Page 62 of Over & Out

HOPPER: I’m sorry. It’s not about you. You’re beautiful. All of you.

HOPPER: Please pick up the phone

HOPPER: I’m so fucking sorry, Chris.

There are more. Lots more. All one-sided.

The elevator dings down the hall, and I shove my phone into my pocket. Mabel appears, her jaw dropping open when she sees me.

“Hopper,” she says as she recovers, clipping over to me in her heels. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Did he contact you?”

Anger simmers in my chest as I stand. I realize in that moment I’m fully prepared to fire my longtime manager if I need to. My second mom.

Yes, I’m that fucking ruthless, as it turns out. At least when it comes to Chris.

That last sentence should have me going cold,because I know who she’s talking about. My father. It means he’s probably going to pop up again soon, if he hasn’t already. And I can tell by the guilty look on her face that she’s been keeping things from me. Lots of things.

But nothing is going to get in the way of her telling me what I need to know.

“I know about Chris,” I say. “And you’re going to tell me everything.”

Mabel closes her eyes. I know I’m right. But this is the irrefutable proof.

Chris is the girl from the track. The one I supposedly broke.

“Come in,” Mabel says, looking suddenly ten years older. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Inside, she kicks off her heels. “I was at a meeting with Goldberg. He wants to talk to you about?—”

“Stop,” I say. I don’t remove my shoes because I’m not coming in. I don’t move beyond the entryway. “You knew it was her. You knew and you didn’t tell me. I need to know why.”

Mabel, to her credit, doesn’t flinch. She walks over to the desk and leans on it. “Does she know it’s you?”

I don’t expect the question. “No,” I grit out. But?—

“Good.”

“But she will,” I continue, “when I tell her.”

Mabel’s lips go flat. There was a time, after Mom died, when I cried in Mabel’s arms. Like a fucking baby. I don’t see even a hint of that motherliness now. Not through my anger.

“Listen to me very carefully, Hopper. I see the wayyou look at her. I see the way she looks at you. If there had been a way for me to stop this before she was hired, I would have. But Tru found her organically. Of all the fucking people in the world, she found the one person you couldn’t be seen with.”

Mabel never swears.

She meets my eyes. “What do you think would have happened if anyone in the ambulance service knew that you were there when she crashed? Anyone at the hospital?”

“You told me she broke all her fucking bones!”

“It was the only way to keep you away! Do you think I like seeing you the way you looked then? Iknowyou, Hopper. I know you would have kept vigil by her bedside if I’d told you anything else. But it didn’t matter that she wasn’t as badly hurt as I made out. No matter what, this is crack for your father. The perfect thing he can leverage to destroy your already fragile reputation. One I’ve been trying to build up foryears.”

It’s only then I see she’s shaking, and for a moment, I soften. I press my fingers to my eyes. “We could have explained what happened.”

“What, that you had nothing to do with the accident?”

I bite my cheek so hard I taste blood. Because no matter how we swing it—she was injured a little or a lot—she fell because of me. Because I was there, taunting her with my presence like I’d done the summer before, when I blew up a whole movie contract because I loved the time I spent at that dirt track more than any fucking thing in the world.

“Your father is a smart man, Hopper. He hasn’t just quietly disappeared.”

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