Shivley: A Now United Story

Ch 30: Sign of the Times

Shivani felt Bailey's entire weight on her and suddenly she didn't know what to do. All she knew was that she needed to take Bailey somewhere where he could cry and talk that wasn't so public. Bailey realized her hands weren't around him and he tried to pull himself back a little bit, but he was shaking so much that he couldn't so Shivani took a step back. He was shaking. Only a heartless person wouldn't hug him back so that's what Shivani did. She looked back at Noah and he nodded. He understood and he walked over to sit with everyone else. Then Shivani gave Bailey a real hug and he practically melted in her arms.

Shivani had no idea what was happening, but she felt this inexplicable rage towards Ashlee. Whoever could've done this to Bailey was a special sort of evil. But she wouldn't give Ashlee the satisfaction of having Bailey have this breakdown in front of everyone.

"Bailey? Let's go to your room okay?"

He managed to nod and pulled back from Shivani, but he grabbed her hand and she let him hold it. She looked back at Noah who gave her a thumbs up and mouthed a Need Help? But she figured this would be a private conversation so she shook her head. They went into the elevator and Bailey was trying to regain his composure, but the tears wouldn't stop spilling out. They made it to Bailey's room and Shivani helped Bailey sit on the bed.

She went to grab a water bottle and handed it to him.

"T-thank you." He tried to wipe his tears away, but they kept spilling out. "I-I'm sorry." He took a long drink of water.

"Sorry? Bailey are you kidding? It's Ashlee that needs to be sorry! I can't even imagine what she could've said to you! That witch-I'm going to go talk to Simon and tell him all the stuff she said to me. We need to get her out! She's awful! She's-"

"Wait Shivani." Bailey's face was still red, but he seemed a little more composed. His eyes were trained at the floor and he wasn't able to look Shivani in the face. "I need to tell you something...something I should have told you a long time ago. And I need you to listen to it completely because this could change a lot of things okay?"

Shivani nodded. Whatever it was, she couldn't imagine her anger towards Ashlee changing.

"Okay. So before coming to Now United, I was in the Philippines on a show called Big Brother where I met Ylona."

Ylona? Why was Bailey bringing her up?

He took another drink of water, but his voice was still shaking. "After the show, we had this flirty thing going on because our management teams told us it would help both of our brands."

Well that sounded like deja vu.

"But then we started to get to know each other and one thing led to another and we starting dating. It was really good in the beginning, but pretty soon things started to feel so difficult. Every day was a new problem with her and I wanted to break up with her. So I called her and told her to meet me at this café. And everything went wrong." He started crying.

Shivani walked up to him and started wiping the tears off his face. "Bailey, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

He shook his head. "No I need to. I need you to know why everything between us happened because it is killing me to lie to you over and over again." He took in another breath. Shivani nodded and backed away again.

"When I told her I wanted to break up, she went ballistic. Apparently my sister had come to her with a problem she had, and Ylona made it go away."

"Made it go away?"

"Apparently my sister had starting dating this guy and something went wrong and they got pregnant and the guy ghosted her. So she went to Ylona because she didn't know who else she could trust. My parents are super Catholic and if they knew she got pregnant...they would disown her. And then there's the fact that the guy was senior in high school and my sister was in eighth grade and she lied about being a junior which means they both could face serious legal trouble."