Spare Me

Chapter 25

W hen Maddy woke up the next morning, the first thing she felt was utter contentment. She was cocooned in Alex’s arms, and even without opening her eyes, she could tell that sun was streaming through the window next to what had become her side of the bed. As her brain came fully online, she remembered the night before: the glittering party, dancing with Alex and his friends and family, and their professions of love.

But the utter contentment gradually turned to confusion as she realized that a faint but persistent banging sound was what had woken her. She rolled over and pushed herself up on one elbow, placing one hand on Alex’s shoulder. “What’s that noise?” she asked.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it, we have nothing to do today except this,” he mumbled blearily, pulling her back down into her arms and kissing her. The banging sound had stopped, so Maddy allowed herself to be drawn back into his embrace and tried to relax.

But a second later she heard someone calling and the muffled thumping of what was clearly someone coming up the carpeted stairs to the second floor of Alex’s apartment. “Alex,” she said with more urgency filling her voice, “someone’s here.”

“Hmm?” he murmured. He didn’t have time to say anything else before someone was knocking on the bedroom door.

“Alex?” Eric’s voice came through the door, and even though Maddy had only met him on a handful of occasions, she could tell by the tone of his voice that he wasn’t there on a social call.

“Eric?” Alex called back, confusion creasing his face.

The door opened and Eric came in, dressed as casually as Maddy had ever seen him in chinos and a button-down shirt, one hand in front of his face, clearly hoping to avoid seeing more of his friend slash boss than he wanted to. “Alex, I’m terribly sorry, but this really couldn’t wait. Are you decent?”

“Absolutely not,” Alex said, his brain finally fully awake. He pushed himself to a seated position and glanced over his shoulder. Maddy had already hastily wrapped herself in the sheet, shielding her nakedness. Alex swung his legs over the side of the bed and quickly grabbed the boxer briefs he’d discarded the night before. “Okay, you can look now,” he said, standing and striding towards the closet for his robe. “What the bloody hell is going on?”

It was only then that Maddy noticed the bundle of newspapers folded in half under Eric’s arm. Her heart sank, somehow innately knowing what they’d contain, as he handed them to Alex.

“Fuck” was all Alex said, running a hand down his face before looking at Maddy.

She was fairly certain the blood had already completely rushed from her face, but if it hadn’t already, it would have when Alex gently laid the array of tabloids on the bed next to her and she saw the headlines that only the British tabloid media could conceive and publish .

ALEX’S MERRY WIDOW

ALEX’S AMERICAN SECRET

DON’T SPARE US THE DETAILS, ALEX – WHO IS SHE?

THE SPARE’S SECRET AFFAIR!

HEIR’S SPARE: A PAIR?

The cover image was one taken with a long lens the night previously— wow, they were fast , she thought—of Alex’s arm around her, ushering her out to the car as they left the reception. As she idly flipped through the stack, she realized that someone must have been working on this for weeks. There were pictures of her jogging in Regent’s Park, of Alex entering a restaurant and her leaving the same restaurant hours later, and even one of the two of them leaving Winfield House to get into his car on Christmas night when he’d taken her back to his apartment.

Maddy found herself transported back to another time. Heard the unceasing vibration of her phone as texts, DMs, alerts flooded it with friends, acquaintances, total strangers asking for interviews. She remembered the feeling of struggling to get from her car to her parents’ front door, so besieged by paparazzi that it made it hard to even leave the house. Remembered the feeling of seeing people she barely knew quoted in colorful insets in People , being interviewed on Good Morning America , talking about Maddy as if they talked every day when, in reality, she hadn’t seen these people in years. A feeling of total numbness washed over her.

“Maddy?” She felt Alex’s hand on her upper arm and, when she looked up and saw his and Eric’s faces, realized it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get her attention.

Air finally forced itself into her body, her biological imperatives taking control as her brain short-circuited. “Sorry,” she said faintly. “What were you saying?”

She saw Alex and Eric give each other A Look, and Alex said, “Eric, let us get dressed. We’ll meet you in the sitting room in a moment.”

“Of course,” he said, giving Maddy one more worried look and quietly leaving, closing the door behind him with a soft click that somehow managed to sound ominous.

“Mads,” Alex said gently, turning to her and attempting to peer into her eyes, which were still focused, unseeing, on the abhorrent headlines. She shook herself and pushed her legs over the side of the bed, walking numbly toward the drawer that had a few of her clothes in it for when she stayed over. “Maddy, I—” Alex tried again.

“We shouldn’t keep Eric waiting,” she said, single-mindedly focused on trying to put on a pair of leggings that were half inside out and half right side out. She robotically slipped into a black-and-white-striped tunic sweatshirt and threw her sleep-mussed hair into a high bun. When she turned around Alex had donned a pair of gray sweatpants that normally sent her mind straight to the gutter, but today had no impact. He was shrugging into a worn Cambridge T-shirt, looking at her searchingly, but apparently having given up trying to get her to talk about it. “I’m just going to brush my teeth,” she said. “I’ll meet you in there.”

Alex frowned, but he nodded as she turned towards the en suite.

She didn’t register the taste of the toothpaste, the feel of the water she splashed on her face, even her own appearance in the mirror. She moved as if in a trance, so trapped in the emptiness of her own thoughts, forcing the memories out, not allowing the reality of the present to encroach, that she only registered having left Alex’s bedroom when she walked into the lounge and found Eric leaning against the mantle and Alex pacing behind the couch.

“Eric, how did they get this?” Alex was saying, sounding quietly furious .

