He Called Me Crazy, Then Regretted

Chapter 5

The previously noisy makeup room fell deathly silent in the blink of an eye.

The person who'd been talking caught the shift in the air, glanced around the room, and their eyes locked right on me. "Oh… Selene?"

I tried to yank a smile onto my face to smooth over the awkwardness, but the gesture felt stiff and wrong, and only made everyone stare at me even more oddly.

Just then, my assistant came sprinting in and shoved her phone into my hands, "Selene, you need to see this right now."

I took the phone, and a photo stared up at me from the screen, unmistakable and damning.

It was a shot of me looking like a total drowned rat outside Grey's front door. The photographer had deliberately cut Grey out of the frame entirely, and the words Grey's home were captioned right below the shot.

I'd gone there on a stupid, impulsive whim that day. I never, ever wanted to cause Grey any trouble.

I squeezed the phone tight and stepped forward, ready to explain. "Grey, I..."

He cut me off cold, his voice as icy as a winter wind. "I just want to focus on filming. I have no interest in being part of your publicity stunts."

That one sentence sent the whole room abuzz. The staff who'd already been whispering under their breaths started pointing at me openly, their whispers rising loud enough that I could catch snatches of what they were saying.

Grey took a step back, putting deliberate distance between us. "Selene, have some self-respect."

With that, he turned on his heel and walked into his exclusive private lounge across the hall.

BANG. The door slammed shut right in my face, shutting me out of his world entirely, like I was nothing more than a stranger on the street.

"How is Selene this shameless? Grey made himself perfectly clear, and she still had the nerve to show up at his house and harass him?"

"She's giving total creepy stalker vibes. She definitely hired the paparazzi herself to take that photo!"

One cutting remark after another hit me from all sides. I stood frozen to the spot, like I'd been nailed to a public pillory of shame, every eye in the room burning into me.

All of a sudden, a voice cut through the suffocating air around me. "Tsk, showbiz never disappoints. There's always some wild drama going on every single day."

I snapped my head toward the door, where a tall, broad-shouldered figure had appeared out of nowhere. The guy was ridiculously good-looking. His dark eyes were half-lidded in that lazy, couldn't-care-less way, and a faint, amused smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Raymond." Everyone in the room greeted him the second they spotted him.

It was Raymond Thompson, the second male lead of our drama, and the second in command at the Reynolds Group, to boot.

Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he'd decided on a whim to dive into the entertainment industry, and he'd already skyrocketed past tons of hardworking artists without breaking a sweat. It didn't hurt that he was drop-dead gorgeous, either.

He sauntered a few steps forward until he was standing right in front of me, one eyebrow c****d slightly. "You've got a decent face, shame your little clout-chasing tricks are so amateur."

So that's what everyone really thought? That I'd staged the whole mess myself?

My hands started shaking on their own, so badly I didn't even notice my phone had started ringing in my grasp.

It wasn't until Raymond spoke up that I snapped out of my daze. "You gonna answer that?"

I jolted back to my senses and practically ran from the room, desperate to escape the stares and whispers as fast as possible.

Amelia's voice came through the line, tired and worn thin. "Selene, I had already called the crew to get you time off. Head back to the company first."

I dropped my gaze, my throat feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton so I could barely breathe. "Okay."

I stumbled out of the studio and straight into the car, and the ride passed in a blur. By the time we pulled up to the company building, a huge crowd of Grey's fans were already packed outside the entrance.

Those rabid fans were screaming at the top of their lungs through megaphones, their words sharp and venomous. "Selene, get out of the entertainment industry!"

I stared out the car window at them, and a sharp, unrelenting ache welled up in my chest, impossible to push down.

I'd been so close to Grey, just barely.

In the company conference room, the General Manager, Mr. Peterson's face was like a thundercloud. "Selene, you're so stupid I can't even believe it."

I stood rooted to the spot, head hung low, letting the documents he hurled slam into my face and shoulders hard and fast.

He was seething with rage. "Take a good look for yourself! How many partners have hit us up to terminate their contracts with you?"

Amelia tried to intervene from the side. "Mr. Peterson, calm down. Selene never meant for this to happen..."

"Never meant for it? Then what the hell was she thinking, harassing Grey like that?" Mr. Peterson slammed his fist so hard on the table the whole surface rattled, and my heart skipped a beat. "Selene, you made this mess, you clean it up. Go find Grey right now, beg him to put out a statement to bury this whole scandal!" He jabbed a finger toward the door, his face twisted with fury.

Grey's cold, detached expression flashed through my mind again, and my fingertips went ice-cold, like every last bit of warmth had been siphoned out of my body in a split second.

He didn't want to see me ever again. He wanted nothing to do with me at all.

Staying out of his way, not making things worse for him, that was the only thing I could give him right now.

My throat felt tight enough to squeeze shut. "I'm sorry, Mr. Peterson, I can't..."

"You can't? All these breach of contract fines add up to over 50 million. You think you can pay that? Don't you forget how much debt the company has already paid off for you."

My whole body jolted, and I clenched my jaw so hard I could taste metallic blood at the back of my throat. "Just give me a little more time."

I stumbled back to my apartment in a daze, but the sight waiting for me sent a sharp, icy chill straight through my bones.

The door to my place was covered in the words PAY YOUR DEBTS scrawled all over in vivid, glaring red paint.

I stumbled back a step, when out of nowhere a rough, calloused hand clamped down on my shoulder. "Well, well, if it wasn't for the big celebrity, it took us forever to find your address, you know that?"