Falling out of Hate with You: Hate - Love Duet Book One Rowe, Lauren (black books to read TXT) 📖

saying he’d breached his contract’s strict morality clause. And now, here we are, celebrating Hugh’s win for Best Country Music Video.

The scandal has been catastrophic news for old Hugh, obviously, but fantastic news for whoever his last-minute replacement on the show will turn out to be. It’s a long shot, but my agent, Daria, is already hard at work, trying to make Hugh’s replacement me. I don’t expect her efforts to bear fruit. I’m barely famous enough to have snagged a spot as a mentor this season. But my profile has expanded significantly since the success of my second album. Not to mention, since that video of me fighting with Savage in New York caused Google searches of my name to spike by one thousand percent. So, my agent figured it was worth a shot.

Daria’s pitch to the show’s producers has been: “You’ve already publicized Laila as a mentor this season and the response has been fantastic. So why not make a surprise announcement that you’ve expanded her role because you’ve realized she’ll bring a fresh energy to the judges’ table? Who better to replace Hugh at the last minute than his polar opposite—a young, enthusiastic woman?”

Yeah, we don’t have high hopes that pitch will work. Almost certainly, they’ll replace Hugh with another big star, another man, who’ll appeal to Hugh’s same demographic. They’ve always had one woman and two men at the judges’ table, since the beginning—and Aloha is still under contract for the next four years of the show.

The PA hands Savage the short script for our banter. “This is all cued up on the teleprompter,” she assures him. “But you’ll probably want to read this before walking out there, so you don’t stumble on anything.”

“I’ll do that. Could you give us some space to rehearse in private?”

“Sure. Let me know if you need me. I’ll come back and cue you, right before the announcer introduces you both.”

As she walks away, Savage tosses the script onto a nearby speaker. “You’re stubborn as shit,” he says to me.

“Excuse me?”

“I kept my word and told no one. For a full month, I pretended nothing happened between us, whenever anyone was around. I kept my word to you and showed you I’m trustworthy. So why didn’t you come to my room, even once? Why not answer a single one of my texts—either during the tour, or over the past two weeks? At the very least, you could have replied to one of my texts! But you just can’t help yourself, huh? You’re so used to being a bitch to me, it’s now your default mode.”

I grit my teeth. “Yeah, interesting to note I’m only a bitch with you. I’m actually really nice with everyone else. And if you must know, I never received any of your texts, except the ones you sent in Vegas, because I blocked your number.”

Savage rubs his face, closes his eyes, and lets out a long and tortured exhale.

“If you actually got to know me,” I say, “beyond the little sex kitten bitch nut job you think I am, you’d find out there’s a whole lot more to me than all that.”

He whisper-shouts, “How am I supposed to get to know you when you block my fucking number!”

“Look, there’s no point to this. I told you it was a one-time thing. I said it would never happen again, so it shouldn’t have surprised you in the least when it didn’t.”

He looks fit to be tied. “Yes, I know what your mouth said that night, Laila, but your body told me something very different.”

I scoff. “Obviously, not. Or else I would have come to your room, wouldn’t I?”

It’s a dagger to his heart, obviously. “How did you resist me, though? That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around.”

“Oh, jeez.”

“No, seriously. Not because I’m ‘Savage from Fugitive Summer.’ Not like that. Because . . .” He shifts his weight, betraying his utter torment. “Laila, I’ve been losing sleep over this. How did you resist coming to my room, night after night, for a full month, after what happened between us in Phoenix? How the hell was that even possible?”

In this moment, I’m dying to tell Savage what I witnessed in Vegas—the sucker punch of him bringing a groupie to his room, the same way he’d brought those groupies into my dressing room. Although, in Las Vegas, unlike the times before, Savage couldn’t have known I’d see him. And that fact laid to rest a certain theory of mine, once and for all. Before Vegas, I’d stupidly entertained the crazy, magical thought that maybe Savage had brought those groupies into my dressing room only to mess with me, but not to actually screw around with them. But when I saw him with that woman in Vegas, I knew I’d been deluding myself.

For so long now, I’ve wanted to tell Savage what I saw and how much it hurt me. I’ve wanted to scream at him, “How could you?” But, always, I decide, like I’m doing now, that small moment of vindication, that momentary “gotcha!” wouldn’t be worth admitting I practically sprinted to Savage’s room mere minutes after receiving his text.

In the face of my silence, Savage leans in, looking like a madman on meth. “You started fucking Charlie right after me, didn’t you?”

“What?”

“Don’t deny it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I saw you two together, all the time, after Phoenix. Always laughing and eating meals together. Always looking so damned cozy together.”

I bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. Savage thinks I had a torrid love affair during the tour . . . with Charlie? A man who recently married the great love of his life . . . a former Marine named Dave? I know for a fact Savage had numerous sessions with Charlie during the tour. Did he not ask the man a single personal question, in all that time? Did he not try to get to know Charlie, the tiniest bit? That’s