I whip my eyes back to him. “It was a hug.” I clip the words, fists at my sides. “Xander’s a friend. Yes, we’ve slept together, but nothing since before Prague and never again. I don’t want him, Foster. I didn’t go to the label or Heath or ask for any of this, so stop fucking punishing me for it.”

Foster dips down and snorts through a line like he has a point to prove, and I feel it like he intends.

He stays forward, forearms braced on his thighs, and he nods at the door behind me. “If you’re done…”

“You know what? Fine.” I hold his stare, my frustration meeting his anger head-on. “Hate me. Despise me. Loathe me. Act like an ass and try to hurt me. But you won’t ruin the documentary. I won’t let you, and not just because of what it means for me. Because of what it means for Felix and Dev, for how fucking proud Colton looks of you when we’re filming.” I blink back a rush of tears, but they reach my voice anyway. “And for you—not Adams—you, Foster. I won’t let you stand in your own way, no matter how you feel about me now.”

He surges to his feet, anger to fury. “Don’t act like you care about me. You never fucking cared,” he grinds out. “The only true thing between us was that you were a liar, so save the bullshit. I won’t fuck up the doc because people I love need this. They need me to show up, and I will. Over and over again. And I’ll do it for me. I’ll turn it on and be everything I need to be in spite of you, Remi. Because I already lost enough to you when you fucked off out of my life the first time. No way in hell you’re taking anything else from me before you’re out of it permanently.”

My heart pounds in my chest, his heaving while the words linger. They tug at strings attached to anchors of pain buried in the muddy deep. Except the water level seems to have dropped, and what I’ve always wanted to say to him is right there.

The door swings open, and Colton strides in.

“Oh,” Colton says. A divot forms between his brows at the sight of us, Foster seething and me struggling to stand, three lines of coke on the case in the middle. “You good, Adams?”

Foster gives me a harsh once-over, then looks to his security guard, tone dead when he tells him, “Take out the trash before I do it myself.” He walks away, slamming the door to the bathroom behind him.

I swipe the tears away as the truth sinks back into the depths.

I never thought I could be sad about that.

27

FOSTER

Before…