Lies, dripping off your mouth like dirt
Lies, lie in every step you walk
Lies, whispered sweetly in my ear
Lies, how do I get out of here
Why, why you have to be so cruel
Lies, lies, lies, I ain't such a fool

Lies by The Rolling Stones

A/N: Okay, folks. The second to last chapter. Remember, if you kill me now, you won’t get the chance to read the last chapter! It any new stories. Or that sequel that’s bound to happen. Enjoy the read while I flee the country!

***

Jo’s heart beat wildly against her chest. It almost felt like it wanted to jump out of her body and hide in a corner from Tom.

He stood in front of her, his face blank and pale. He blinked at her a few times, mouth opening and closing without any words coming out.

The chances that Tom didn’t hear what Jo had been talking about with William were slim. But somehow her heart – that was indeed still beating inside her chest, being a lot more braver than Jo – decided to think positive and at least try to control the damage.

Jo almost wanted to laugh out loud. There wouldn’t be any possible damage control, right?

“Tom,” she started. “Hi. Uhm. I didn’t hear you. That was a stupid call. How did you come in? Like... you don't have a key and all. What are you doing here?” Well. That wasn’t working so well.

“I’m asking myself the same.”

He still stood there, not doing anything except getting paler and paler. His voice wavered a bit, and Jo felt torn between throwing up and fainting. But she couldn’t do either now.

“Tom, can I...?”

“No.”

“You don't even let me...”

“No.”

Jo sighed. “It's not what you think it is,” she rushed out.

Tom only laughed without joy. “Oh, god, Jo. Don’t add insult to injury by lying to me right now. Okay,” he said then, his voice harder and his body going even more rigid. “Tell me what I think this is.”

“You think I lied to you this entire time. You think I wasn’t honest. About anything.” She couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t even wrong. But damn it all, Jo had to try.

“And how could I’ve possibly gotten that idea?” He’d started pacing then. Jo let go of the phone she'd still been clutching against her chest, letting it fall at her feet without looking. She didn’t care about a stupid phone. Not when her life was falling apart right before her eyes. “Tell me, Jo. How could I've gotten the idea? I mean, I come in here, hearing you talk on the phone. And do you know what it sounded like? Like you were telling William, your boss, that you’ve got a freaking story about me cheating on my ex-girlfriend. A story I haven’t told anyone but you.”

Jo could feel tears filling her eyes. He was right, and it sounded so wrong. In her head, Jo could hear Eva, Nick and Sam. All of them screaming at her, laughing at her, sarcastically shouting, “I’ve told you so!”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. Let me explain.”

“What could you possibly say and explain that would make this any better?”

“Can we just sit down and talk?”

“I won’t sit down with you.”

He was harsh. Jo didn’t blame him. How could she? She would have loved to be anywhere but here right now. Sitting down was a stupid idea on her part. “Can we just talk then?” she asked. Timidly. Carefully. And afraid.

It seemed to be the last straw for Tom. Maybe it was her voice. Maybe it was the crying that was more than obvious now in the way her voice shook. Oh, and in the way the tears were streaming down her face and her entire body had begun to shake.

No matter what it was, it had made his face morph from white to red. His eyes were wide, and it wasn’t just Jo who was shaking now. She could see Tom’s trembling hands, which he tried to hide by shoving them into the pocket of his trousers.

What was even worse was his voice. Gone was the smooth timbre in which he always made Jo feel safe, warm and comforted. It was replaced by a cold voice, that felt like a knife when Tom finally spoke to Jo again. No. Not speaking. Yelling.

“Okay, talk then! Talk and tell me fucking everything! Who are you, Josefine?"

"I never lied about..."

"Who the fuck are you?"

“I’m just Jo.”

He laughed again. “No. You’re not ‘just Jo’. Because Jo met me by chance and made me talk freely to her. I thought I’d made love to her and I thought she was falling for me. That’s not you. You’re not Jo. You’re a fucking journalist. You lied to me, you met my friends and you let me believe you fucking cared for me!”

“I did! I do! I care for you! It wasn’t all a lie!”

“Did we meet by chance?”

She couldn’t do this. She needed to sit. It was strange to think about this now. But she couldn’t just stand in the middle of her room now. Not with Tom. She needed to sit. She wanted to sit.

“I need to sit.”

“For fuck’s sake, Josefine!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying that!” Tom roared, and Jo shook and shivered. And she didn’t sit.

“I...”

“Did we meet by chance? That’s all you have to answer me. Was it by chance because Mary had a hard time with her husband and you were in the area and went to the café? And then you thought ‘Oh. What a great idea. I’m having this actor before me. I’m gonna write a story about him. Look how cute and trusting he is’? Or, did you plan this from the beginning?”

“Tom...”

“Just fucking tell me. Now. Or I’ll leave before you get any chance to say anything to me ever again.”

“I knew the café and I went there to meet you. It was planned.”

He actually seemed to choke on that. Through her tears, Jo could see his face going pale again. “You lied from the very beginning then. Ha! And I thought you’d maybe get to the point I was. Wanting me. But you only wanted a story, right?”

“I want you. I have feelings for you. Nothing was a lie. It’s all me. It’s just the way we met.”

“Well. I could never believe you anymore anyway. Just do me a favour and spellcheck my name before you publish that story.”

And then, before Jo's body could register and do anything about it, Tom was out of the door and possibly out of her life.

