She Made It, Then Dumped Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Winner's Speech
Sonia wins Best Actress and names Jace as the man she loves, wires Wesley ten thousand dollars on stage, and Wesley orders every one of her films pulled. By morning she tells the cameras he held her hostage, and the hospital calls: a crowd is in his father's room.
The presenter opened the envelope and read Sonia Rhodes's name.
The whole ballroom stood up.
I stood too, at table nineteen by the kitchen doors, in the gray suit she had picked out for me that morning.
Before she left the apartment, she had texted me.
Tonight I'm thanking the man I love. Be proud of me.
I had read it four times in the car.
Six years ago, in our first apartment, she had put her feet in my lap and asked if I would leave her behind once she made it big.
I had told her no.
Then I had spent six years making sure she got there, and making sure she never learned how.
She climbed the steps with the trophy in both hands.
Her eyes were already wet.
"Thank you to my director, my crew, and every fan who stayed when I had nothing," she said.
The cameras followed her across the stage.
"And thank you to the man who has my whole heart."
She looked out over the tables.
I lifted my hand a little, so she could find me.
The spotlight slid across my face without stopping.
It landed on table three, on Jace Macpherson.
Jace was twenty-one.
I had paid off his father's debts when he was nineteen, and then given him a room, a tutor and an acting coach.
He walked up the steps with his head down, and Sonia took his hand.
The ballroom went loud, then quiet.
Jace leaned into the microphone.
"Wesley, I know you're here," he said. "Thank you for looking after Sonia all this time. But being grateful isn't the same as being in love, and you can't keep her by reminding her what she owes you."
Heads turned toward table nineteen.
Sonia finally looked at me.
It was not a warm look.
"I sent ten thousand dollars to your card tonight," she said. "That covers everything. We're even."
My phone buzzed against my leg.
I didn't need to check it, but I did.
Deposit received: $10,000.00.
Six years of my life, and she had priced it at one deposit.
A woman at my table lifted her phone and filmed my face.
I walked out through the kitchen so the rest of the room would not see it.
By the time I reached the loading dock, the clip had two hundred thousand views.
The caption read: Boyfriend dumped on stage, refuses to let go.
Under it, strangers had already decided who I was.
Homewrecker.
Leech.
Bet he's been living off her for years.
Footsteps came up behind me.
It was Sonia's agent, who had been my friend since college.
"Wes, don't do anything stupid," he said.
"She paid me off in front of four hundred people."
"Then take it and disappear for a few months. It dies down. It always dies down."
He didn't look at me when he said it.
He looked at the door she would come through.
I stood alone on the dock after he went back in.
In six years she had never asked why a project coordinator carried two phones.
She had never asked how that same man paid the rent on Larkin Street.
I took out the second phone.
My chief of staff answered on the first ring.
"Mr. Thornton."
"Pull every film Sonia Rhodes has ever made," I said. "Every platform, every theater, every license. Tonight."
There was a short pause.
"Sir, Northlight owns the rights to all of them. That includes the one she just won for."
"All of them."
"Understood."
I hung up.
I had hidden what I owned so she would never feel smaller than me.
Tonight I stopped hiding.
I had told her no six years ago.
Now my answer was yes.
By morning, every Sonia Rhodes film had vanished from every screen in the country.
Her fans noticed before the news did.
At ten, Sonia stood in front of a wall of microphones, her trophy on the podium beside her.
Her eyes were red.
"When Wesley first asked me out, I said no," she told the cameras. "He said he would ruin Jace's life if I refused. So for six years I did what he told me."
Her voice shook in all the right places.
"He picked my scripts. He picked my shows. I gave my fans work I was ashamed of because I was afraid of him."
She bowed her head, and the tears fell right on cue.
Jace stood at her shoulder.
"We were both scared," he said. "We still are."
I watched it on my phone in the hospital cafeteria, two floors below my father's room.
I had a coffee in my hand and nothing left to say.
My phone rang.
A nurse, speaking too fast.
"Mr. Thornton, you need to come now. There are thirty people in your father's room. They're filming him, and one of them has his bed."
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