Chapter 18: Distance

I hid out in my room for the rest of the afternoon, considering my own personal strategy for this latest publicity stunt. If Ed was still mad at me, maybe that could work in my favour. His attitude would annoy me in return, and it was much safer to dislike him than to like him under the current circumstances.

Pretending to love him in public while maintaining our usual friendship in private was a recipe for disaster. Saturday night's kiss had been a warning for me: I was getting sucked in again, unable to distinguish between my head, heart, and hormones. How could I keep romantic feelings at bay if we had no real barriers between us anymore?

A light rap of knuckles against the door interrupted my quandary. I waited to see if they'd leave, but the louder and longer knock that followed pulled me away from my bed to answer.

Ed stood on the other side of the door, fist raised as if planning to try again, and I cocked a questioning brow at him.

"Uh, hey," he said, having the decency to look sheepish. "Got a minute?"

"Not really."

As if knowing I was lying, he scratched the back of his neck and lowered his eyes.

"Sorry for snapping earlier. I shouldn't have reacted like that. It just seemed like too much of a coincidence."

"Well, it is a coincidence."

"Yeah, Helen explained."

I leaned against the door frame and folded my arms. "Helen explained? So if she hadn't, you'd still think I'd screwed you over again?"

With a soft sigh, Ed glanced over his shoulder before returning his gaze to me. "Can we talk inside?"

"So your men don't overhear? We're in a public relationship now, so why not start practising early?"

Shaking his head, he tugged my wrist free from my crossed arms and strode into my room, yanking me in with him. As he slammed the door shut, he whirled around to face me, eyes swimming with irritation.

"Is that what this is really about?" he asked.

"No, this is about you jumping to conclusions. I thought we'd moved past what happened last spring, but apparently you're still harbouring resentment and suspicion towards me."

Ed closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, and when they re-opened, the irritation had been replaced by something softer.

"Yes, I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I also believed we'd moved past it, hence why I reacted the way I did. I'd let my guard down with you again and thought I'd been bitten for it. It was an instinctive reaction driven by fear, and I can't do anything about it now other than apologise."

Stop. This didn't work with my plan. How was I supposed to hate the guy when he was being so reasonable?

Luckily for me, my silence prompted him to carry on talking, and this time his words genuinely did rub me up the wrong way, so I didn't have to pretend.

"I know Helen has asked you to join me at the awards ceremony. Obviously it's your decision, and nobody's going to force you either way, but you should know that I'll be performing Friends there."

"Why?" I furrowed my brow as a searing flush of angst rolled through me. "Do you already know you've won or something?"

He lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. "Not exactly, but it's the top streaming song so they want me to sing it live."

"Wonderful. I'd tell you to enjoy the trip down memory lane, but that conclusion you jumped to earlier suggests you're already partway there."

A muscle in his jaw clenched but he didn't fight back. "If this plan of Helen's is upsetting you, we'll talk to her about it and suggest an alternative."

"Don't patronise me, Ed."

"I'm not trying to patronise you—"

"Exactly." I stepped closer, throwing my arms out. "You're not trying because you don't even realise you're doing it. We can't all have an endless supply of money, a choice of places to live, and a tight-knit team to fix our mistakes. I need this job, and honestly, I don't know how I still have it thanks to the number of times I've tested Helen's patience recently. So, no, I am not going to give her an excuse to fire me by taking away the one strategy that she thinks will sort this latest fuck-up."

Sighing, Ed tipped his head back against the door, fists clenched by his sides as swallowed down his own patience. When his blue eyes met mine again, they'd lost their earlier tolerance.

"You say I've not moved on since last spring? Neither have you. You still think I live in a perfect world with no challenges. Maybe you do deserve to lose your job if you're not taking notice of all the crap I have to deal with every day."

Ouch. His cold words barrelled into my chest, wrapping around my lungs and squeezing. As I opened my mouth to reply, my throat tightened with a thick lump. Anger prevailed, though. I swallowed down the hurt and speared him with a steady glare.

"Get the fuck out of my room."

Rather than comply, he stepped closer to eliminate the distance between us, and I craned my neck to hold his stony gaze, refusing to shrink away.

"You weren't the only one who got hurt last spring." His low voice sent an inconvenient tremble of desire through me, but my anger pushed it aside. "So if you are picking a fight to put distance between us, that's more than okay with me."

And just to prove we'd come full circle, I was left to wonder whether we were both playing the same game or if one person was on track to come out of this worse.

*

"This is a safe space, so please be honest and open. It's just the three of us."