***

“Oh, Tom.” Luke shook his head again, and repeated the same words and gestures for the past hour Tom had been sitting with him in the office of Prosper.

Much to his credit, he hadn't said ‘I told you so' once. Not that it would have changed anything, because Tom knew Luke was thinking it. Tom himself was thinking it.

At least those were supposed to be his thoughts. At the moment, he felt like he was in some sort of limbo. He was thinking everything at once and nothing at all at the same time.

He never felt as betrayed as he did in this moment. Not even by the comments his ex – or her friends or whoever – was making about their relationship and break-up these days. Or the comments on his speech at the Golden Globes. That all was nothing compared to what he was feeling right now.

“Tom?” Luke’s voice brought him out of his head where he was currently going through all of the things he'd ever talked about with Jo.

What were the things she lied about? Or, better yet, what were the things that were actually true? Tom was sure that list was significantly shorter. What did her family look like for example? Were there actually nephews? A brother? Or did she say those things to have something in common? Had she really been awestruck by meeting Ken? Or had it been a normal occasion for her? Maybe she'd just been nervous about being exposed? Tom groaned. Ken would join the long list of people who'd warned him and who deserved an apology.

And then he groaned again and leant forward a little, dropping his head in his hands. Had the sex been nothing more than a chore for her?

“Tom?”

He jerked. Okay. He’d been inside his own head again. “Hm?”

Luke sighed. “I know it’s hard to talk about right now. But we need to be ready for the damage control. So. What could she write?”

Oh. Right. Tom had been so distraught by the lies and the betrayal as well as the questions he had that he didn’t even think of the consequences.

“Lots of things, I guess,” he answered, lifting his head a bit and looking at Luke. He saw him cringe, before he lifted a brow, a wave of his hand indicating for Tom to continue. “I told her about Taylor,” he sighed. “I told her about Taylor, about my family, we had sex, and I fucking told her about that one time I cheated.”

Tom knew the gasp was coming before he’d even finished the sentence.

“Tom! You never... what? When?”

“Right after Thor. It was just for a couple of weeks, it was... she wasn’t...”

“Alright,” Luke interrupted. “Okay. That was a long time ago. Did... Did she know at the time?”

Tom shook his head. Slowly. He was exhausted, his head was swimming, and he just wanted to go to bed. Go to bed and maybe drown himself in whisky first.

“Nobody knew except the woman and I. Well, and now Jo.”

“Okay. That’s good. No witnesses.” It sounded as if it was a crime scene. Tom scoffed. Maybe it was.

“Jo wants to ask around though.”

“We need to be faster then. Does she know who the woman was you cheated with?”

“No. But if she wraps everyone else around her little finger like that, like...me, she’ll find out.”

“Tom...” There was so much sympathy in Luke’s voice that Tom didn’t know if he wanted to puke or cry. Well, he thought, some sort of dark humour in his mind, give or take two to three hours, and the whisky could manage both.

***

Jo didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there on the floor, her back against a chair, right were she'd been standing when Tom walked out of that door.

At some point her numb body couldn’t take it anymore, tired from the constant crying, exhausted from the flow of tears and her shallow breathing. And then Jo had let herself fall on the floor, ass first, not caring much for the pain or bruises that would cause.

It wasn’t like those could ever be any worse than the cuts and bruises in her heart.
And the worst thing about that? She deserved every single one of them. It was all her fault, she shouldn’t have been in that café in the first place.

Jo sobbed harder. Because no, she shouldn’t have been there. But the truth also was that she wouldn’t have met Tom then. And she wouldn’t have fallen for him, even though it didn’t matter now, because he hated her, and she couldn’t blame him.

She needed to talk. She would get yelled at, but that wasn’t new with Eva. So, Jo grabbed for the phone that was still on the floor, close to her, where it had fallen earlier.

It rang three times, before Eva picked up with a chirpy “Hello!”

“Eva.” Jo's voice was raw from crying and not saying anything for the last couple of hours.

“What is it?”

And Jo talked. She talked and sobbed and cried and screamed, but it didn’t manage to make the pain go away.

Eva tried to calm her, telling her to breathe, telling her that there was always a way to make things turn out differently. Maybe not making Tom forgive her, but definitely making him not hating her even more.

“You can’t write that article,” Eva said calmly, keeping it together for the both of them.

“I know.”

“You've probably lost him, but you can’t hurt him even more.”

“I know.”

“You sound strange,” Eva said next. “I don't mean your crying, but the sound of your voice. You’re planning something.” Eva knew her too well. Jo was planning something. Something to make it better. Something to show Tom he could trust her. From now on, at least.

“I...”

“Please, Jo. Please, don’t write it. You won’t make anything better by scheming and spinning some sort of solution now. Just don't write it and move back to Germany, if you have to.”

Jo loved that about Eva. She wasn’t sugar-coating anything ever. She didn’t tell her that they’d plan something grand to win Tom back. She was telling Jo how it was. But Jo wasn’t trying to get Tom back. She was going to try to do the right thing. And it wouldn’t fail. Also, it was something for her to do except crying, weeping and possibly drinking herself into a stupor.

At that moment, Sam and Nick came through the front door, eyes widening as they took in the scene in front of them, and Jo saw the realisation of what had happened hit them.

“I need to go,” she whispered into the phone.

“Jo, don’t you dare make it worse,” Jo heard Eva say, before she hung up.

Then she stood up and looked over at Sam. “I know you’ll be working somewhere else soon. And I need your help.”