographer from taking a picture. We can’t control other people’s behavior. We can only control our own.”

  
I couldn’t believe he was content to just throw me to the wolves. I wasn’t used to being tabloid fodder, he knew that. Because we couldn’t change what happened meant that we should just do nothing about it?
That was
his
ideology, not mine. “That’s a bit of a cop-out, don’t you think?”

  
His newly-found calm cracked at that as his voice rose a notch higher. “A cop-out? I’ve been living my life by those words for three years now. You’re going to stand there and tell me the theory I base my life around is nothing but a cop-out?”

  
“No. I didn’t mean it like that. What I was trying to say is that it’s a little too convenient to write everything off to a simple catch phrase. Sometimes, you have to get down in the mud and get your hands dirty. Sometimes, you have to actually figure some stuff out for yourself. And sometimes, you need to ask for help.”

   “I don’t need anyone’s help. I’ve been doing just fine on my own.”

   “How can you say that? Your mother and Claudia have been there for you every minute of your life. I’m really sorry
I
wasn’t, but you need to stop holding that against me. I want to be here for you now. I love you, Trip. I want to help you through this.” Would he always resent his father? He’d acted like I’d gone for his jugular just by bringing it up. Would he ever let me break down that wall? Was I even supposed to try?

  
I let the dad thing go for the time being, in order to drive my point home. “But what I meant was that
I
need
your
help.”

  
A line formed between his brows. “With what?”

  
With what?
Couldn’t he see how hard it was for me out there? How I was struggling? This was the life he chose; this was the world he lived in. I felt out of control within it, but how could he just be
used
to this madness by now? The entire universe expected pieces of him—from his fans to the women to the people he worked with. The only piece of him I wanted was the
real
him, but there were so many other things standing in the way.

 
“I don’t know how to deal with this life. I feel like I’ve been thrown into this ocean without a life vest, and I’m afraid of sinking, Trip. You’ve had ten years to become a part of the way things work out here. I’ve had four weeks. I just don’t—”

  
“You think I’m like
them
? That I’m part of this whole stupid, shallow—”

  
“No, of course not. You’re—”

  
“Because I’m not just some fucking
sellout,
okay? I might play the game, but it doesn’t mean I like it. It doesn’t mean I’m
used
to it.”

   “I wasn’
t saying that! I—”

  
“Let me tell you something, Lay. You
never
get used to it. Never. All you can do is navigate through it.”

   “Okay, fine. I’m just trying to figure out
how
. I don’t know how to be
you
through something like this!”

  
He stood there staring at me for a long minute, and I couldn’t read the look on his face. We were both breathing heavily, caught in a stand-off, each of us waiting for the other one to flinch first. My heart was beating in a crazy rhythm, watching him looking at me like a lion ready to pounce. Every muscle in his body was poised, tensed; his eyes were icy, blue slits aimed in my direction. The moment was wrought with unease, the air between us charged with crackling electricity,
edgy and heated. I got the impression he was battling with himself over whether to wring my neck or slam me up against the wall and kiss the last of our fight away.

   It hadn’t occurred to me that
he’d been considering a third alternative entirely.

  
“Well, from the sound of it, you’ve already got it all figured out perfectly.”

   At that, he walk
ed out of the room.

  
I stood there, shocked and speechless, having no idea what to do. I didn’t want to run after him, even though we still had a ton of stuff to work out.
Because “working it out” had only led to huge fights between us thus far. Talking about our problems shouldn’t trigger even bigger ones.

  
We needed to find some better ways to get our points across, because fighting about everything was definitely not cutting it.

   Ignoring our stupid
crap hadn’t ever cut it, either, and at least we’d gotten in the habit of
addressing
our problems, even if we had no clue how to deal with them.