22
Chris had signed the contract for The Gilded Cage with a thin black clicky pen. And he’d taken it. Stuffed it into his pocket as a memento of the day. Dante had asked Chris to stay another night and celebrate New Year’s with him and some film execs, but his agent had only come to Manhattan for the length of time it took to sign the contracts, and Wes had already flown down to Florida to visit his parents. There was no point in staying. Chris wanted to get home to be with Bronte. She was who he wanted to celebrate with.
Still amped-up, he knocked on her door like an overly enthusiastic woodpecker. She opened it, wearing a long sweater dress and super-sexy knee-high boots. But she didn’t look nearly as excited as he thought she’d be to see him. “What are you doing here?”
“I came home early. I had to see you.”
She studied him for a beat. “Oh.”
Her reaction caught him off guard. “Are you going somewhere?”
She turned around, leaving the door open for him to come in. “No, I just got home. I went out to dinner with some friends from work.”
She held on to the couch as she peeled off each boot. “How’d it go?”
He grinned. “I got it.” He held up the pen, needing something concrete to hold to remind himself it was real. “I’m Roy.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’re upset about something.”
She stalked around the couch to the coffee table for her laptop and showed it to him.
“What’s this?”
“Scroll down.”
He did, and in bold letters, the headline read, CJ Cunningham Back at It Again.There were four pictures from outside the bar in Harlem. He was smiling and laughing in two and had his arms around the girls in the other two.
“You were hanging out with girls at a bar?”
He closed the laptop, irritated at the accusation. “Yes, I went to a bar. No, I wasn’t hanging out with girls. We were leaving, and they wanted a picture. I was with them for, like, thirty seconds. It’s a bad angle. Why are you even reading this? You promised you wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t read it. But a picture paints a thousand words, doesn’t it?”
He ran a frustrated hand over his face, a habit he hadn’t lost since he’d shaved off his beard. “I told you how this stuff works. I was with Dante for dinner for a long time and then went out with Wes for one drink. That’s it. I even told you about it. It was my first night there. I can’t believe you think something else happened.”
Her arms unfolded from their stiff hold around her middle, and she shook her head, stepping backward. She looked as lost as he felt and panic welled in his chest. “I don’t know, Chris. I…I don’t know what you’re like when you’re out doing the CJ Cunningham thing.”
He reached for her hands. “I would never, never be unfaithful to you. Wes and I went to the bar to hang out, we listened to music, and those girls happened to pop up when the photographer showed up.”
“No, I know you wouldn’t be unfaithful. It’s just that…” She pressed her hands to her face. “I’m trying to be logical about all this, but your life is so different from mine, and it’s hard to get used to the idea of you as a famous person.”
“Hey, I get it,” he said, slipping one hand around her neck, closing the gap between them, and tilted her head up. “But you know me, Bronte. You know exactly who I am. You know that I always forget to add softener to the laundry and that I’d rather eat breakfast food all day than anything else. You know I need to fall asleep to some kind of sound but hate the beep of your alarm. You know me. I’m Chris from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I am in love with you.”
Barely even registering what he’d confessed in his haste to get it out, it took a second for him to process that she’d responded. “What?”
“I said, I love you too.”
His heart stopped. He forgot to breathe. Even when Bronte smoothed her palm over his cheek, his lungs still didn’t remember how to work.
He couldn’t believe this woman loved him. This pure and good woman loved him. Despite everything she knew about him, all the shitty stuff, all the demons, she still chose him.
“Did you hear me, Chris?”
With a blink, he came back, her blue eyes anchoring him to earth. “Yeah, yeah. I heard you.”
He slipped an arm around her waist and gripped her hair with his other hand, angling her head to kiss her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth, rediscovering the little gasps of sounds he’d missed for the last three days. Bunching his fist in the soft material of her dress at her hips, he said, “You look really good in this, but I’m sorry to say, it’s going to have to come off.”