Helen, Ed and I sat in a small circle, our chairs spaced far enough apart that it didn't feel invasive, but close enough to create the illusion of intimacy. Two days after Ed and I had locked horns in my room, Helen had set up this meeting to discuss our strategy. She probably knew we weren't talking, but Ed wasn't the only issue plaguing my mind.

Mac hadn't replied to any of my messages. While I knew there'd be a good reason behind that, it still niggled away at me. Two friends lost in as many days.

"Firstly, background to the relationship," Helen continued. "Stick to the truth as much as possible. Sophia has already been seen around our team, so we can't pretend you only just met."

"So, team member who fell in love with me?" Ed suggested lightly.

He was trying to provoke me, so I didn't give him the satisfaction of a reaction. Instead, I bobbed my head once at Helen to confirm I was on board with that narrative.

"Now, Sophia, is there anyone you know, past or present, who may see you in the media and try to sell a story?"

"You mean anyone I've pissed off?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, but not just that. Anyone who has anything on you that could be damaging."

Ed turned his bored gaze onto me. "People you've slept with in public bathrooms, for example."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Thanks for clarifying." Then I turned my attention back to Helen. "I was pretty wild at uni, but the only people who'd know about any of that would be my friend Gabby, her girlfriend Charlotte, my ex Mike, and Becca—who you already know about. Oh, and Logan McIntosh, but I don't think we need to worry about him for obvious reasons..."

Although I didn't look across, I could almost sense Ed's eyeroll. Helen cracked a small smile, so at least one of us was enjoying this.

"Tell me about Mike. Amicable split?"

"Sure, I guess. Met at uni. Started dating during second year and broke up a year after graduation. He's the only one I fooled around with in public," I said, whipping a pointed scowl towards Ed, "so you don't need to worry about stuff like that coming out."

"He won't talk?" Helen asked.

"Nah. He's with Becca now. Neither of them can try to fuck me over without sabotaging their own relationship."

That had to be one good thing to come from Becca and Mike getting together. He couldn't expose me without Becca questioning why he was still focused on an ex-girlfriend, and she couldn't expose me without Mike questioning if she was lashing out through insecurity.

Plus, despite our differences towards the end of our respective relationships, both were good people deep down. Neither would set out to hurt me unprovoked.

"And what about after university?" Helen asked.

I shrugged. "Not had any relationships since Mike."

"Anything casual?"

Apart from the guy sitting next to me?

"No," I said. "Just Logan and then one-night stands."

"With half of London, right?"

Biting my tongue to avoid biting his head off, I turned to face Ed and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Your jealousy is rearing its ugly head again."

He held up his hands in surrender. "Not jealous. And not judging, either, before you accuse me of that. This is a safe space, remember? We have to be completely transparent."

"Half of London would be millions of people. I think we can safely say that an exaggeration like that comes from jealousy or judgement."

"Or a joke." Ed's lips quirked but his eyes remained cold.

"You need to work on your sense of humour, then."

"Enough." Helen heaved out a tired sigh. "Let's stay on track. Ed, you can drop the attitude because I'm coming to you shortly."

Part of me suspected his attitude was in response to our argument earlier on in the week. He'd said he was just as happy to put distance between us, and he'd never judged me before, so his incendiary comments had to be coming from a tactical place rather than genuine malice. As much as I wanted to be pissed off, I knew this wasn't him.

"I've slept with fifteen people in total," I told Helen. "Apart from Ed and Mike, I can probably tell you the names of around five of them. As for the rest... no idea about their identities, I'm afraid. We didn't exchange names."

Ed shuffled in his seat, head bowed towards his legs, and a small stab of shame pierced my heart. He knew I'd slept with multiple people during the summer, but we'd never discussed the exact number. Given that he also knew my body count before him, he could quite easily work out just how many one-night stands I'd had since.

There was no reason for me to feel ashamed: we weren't together, and I'd had my reasons for wanting so much sex. But if the tables were turned and it was Ed who'd slept with six people over the last few months, I'd still feel jealous that six other women had enjoyed the mind-blowing, one-on-one experience of him in bed.

"I think that's fine," Helen said, drawing my attention back onto her. "If you give me the names you know anyway, just so we can keep an eye out, but this is all worst-case scenario stuff. Chances are, nobody will try to smear the name of someone who's not actually a public figure."

"And, just so we're clear," I said, "I want it to stay that way. I'd rather not be giving away personal details about myself in interviews or whatever. I understand that we'll have to disclose my name at some point, but if we can keep my surname out of it... if possible."

"We can..." Helen's cautious tone did little to reassure me. "But what we can't do is stop people from finding out themselves. Social media, public records... If they care enough, people can find out anything."