“Alex, I know you were careful, but you know the British press. You both have experience with this.” Maddy wasn’t surprised that Eric knew her entire backstory. “You had to know that it was only a matter of time before this got out.”

Maddy sighed and nodded, studiously not making eye contact with either of the two men who she knew were watching her carefully, waiting for any sign of reaction, breakdown, basic emotion. And it wasn’t that she was afraid to show emotion in front of them. But she also knew that it was going to be a long day. That there were many important conversations to be had. And that once she let herself actually feel the feelings that she was currently forcing down somewhere below her diaphragm, she wouldn’t be able to stop feeling them and function normally for quite a while. And so she said, perfectly calmly and rationally, “Yes, we should have known. It was stupid to think that we’d be able to keep this under wraps. We were naive to think that we could have kept this secret for very long.”

She saw Eric nod out of the corner of her eye. “So I don’t know if either of you has checked your phone yet…”

Maddy shook her head and saw Alex do the same from where he was still pacing.

“So the most important thing is not to talk to any press. Don’t answer calls or texts from any numbers you don’t know, don’t comment to anyone. Who else knew about you before this broke?”

“Besides you? My brother and Hannah. That’s it.”

“And Graham. And Hannah’s personal shopper at Harrods,” Maddy added. “And, of course, everyone at the reception last night.”

“What about you, Maddy? Who did you tell?” Eric asked. “Those are all our people.”

“No one,” she said quietly. “My friend Nadia knows I’m seeing someone, but not who it is. ”

The hollow numbness in Maddy’s chest started to give way to anxiety. A need to fix things. “What’s next?” she asked, turning to Eric, a new sheen of resolve falling across her face. “We just made your week a lot harder. What do you need from us?”

Eric smiled. “Well, this is my job, so don’t worry about me. But we do need to sort a few things out rather quickly,” he began. “Their Royal Highnesses want to see you at one p.m. at Buckingham.”

Alex’s head fell, and a small part of Maddy cracked open. Not enough to let her actually feel things, but enough to realize that this was going to be much harder on Alex. He’d spent his entire adult life fighting back from a single misstep as a child, and she could see his brain convincing him that this was going to be a reason for his family to whisk him back into their cocoon again. She crossed to stand next to him and took his hand, putting her other hand on his upper arm. “It’s going to be okay,” she said quietly, not believing it for a second, but feeling compelled to offer him some kind of reassurance.

He smiled at her a bit wistfully and put his arm around her, kissing the top of her head tenderly. “I think I’m supposed to be telling you that.”

“Okay, so you’ll go to your parents’,” she said, glancing at a clock on the mantle and sighing, “and I’ll go back to Winfield House and do some damage control.” The niggling concern that she was probably about to lose her job wormed its way into the hollow emptiness she was feeling.

She turned to go, but Eric stopped her. “Maddy, you’ll need to wait for me to call a car. You won’t be walking anywhere alone anytime soon.”

Of course she wouldn’t. She knew how this went. She’d done this before. “I’ll just go pull a bag together if you’ll call one for me, please, Eric,” she said quietly .

“Mads, wait, I’ll come with you,” Alex started, but Maddy silenced him with a look.

“You shouldn’t keep your parents waiting.” It came out sharper than she’d intended, but she knew if she and Alex were alone together he’d try to comfort her and she’d lose control. The effort of forcing her emotions down was starting to weigh on her. “I’ll talk to you later.”

She walked swiftly out of the room before either of the two men had a chance to say anything. Just keep moving . It was the same mantra she’d used two years previously when she’d been in an almost identical situation. Get your things and go. Face the Stewarts. She wanted nothing more than to slip back under the comforting weight of Alex’s duvet and go back to sleep. To wake up again in a few hours and find out this had all been a terrible nightmare. But she knew that it wasn’t a dream, that she was repeating history, and that she had no choice but to face it. As she grabbed her phone from the nightstand she saw an eerily familiar shockingly large number of notifications. Missed calls from friends, strangers, Mrs. Stewart, her former sister-in-law. Evan’s family . Her heart sank further. They never should have found out like this. A fresh wave of guilt washed over her, and she renewed her efforts to force her feelings as far down as she could.

As she turned to leave Alex appeared. “Darling,” he said softly, his eyes full of emotion.

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. “Go talk to your parents. Let’s talk tonight.”

He nodded and she saw him swallow. Somehow the emotion she saw breaking through his facade of calm was what was going to break her, so she gently pushed past him. Just keep moving. Just keep moving.

Eric met them at the front door. “The car is outside,” he said quietly, a sympathetic look on his face. “There are quite a lot of reporters at the gate,” he continued. Maddy fished an old Vassar baseball cap out of the tote bag she’d found in Alex’s room and pushed it onto her head, pulling her messy bun through the hole in the back. “Keep your head down, don’t talk to any reporters.”

She nodded tightly, forcing herself not to remember the last time.

“Someone from the Kensington press office will be in touch to coordinate some kind of statement.”

She swallowed and nodded again, unable to form words. The warm sparkly feelings of the night before were gone. She’d forgotten how this felt. She realized belatedly and terribly that this was what it would be like if she picked Alex. This would be her everyday.

“Mads,” Alex said, turning her toward him and taking her in his arms. She forced herself to meet his gaze and found his warm eyes searching her face, concern etched across his face. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll take care of you.” She nodded silently. “I love you,” he said, a heartbreaking earnestness in his voice.

“I love you too,” she managed to get out. That hadn’t changed. The way she felt about him hadn’t changed. And that made what was about to happen even worse.