For christierrr, Greys has become my life, Valentinas and blaue-banane. You guys keep me motivated, even when I can't write anything worth reading to save my life. I just think of you and somehow it works out :) Also and always for traceit, of course. Her advice and inspiration has been so invaluable.

21

The Bakersfield airport was miniscule, and so were its bathrooms, but Odessa and I managed to take over the only ones in the building, commandeering the vanity area so that she could do my hair, my makeup. I'd gotten out of Lima before the paparazzi even had the chance to arrive, and had detoured to this podunk town specifically for the purpose of transforming back into Norah Castle. Back into myself. And I wanted it, needed it, because Honor Castlereagh had a broken heart but Norah Castle surely didn't have one at all. I wouldn't hurt anymore, once I was her again. Or so the theory went.

Odessa ran her fingers through my hair, looking at me in the mirror as she did so. She was obviously concerned, and I didn't blame her. I was washed out, defeated, and something about my expression reminded me of those people you see on the news, the ones who've had their houses destroyed by tornadoes, floods, earthquakes. It was the blank, traumatized look of someone who'd lost everything, and it didn't look especially good on me.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, expertly twirling a strand of hair around a hot roller.

I shook my head, dislodging the roller, and she gave me a chastising look which I ignored. "Not now, Dess." Not ever.

"Perhaps I should rephrase." She gripped my head, forced my face forward, held it still. "Don't move. And I wasn't really asking, Norah. Talk. Now."

"Seriously. Not now." My voice, which I'd intended to be commanding, came out begging, but either way. I just wanted her to leave me alone. So far I'd done a decent job of not thinking about anything that had happened earlier, and I wanted it to stay that way.

"Look," she said, and her voice was brisk, no nonsense, no softness. "I need to know everything on many different levels, okay? As your pr agent, I need to know what I'm dealing with so I can fix it. As your assistant I need to know what I'm dealing with so I can handle you. And as your friend, I need to know what you're dealing with so I can help you through it. Basically, I have three jobs to do, and I can't do any of them if you don't talk. So talk."

I could feel pressure behind my eyes, a pressure that had once been unfamiliar but which I now knew preceded tears, and I still wasn't strong enough to fight them. "I'm just… Such an idiot, Dess. I can't…"

She stopped her ministrations, grabbed a tissue, dabbed at my face, and now there was softness in her expression. "Just talk to me, Norah. I can't stand to see you like this, honestly I can't."

So I told her everything, haltingly, as she styled my hair and applied my makeup ([waterproof] mascara last, obviously), and since those two things were quite the production there was plenty of time for the whole story. I didn't leave out the details; I told her everything I'd felt, how my feelings had grown, how happy I'd been for that brief, brief time. And how enraged I'd been after, how broken I was now. But there was no way to make her understand the way my confrontation with Will played over and over in my mind, the way the horror of it never faded for me. Now, when it was too late, I could see how wrong, how sick I had been to lash out at him, to say the things I'd said. Watching myself hurt him on a continuous loop was nearly unbearable, but I couldn't turn the playback off. Didn't want to, because I deserved to feel the full impact of my words, deserved to feel the full impact of my actions. Never before had I truly understood the phrase this hurts me more than it hurts you. Because while I'd hurt Will, and done it in the cruelest most calculating way, seeing his pain, knowing it was my fault, I suffered for him and for myself.

"I said everything I could think of to hurt him," I confided, hearing the words again, watching myself say them. "And none of it was true, Dess, not a single word. But I… I had to say it, I couldn't stop."

Looking at me sadly, she shook her head. "I've known you a long time, Norah. You've never been very good at being happy." Which was the biggest understatement of all time.

"I wanted to be," I whispered. "I'd never felt... I can't explain. It had just never felt so attainable before. And I tried so hard not to care, not to want it, because I was afraid of something like this happening but it happened anyway."

She wrapped her arms around me, made soothing noises, stroked my hair. It reminded me of that night so long ago when she'd found me by a payphone, crying in the rain, and stood holding me for hours, both of us soaked to the skin. I was grateful, genuinely grateful. "I'm so sorry. So, so sorry. But we'll have the last word, alright? We'll throw him to the dogs on this scandal, and then… What I have planned for him will make what I did to Elliott Edrington look merciful."

Which was saying something, because what she'd done to Elliott Edrington had been a masterful work of pure, unadulterated evil. I'd barely spoken to Elliott twice before he began to insinuate to the press that we were lovers. It raised his band's profile, increased their record sales and, unfortunately for him, seriously pissed me off. So I gave Odessa her orders ("Ruin him. I don't care how."), and she executed them flawlessly by leaking information about his crippling drug addiction to the press, and he loathes me even to this day, for which I can't exactly blame him.

I imagined doing the same to Will, leaving him penniless, friendless, reputation in tatters… For a second, a split second, I was tempted. But then I thought about the fact that his entire life was collapsing around him and it was my fault. I thought about the fact that I'd abandoned him and told him I didn't care, left him to deal with the fallout of something he was neither prepared nor qualified to handle. He must be frantic, I knew, and I couldn't bear the thought of what I'd done to him, why I'd done it. Will would never have done something like that, no matter how hurt he was; he didn't have it in him. And it was certainly too little, too late, but I had told myself I'd be different, I'd be better, and I wanted to be. For him, even after everything, even though he would never know it, I wanted to be.

"No. He doesn't deserve that, Dess. He doesn't deserve any of this," I added.

Odessa looked at me incredulously. "Are you kidding me? Look at what he did to you, Norah. This bastard broke your heart! Edrington barely did anything to you at all."

I closed my eyes, shook my head. "Maybe Elliott didn't deserve what we did to him either. But Will… I can't hate him, Odessa. I want to, I thought I could, but now… I can't blame him for anything he did."