I nodded, understanding that. Maybe in normal circumstances people wouldn't try to smear the name of someone not in the public eye, but this was Teddy Stone. He had an obsessed fanbase who would attack any woman associated with him—I'd seen it with my own eyes—and I knew they'd come for me. I just didn't want to make it easy for them. Luckily, there shouldn't be much of an overlap between my sexual past and Ed's fanbase.

"Right." Helen's eyes landed on Ed. "Your turn."

He scratched at the back of his neck. "What's the point? I have to disclose everything to you. There's nothing hiding in my closet that you don't already know about."

Helen's eyes flickered over me, a strange expression clouding her face that I couldn't decipher.

"You sure about that?" she asked him.

"One hundred per cent. The only thing you didn't know about was the girl in the bathroom, and now you do, so..." He threw up his hands in the air and rose from his seat.

"So, previous sexual partners are still Francesca, Lacey, Sophia, Lucia, and Veronica?"

Body stiffening, Ed froze. Then he slowly sank back into his chair. His fists clenched into tight balls at his sides as he fired lethal daggers at Helen.

"Yes," he said through gritted teeth.

I repeated the names in my head, doing my own calculations just like I knew Ed would have done for me. I had to assume one of those women was his first girlfriend and another was the girl from the bathroom, but that left an extra name in the mix.

"Lucia?" I asked, knitting my brows together. "Not Lucia Bruno?"

Ed wouldn't meet my eye, staring only at Helen like he wanted to strangle her.

"Yes," Helen said, ignoring the silent threats from our companion. "Don't look at me like that, Ed. This is a safe space with no judgement, right?"

Ouch. Helen taking my side for once. Clearly she hadn't been impressed with his reaction to my sexual history, either.

"You slept with her?" I twisted to face him.

"Mm." He stared straight ahead and crossed his arms over his chest. Defensive. Uncomfortable. Embarrassed?

"When?" I was still crunching the numbers in my head. "In Rome?"

If he had slept with her during our trip to Rome, that meant he'd lied to me about it, and I struggled to believe that. He'd had no reason to lie at that point, unless it was all part of his bigger master plan to deceive me. But I doubted it.

"No." He scraped a hand over his jaw and cleared his throat. "In August."

"This August? As in, two months ago?"

"Yes." Impatient eyes flashed in my direction. "She was in London for a shoot. It's all wrapped up in pretty NDAs now, so I don't see why we needed to mention it."

Helen snapped her notebook shut with a loud thump. "Because she's a public figure who you may bump into at events. Better for Sophia to find out now than risk being caught off-guard by Lucia bringing it up in front of her. We need to at least pretend that the pair of you communicate."

Ed shook his head to himself at Helen's dig, and I couldn't help remembering how he'd been caught off-guard over-hearing my conversation with Aaron. In a rare display of insecurity, he'd lashed out about it, even though his main issue had been the fact that two people close to him had gone behind his back.

Now, though, I understood the insecurity. He'd wanted to know how he compared to Aaron, and all I could think about was how I compared to Lucia. An Italian supermodel. We weren't in the same league. Not even close.

When I'd first met Ed, I'd considered myself the convenient option: someone who wasn't in the public eye and therefore represented a refreshing change from a relationship under the spotlight. That suspicion had worn off over time, but now it returned with a vengeance. If he could sleep with women as beautiful as Lucia Bruno, why fool around with me? Because people like Lucia came with future NDAs, that's why. He already had one with me, thanks to my job, so I was safe and easy. Others were a risk beforehand and a hassle afterwards.

"Are we done now?" I asked Helen, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice.

"Seriously?" Ed spat out a shocked laugh. "You've slept with six people recently, yet you're upset with me for sleeping with just one woman? How's that for double standards?"

So he had done the maths, then.

"I was honest with you about it, though. I'm pretty sure you lied to my face about Lucia."

"When did I lie to you?"

"The night you went out drinking with Aaron. I sat by your side for hours making sure you didn't choke on your own vomit, and you told me you'd got drunk because you couldn't use my method of sleeping around instead."

Ed's eyes glazed over as he presumably tried to recall the conversation. Or, as it turned out, tried to twist the conversation to cover his tracks.

"That wasn't a lie. I can't do that. I slept with Lucia and then spent a week with her team and mine drawing up an NDA. That kind of bureaucracy really dampens the mood."

Hopefully she was worth it, then. But I didn't say that out loud, because he'd probably say she was, and then I wouldn't know if he'd said it out of spite or because it was true. That was the bed we'd made for ourselves.

***

Thank you for reading :) xx

***

How do you think Soph is going to handle being in the spotlight? Will she be loved or hated?