Neglected and Ignored by My Movie Star Husband novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: No Cameras

Willa's POV

I walked across the gravel to the phone on the vent and held it up.

The little number beside the red dot was over a thousand.

"Hello," I said to the lens. "This is Willa Mercer."

Behind me Camille said, "Don't."

"I'm going to turn this off," I said. "She asked me for a private conversation. Anybody who wants to help her can call the number on the screen after this."

I pressed the red button.

The screen went dark in my hand.

I set the phone face down on the vent and walked toward the parapet, slowly, and I stopped ten feet from her.

"No cameras," I said.

"Where's Mason?"

"Sitting by the tank. He'll stay there."

Camille turned her head and looked at me for the first time.

Her mascara had run to her jaw.

In the black sweatshirt, with her hair shoved back, she looked like the girl who had come into my mother's kitchen when I was thirteen.

She had carried a suitcase and a stuffed rabbit, and she had held her back very straight.

"You came," she said. "I didn't think you'd come."

"I almost didn't."

"Why did you?"

"Because I knew you'd want an audience, and I wanted to take it away."

She made a sound that was nearly a laugh.

"You're mean," she said. "Nobody knows you're mean."

"I'm not mean. I'm tired."

I sat down on the gravel, cross-legged, in the navy dress.

I did not sit near the edge.

After a moment she shifted her legs and turned, so that she sat sideways on the parapet and could see me.

It was not much.

I saw Mason's shoulder move, once, and then go still.

"I could say I trusted you, and I loved you, and you took my work and sold me to a waiter," I said. "I'm not going to, because you know it."

Her chin shook.

"You had a gift," she said. "You sat in that kitchen and you made people out of nothing. I used to watch you. I used to stand in the doorway when you wrote and you never looked up, you never once looked up."

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