I Caught My Boyfriend Cheating With My Enemy, Then I Became His Biggest Regret

"Surprise, baby."

I pushed the apartment door open with my hip, still smiling.

The chocolate cake in my arms was from Ethan's favorite bakery on Melrose. Thirty candles stuck out of the frosting like tiny soldiers. I had wrapped my New York shoot two days early. I hadn't told my manager. I hadn't told my assistant. I hadn't even posted a photo from the airport.

Nobody knew Ava Morales, the actress whose face was on half the billboards on Sunset, was back in Los Angeles.

That was the whole point.

"Ethan?"

No answer. His keys sat in the dish by the door. His jacket hung over a barstool.

I kicked off my sneakers and padded down the hallway. The bedroom door was half-closed.

Then I heard it.

A woman's laugh. Low. Lazy. Familiar.

My feet stopped moving.

I knew that laugh. I had heard it at the Golden Globes, two tables over, when she told a reporter I "photographed older than I looked." I had heard it at a casting office in Burbank, right after she walked out with a role my agent swore was mine.

Sienna Blake.

My biggest rival in the industry. The woman who had spent three years trying to take everything I worked for.

"Stop," she giggled behind the door. "She's not back until Friday, right?"

"Friday," Ethan said. "Relax."

I shoved the door open.

Ethan stood by the dresser, shirtless, his belt hanging loose. And Sienna lay stretched across my bed. My sheets. My pillows. The cream silk robe I'd bought in Paris was tied around her waist.

The cake slipped out of my hands.

It hit the hardwood with a wet slap. Frosting splattered across my bare feet and up the white baseboards.

"What are you doing?"

My voice came out thin. Like it belonged to someone else.

Ethan's face went pale. His hands jerked toward his chest, like he could cover himself. For a few seconds, he looked like the man I loved. Scared. Caught.

Then something in his eyes shut off.

He straightened. He picked up a T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head, slow, like he had all the time in the world.

"Why are you home early?"

I stared at him.

Not *I'm sorry.* Not *Ava, it's not what it looks like.*

A question. Like I was the one who'd done something wrong.

"Why am I—" A laugh tore out of me. Ugly and sharp. "It's your birthday, Ethan. I flew across the country to surprise you."

Sienna sat up and fluffed her blond hair. She tugged the robe so it slid off one shoulder.

"Well," she said, smiling at the mess on the floor. "Looks like your surprise worked."

"Get out of my robe."

"This?" She pinched the silk between two fingers. "It's a little big on me, honestly. But it's soft."

My fists curled so tight my nails bit my palms. I turned back to Ethan.

"How long?"

He didn't answer.

"How long, Ethan?"

He leaned against the dresser and crossed his arms. His jaw worked once, twice.

"Since you found out anyway," he said, "I don't need to keep pretending."

The words landed like a slap.

"Pretending," I repeated.

"Eight months."

Eight months. Thanksgiving with my mom. Christmas in Aspen. The night he held me on the bathroom floor after I lost the Netflix lead and told me I was the most talented woman he'd ever met.

All of it. Eight months of it.

"You told me you loved me last Tuesday," I whispered. "On FaceTime. You told me you were counting the days."

"I was." He shrugged. "Just not for the reason you thought."

Sienna laughed again. This time it made my skin crawl.

"Oh, honey," she said. "You really don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

She swung her legs off the bed and stood. She stepped right over the smashed cake, careful not to get frosting on her painted toes.

"This isn't some little fling." She tilted her head. "Ethan and I have been planning something. For a while now."

My stomach dropped.

"Planning what?"

Ethan picked up his phone from the nightstand. He scrolled for a second, then turned the screen toward me.

It was a schedule. *Crimson Hour* premiere. Press junket. Red carpet. Next Thursday.

My movie. The one I'd fought for. The one Sienna had a supporting role in.

"Everyone's going to be there," Ethan said. "Every outlet. Every camera."

"So?"

"So that's when people find out who you really are." He said it calmly, like he was reading a grocery list. "The diva who steals roles. The one who screams at assistants. The one who throws tantrums on set."

My mouth opened. Nothing came out.

"That's not me," I finally managed. "That's not true. None of that is true."

"Doesn't have to be true," Sienna said sweetly. "It just has to look true."

She reached past him, grabbed her own phone from the bed, and tapped the screen. A video played. Me, on set in Vancouver last spring, red-faced, yelling.

"That was a rehearsal," I said. "That was a *scene*. I was in character—"

"Without the script pages, who's going to know?" She swiped. A photo of me walking out of a director's office in tears. Swiped again. A screenshot of a text thread I had never seen in my life, with my name at the top.

*Tell Sienna's people if she takes that role, I'll make sure she never works again.*

"I never sent that."

"Your old number," Ethan said. "I still had access to your cloud. You never changed the password."

The room tilted.

He'd held my phone a thousand times. Ordered our takeout. Booked our flights. Read my messages over my shoulder while I laughed and told him he was nosy.

"Why?" My voice cracked down the middle. "What did I ever do to you?"

For the first time, Ethan looked almost bored.

"You got big, Ava," he said. "Everybody started calling me *Ava Morales's boyfriend.* Like I didn't have my own name." He tossed the phone onto the bed. "Sienna's agency is signing me. Producer credit on her next three films. She actually wants me to have something."

"I *gave* you everything."

"You gave me your leftovers."

I stared at him. The man I'd introduced to every producer I knew. The man whose rent I'd paid for two years while he "figured things out."

And I didn't cry.

That was the strangest part. I'd thought I would fall apart. Instead, a cold, flat calm spread through my chest.

"Okay," I said quietly.

Ethan blinked. Sienna's smile slipped a little.

I turned around. Frosting squished under my heel as I walked toward the hallway. My purse was still by the front door. My keys. My car.

I just had to get out of this room before the calm broke.

"Ava."

I didn't stop.

"Ava, wait." Ethan's voice followed me, and there was a smile in it now. A real one. "Where do you think you're going?"

My hand found the doorframe.

"Away from you."

He laughed. Actually laughed.

"You think breaking up with me is the end of it?" he called. "You think after next Thursday, you'll still have a career in this town?"

My fingers froze on the wood.

Slowly, I turned my head.

Ethan stood in the bedroom doorway, Sienna draped against his shoulder in my robe, both of them watching me like I was already finished.

"Go ahead and leave, babe," he said softly. "But by the time we're done with you, nobody in Hollywood is going to remember you as anything but crazy."