Page 85 of Resisting You
He squeezed my hand gently, giving me a soft smile before turning back toward Morgan, who was watching the exchange with undisguised interest. Then, he addressed Kristen again without looking at her. "In fact, you can tell the producers right now: either Morgan's off the show, or I am. I won't work with her anymore. Not after this."
Kristen's composure slipped for the first time. "You can't be serious. Your contract?—"
"I'll break it," Noah said simply. "I'll fight it in court if I have to. I’ve filed enough complaints about Morgan to HR that I may even win. But even if I don’t… I'm done.”
He looked back at Kristen, his expression softening slightly at the shock on her face. "And if you have a problem with that, if you can't support me in this, then I'll find a publicist andmanager who will. Someone who understands that some things matter more than ratings or public image."
The silence that followed his words was absolute. The entire room seemed to be holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. A complex wave of emotions washed over me—fear for what this might mean for Noah's career, guilt that he was putting himself on the line for me, and beneath it all, a fierce, overwhelming love for this man who was choosing me over everything else. But was that fair for him? Am I worth throwing away a booming acting career and a hit show on cable?
Kristen recovered quickly, her professional mask sliding back into place. "I’ll start the paperwork for it tonight" she said, her voice steady despite the tension evident in her posture.
He turned back to Morgan, who was no longer smiling smugly. "As for you? Out.Now."
For a moment, Morgan didn't move. She looked from Noah to me, then to the room at large, calculating her options. Finally, she stood, gathering her purse with deliberate slowness. “Goodbye Noah,” she said. “For now.”
“Forgood,” he corrected her, then gently moved in front of me to block me from her as Morgan passed by us.
Morgan's smile returned, brittle now. She looked at me one last time, a look that promised this wasn't over, then turned and walked toward the exit, this time with far less confidence than she had at the start of the rehearsal.
Noah squeezed my hand gently. “Give me ten minutes,” he said, his phone already out and in his free hand. “I can fix this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know that you can,” I whispered.
But if he heard me, he didn’t respond. He was already running to a quiet corner of the restaurant, phone pressed to his ear. He was barely ten steps away, when Kristen appeared at my side.
She crossed her arms, drumming the taut flesh of her bicep with manicured fingers as the toe of her stilettos clicked sharply against the tile like punctuation marks.
“Rosa,” she said, low and measured, “You know as well as I do this isn’t fixable. Not immediately, at least.”
I blinked at her. My whole body still humming with shock, like I’d been struck by lightning and hadn’t realized yet that I was supposed to be dead.
“I don’t think?—”
“Well, youneedto think,” she cut in. “Right now. This isn’t just about your practice anymore. This is aboutbothof your careers.”
I flinched.My practice. The words felt foreign now. Ashy and hollow. Something that used to be mine, but wasn’t anymore. The dream I had that was slipping away faster than sand through my fingers.
Kristen folded her arms, her expression unreadable. “You’re smart, Rosa. Smarter than most of the women I’ve had to clean up after. You have to know what Morgan did wasn’t just personal—it was strategic. Surgical. She very intentionally only took you down with that leak.”
I nodded slowly. “She didn’t just want to humiliate me. She wanted to end me.”
Kristen exhaled, like I’d passed a test. “Exactly. But if Noah stays with you? It will end him too. Maybe not immediately… but eventually. It will get out that the entire marriage was a farce.”
“It may have started that way, but it isn’t. Not anymore?—”
“You think that matters?” she hissed. “There’s already rumors that there’s drunken footage of you two at the chapel. I can only bury so much for so long.”
I exhaled sharply, a sound that was humorless and bitter. “What do you expect me to do about any of that?”
For a brief moment, her eyes tilted with compassion. “He’s not going to walk away from you. Especially not now with everything that happened.”
I pressed the heel of my palm to my chest. Everything hurt. My head, my heart, my pride.
She continued, her voice softening just enough to make it worse. “He doesn’t have to go down with you. The right spin, the right press, and he walks away clean. Victim of a failed whirlwind marriage. Blindsided. Heartbroken, even.”
She produced a folder of printed out papers from her purse and handed them to me.
Annulment papers. A new set than the ones I had printed out through Reid’s lawyer. I blinked at them, shocked that she had them at the ready. My breath caught. “You want me to leave him.”
