Page 76 of I'm Not His Style
“Well, that wasn’t me.”
Bridget leveled him with a look. “She fabricated those texts when you broke up with her, so who’s to say what she would be willing to lie about for this?”
Rhett swore. “What do we do?”
“Whatever you do, you are a straightedged Eagle Scout on Fallon tonight.”
He said nothing to this.
“Can we get an early copy?” Adalyn asked.
“It’s running with...Flashmagazine.” Bridget tapped away on her phone. “I might know someone who can get us an early copy.”
The next hour of the plane ride was tense. Bridget spent the entire time calling, texting, and emailing people she knew to try to see if any of her contacts could give her an early peek at the article.
Rhett didn’t say a word. He let her work, his eyebrows lowered and jaw tight. He epitomized stress, and watching him made me clench my teeth without meaning to. But really, it seemed a little silly that no one went directly to Karina. Wasn’t Rhett helping her a ton right now with the publicity of their fake relationship? Wasn’t it a mutually beneficial arrangement between them? Surely she would want to keep him happy right now.
Rhett caught my eye. “What’s up, Frenchy?”
“Have you considered reaching out to Karina directly?”
“She would never tell us the truth,” Bridget said without looking up from her phone.
“She might be willing to send Rhett a copy of the article, though. Especially if she wants this dating thing to continue.”
Bridget looked at Rhett, lifting her eyebrows. “Do you want to try?” She tucked her curly black hair behind her ear.
“Sure.” He pulled out his phone and started tapping into it.
The occupants on the plane all waited in tense silence for the response. Rhett leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. This had to be the last thing he wanted to deal with on the way to an interview. I wanted to cross the aisle and lend him my support. He had helped me when I was sick, and I wanted to return the favor, but this wasn’t the same thing. You couldn’t hand someone Gatorade and a straw to make bad publicity go away.
Holding his hand could lend a little support, but I wasn’t supposed to do that.
The constraints on our relationship were ridiculously annoying right now.
Rhett sat up. “She responded.” He went silent while he read it. “She emailed it to me. I’m forwarding it now, Bridget, so you can send it to everyone.”
Bridget must have gotten the email because she started typing, and not too much later, it popped up in my email. I opened the link.
“Everyone read,” Bridget commanded. “Scour it so we know what we’re up against tonight.”
We got to work. Karina had been in many relationships. I thought Rhett had dated a lot of women, but his numbers had nothing on her. There were many guys with varying lengths of commitment, and this exposé broke down how she’d been wronged each time, and by whom. They used code names, but it was pretty easy to figure out who each man was.
The article mentioned Rhett by name—a fact that proved she didn’t say anything incriminating. She lamented his lack of prioritizing her and how he allowed himself to be a slave to the public eye. None of those things made him look good, but she didn’t make him a cheater.
I reached the end of Rhett’s section and stilled, reading over the final line again. It was enigmatic.We both had faith that we would work around our differences, but I guess he wasn’t faithful enough.
Adalyn looked up. “The last line—”
“I just saw it.” Bridget scowled.
Rhett seemed slower to read than the rest of us. Once he finally reached that point, he put his phone down and looked at Bridget. “She’s saying I didn’t have faith in our relationship.”
“In this context, especially after she talked about the other cheaters in such great detail, no one will read it and think you were lacking in faith. She set it up so it would read that you were unfaithful.”
Rhett looked at me and Adalyn. We both nodded. He swore again. “What do we do?”
“Address it on Fallon tonight,” Bridget said. “He’ll probably ask about Karina now that you’re dating again. Bring up the last breakup and why it happened—explain that you were at fault for not having enough faith in the relationship or believing it could work out.”