And I couldn't. Once the rage and hatred that had coursed through my veins during our confrontation had evaporated, I saw that it had been inevitable, really. Obviously it would be Emma he'd choose, Emma he'd love. There was no comparison between the two of us. I'd thought several times before how alike they were, and I'd known that I wasn't good enough for him. Of course I wasn't. The truth was, I wasn't good at being happy because I wasn't good enough to be happy, didn't deserve to be. Emma deserved it, more than deserved it, and so did he.

"Well you should," she insisted. "He rejected you, hurt you, and honestly at this point it's either you or him. If he can't be crucified in the press, you will be."

"Then that's how it has to happen," I told her. "Whatever it takes, Odessa. I don't… I don't want his life to be worse for knowing me. I want him to be happy."

"You are killing me with this shit," she muttered. "And anyway I can't imagine how we can fix this for him, he's at least as screwed as you are."

I thought about the truth of this, of the 8x10 pornographic glossies of the two of us that were currently circulating about the country… My legs around his waist, his face buried in my neck, graphic, graphic…

"No, he's not," I said, remembering something, one of the first thoughts I'd had on seeing those photos. "Dess, in all the pictures… You can't see his face. They only have an anonymous source's identification to go on."

She looked at me like I was crazy. "Yes, but… The identification is accurate, Norah."

"Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all." My mind raced and my heartbeat accelerated as I hit upon a plan. "Dess! Call the Cohen kid, the mean one. I want him to file a defamation suit against KT on Will's behalf, and then I want him in Lima yesterday."

"What are you thinking?" she asked, and I could see she was intrigued in spite of herself.

"Look, they printed this man's name in a national magazine, accused him of child molestation practically, with nothing stronger than an anonymous source's word to back it up. There's no way that source is going to come forward. No source, no identification, and if they can't prove it was him…" I trailed off, willing her to see all the implications.

I could see the wheels in her mind turning as fast as mine were. "Okay… And even if they could fight it, they probably won't… It will be easier to settle, which comes off as a win."

Nodding, I could feel some of the heavy weight on my heart begin to lift. "Yes. Yes. And if the magazine itself admits its claims were completely false… Because I mean, we were in his office, okay, the pictures are real, but he'd never hurt one of his students, no way in hell… When the magazine admits that, the school district will have no grounds for any disciplinary action."

She pursed her lips, then looked at me. "What if, and I mean, it's a big what if, but what if they won't settle? What if they want to take it to court? That could take years…"

At this point I should probably add that I'm not an attorney or anything but I really like Law and Order. Also, issues like this with tabloids are commonplace in the entertainment industry; I'd never been involved with one, but I had a pretty good idea of how it worked. And I wasn't worried.

"So I'll file a sworn affidavit stating that the man I was with was not the man they claimed," I told her. "I'll swear to it in open court on any number of bibles, Dess. They won't have any choice."

"It could work…" she murmured, then pinned me with a hard stare. "But it does nothing for you, Norah, fixes nothing for you. Well, aside from the fact that you could claim whatever guy you were with wasn't married. So you'll just be a kinky slut, not a kinky homewrecking slut."

"Well that's something, right?" I gave her a wan smile, the first I'd managed since the morning. "I think my rep can take the hit, okay? I mean… I was doing exactly what it looks like I was doing, there's really no way around it."

"With that attitude, the next month is going to be very unpleasant," Odessa pointed out. "We're talking major tabloid coverage, major increase in paparazzi, jokes on Leno… I mean, unpleasant doesn't really do it justice."

She didn't need to tell me this; I could easily imagine the talk show nightmare my life was about to become. It was funny, because a week ago the thought of being a punchline on Leno would have filled me with utter horror. But after the week I'd had, it hardly seemed like any consideration at all. The next month, and possibly the rest of my life, was undoubtedly going to be unpleasant, but not because of Jay Leno. I hadn't felt this bruised, this broken, since the last time I'd left Ohio for Los Angeles. But beyond the hurt, beyond the pain, was the soul-deep knowledge that I had to fix this, had to make this right. If that meant throwing away my reputation to save his, well… This morning I'd been willing to do it, and I still was, even though he'd broken my heart in the meantime.

But he hadn't just broken my heart, I realized. He'd broken Emma's, too. I tried to see things from her perspective, imagine the pain she must be experiencing, ignore the sick jealousy I was simply not allowed to feel, and it occurred to me that it was entirely possible that she'd be too hurt to ever speak to Will again. She was fragile like that. It wasn't right that I had ruined her happiness, even accidentally, and I needed to make everything right, repair everything I'd destroyed. No matter how much it killed me. I wanted her to be happy, and I wanted him to be happy even if that meant he'd be happy without me.

None of this would make me happy, of course, but then again I didn't deserve to be.

xxx

To: epillsbu [at] wmhs [dot] com

From: youcanreachnorah [at] gmail [dot] com

CC:

BCC:

Subject: Don't delete this.

Dear Emma,

I am so so sorry for everything that happened today. I hate that I hurt you; you're the last person in the world I'd ever want to hurt. I didn't do it on purpose, would never have done it on purpose, but that doesn't mean my carelessness didn't cause you pain.

You said you know it wasn't my fault, but I have to tell you, honestly, that it was. I want you to know that nothing that happened was Will's idea. I saw him, I wanted him, I seduced him, and believe me Em I'm good at that kind of thing, okay? Maybe he should have resisted me but I was… Pretty insistent.

Please, don't let this ruin what the two of you have together. You told me you finally had a chance at happiness with the man you loved, and loving someone means forgiving them. Maybe that's all it means. So forgive him, and forgive me if you can.

With Love,

NC

TBC

Note: One of my close friends is an attorney, and according to him Honor's plan is pretty much the way something like this would go down, give or take a few technical details.