I was shaking my head immediately, my heart thrashing wildly, my stomach an icy, iron block of denial. I felt like someone had opened a hidden trapdoor, the one I’d worried about on the very first day of this entire project, and now my feet dangled helplessly over an endless black pit. It was all I could do not to plummet inside of it. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about."
"Molly? We're talking about Molly?" Beatrice asked quietly.
Rick nodded. Then he turned his attention back to me. "Noah, don't bullshit me right now. It is my job to see the stories where they unfold in people's lives. You can't tell me it's not true. We watched the way she was with you, and the way you were with her. Every single day, that woman singlehandedly brought out the human side of you. It wasn't me, and it wasn't Marty, even though we're damn good at working with the people we film. And it was a beautiful thing to watch. It was real and heartbreaking and compelling."
Bracing my elbows on my legs, I gripped the sides of my head. Over the roaring sound of my pulse, I registered the sound of Beatrice asking him what he caught on film. I lifted my head.
"Did you film us without our consent?" I asked in a low, dangerous tone. "Did you get footage of her without her knowledge?"
Rick started to speak, and I stood, whipping around to Marty. "Turn that camera off." He didn't move quite as quickly as I wanted. "Turn it off or I will break it with my bare hands," I yelled.
Marty clicked a button and dropped the camera. His face was drawn and pale. "I never filmed anything when you didn't know I was there. I swear to you, Noah. I'd never do that to either of you."
My chest heaved with jagged, uneven breaths as I struggled to rein in my temper.
"Did you sleep with my employee?" Beatrice demanded.
I glared at her. "Remind me why that's any of your business."
Her face went glacial, but she was the least of my problems. "Rick," I said, "you better start talking now."
"Beatrice," he said quietly, "can I have five minutes with Noah, please? I should have insisted I speak with him privately first, and that's on me."
"I'm not sure I should be kept out of the loop anymore," she snapped. "This is unacceptable."
He pinned her with a deadly look. "What's unacceptable about it? That Washington stands to make more money if he gets his own season? That we found a story that's real and true and is the kind of television we dream of making? It's not up to you to decide whether it's unacceptable or not. I'm telling you about this as a courtesy, but the decision will be made by Noah and Molly." He pointed a finger at me. "And you will hear me out before you do so."
I couldn't spare any of my rioting attention to Beatrice, but the fact that she stood and walked briskly from the office was answer enough. Silence descended when she slammed the door shut behind her. Closing my eyes, I tried to remember what it had felt like just an hour earlier.
Apathy sounded like heaven.
Not caring sounded like the best kind of escape I could have imagined.
And in that, I recognized it for what it had been: protection. I insulated myself in numbness because without it, I would have had to admit what Rick was telling me now. That Molly slid through an unseen chink in my armor and planted herself there, right next to my heart. A hole in my rib cage I hadn't known about before she showed up in that elevator. That space inside me belonged to her now.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to rip down the walls.
I wanted to find her.
"You hate me right now," Rick said calmly. "And I don't blame you."
Slowly, I lifted my head and stared at him. The side of my jaw twitched, and I knew I couldn't let a single word escape my mouth until the rage lessened. But all I could think about was her. How she'd feel when she heard about this.
"If I find out that you got a single second of footage of Molly without her consent, or a single moment we thought was private … if there's a fraction of a frame on that film that makes her look like she's being disrespected, I will make your life hell on earth," I vowed.
In the seconds after I spoke, it took me a moment to realize that he started smiling.
"What?" I snapped.
"And you still don't see it," he mused.
I shoved my hands into my hair and tugged on the strands. "Quit talking in circles, Rick."
He leaned toward me. "Think about what you just said to me. It wasn't about how you look, if you come off bad, or if it tarnishes your reputation. You'd tear my life apart if I did something to her."