Her tone takes on a high, pleading note. “Please, Jack. I’m sorry, it was for your own good, so you didn’t break your contract, you would have forfeited half your royalties.” Her eyes are wide and begging.

“So you thought you’d make up a baby?” My eyes swing around. “Who else knew, was it just you and Andy? Who came up with it? Wait, do I even care whose idea it was?” It’s true, I don’t care. Not yet. There are too many other things right now. I can’t believe there’s no baby. I haven’t been sure how I feel about the concept, and now there is nothing. I don’t like this either. I’m empty. There has to have been a mistake, a misunderstanding.

I turn to Devon as if he can answer this for me, even though I know he can’t. I am finding it difficult to breathe for some reason. “God, it’s not true is it.”

“We didn’t know,” Devon manages. His voice is rough with emotion as he looks at my face. Monica squeezes his hand. Her elegant face is transformed into sadness and concern. Devon’s look also smacks of pity, and I think of the throbbing skin on my foot. I think of the might-have-been that this lie has cost me.

I know, right in that moment, that I would give it all back.

I would trade all of this and all of these people and every royalty I’ve ever earned to get one moment of the peace I experienced for the first time in my life. It is so clear to me that I wonder why it has taken me this long to see it.

My eyes fly to Katie, who winces at what she must see in my expression. “Can you fix it?” I bark. “I mean, can you get me there? I can’t go commercial, I’m a wreck, can you get a plane to Hilton Head? I think it’s the nearest private airfield. See who has a pilot available.”

I don’t know what I’m saying. There is no way I can go back there. Not after all of this. After what I did and the way I left.

But Katie nods, wordlessly, and fumbles to pull her laptop out of her messenger bag. “I’m so sorry, Jack,” she says again for the thousandth time in two months.

My skin feels hot and tight, and I am slightly nauseous.

“God, you’re not going to her, are you?” Audrey says, her voice pouring acid all over me.

I hate her. My look must tell her everything I feel right now, because she flinches as I turn her way.

Rage rumbles from deep inside me, erupting as I turn and blindly punch a huge hole right through the wall behind me.

Fuck, it hurts.

Everybody is frozen.

“You can’t be serious,” Andy’s caustic tone grates over my already shredded nerves. “Dude, that cheap waitress you messed around with, that’s what this is all about?”

I grind my teeth together, and taking a deep breath, finally turn to him.

My hand is throbbing and it stings. I cradle it. Blood, I’m sure, is pooling in the skinned divots. The pain helps me focus. I wonder who this man is, who I have blindly trusted for the last six years. Just what he would do for his next paycheck.

After several moments, where even Andy must suddenly know better than to offer anything else, I say what I should have said to him sooner. “You’re fired. Get the. Fuck. Out.”