“You’ll figure it out—you always do,” Olive said as they left the bathroom to find the room had emptied significantly and only Dante and Sean were waiting. Olive hugged her and they said goodbye. Paisley waved to Dante and as she turned to face Sean, she felt butterflies in her stomach and her heart pounding too loudly.
No more secrets was what he wanted and she had to find a way to honor that and to keep her pregnancy to herself until she was ready.
“It’s started snowing... Want to walk for a bit?” he asked.
“Yes. I love snow.”
“You told me that,” he said. “I’m a remembering kind of man.”
Eight
Paisley pulled up the collar of her coat around her neck as they left Mrs. B’s condo building and started to walk toward Michigan Avenue. She thought about last Christmas and how she’d wished her life would be in a different place this year. Well, that wish had come true, but dang, she’d had no ideahowdifferent her life would become. She’d had an affair with a movie star, was pregnant and her best friends were both in committed relationships.
She started to laugh and Sean turned to her, snow sticking to his thick eyelashes and the skullcap he was wearing.
“What?”
“Just thinking how surprising life can be,” she murmured.
“Yeah? What in particular?”
She shrugged. “Well, turns out I had an affair with a megastar. Didn’t see that coming.”
“If you’d known from the start, would it have changed things?”
“Heck yeah. I wouldn’t have flirted with Sean O’Neill. I mean I’m not exactly in your orbit. It would have felt weird.”
“Fame isn’t real. You know that, right?” he asked her.
“Yeah, of course. It’s so surreal—how do you live with it and stay normal?”
“Well, you know I have a big ego,” he answered with a wink.
“Except you don’t, not really.”
“Well, I know I’m good at my craft,” he said. “The photographers and gossip sites that always talk about me, they aren’t exactly my favorites. We would have never known each other...”
She nodded. “I see the point you’re making. If you hadn’t lied we would never have gotten together. And you’re right.”
“Ah...finally got you to admit I’m right and I can’t help but feel that I’m still wrong,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
He stopped walking and put his hand on her arm, and she turned toward him. The snow was still so light that it just fell in random flakes on both of them. This was the kind of picture-perfect moment that she had would have expected from a Sean O’Neill movie. Paisley knew that she was trying to make him into the superstar, but it was too late. Because she already knew the man behind the fame. She was just afraid to trust that man. Afraid that it might be just one more role from the award-winning actor.
“I know. It’s just...the more we discuss it the more I realize that lying was the only option I had, and yet it’s the one reason why you can’t trust me. I mean, there’s no other way I could have actually gotten to know you.” He blew out a breath. “I want to say the right thing, but let’s be honest, I’m not a writer. I just bring someone else’s words to life.”
She shook her head again, reaching up to touch his cheek because he looked so...alone. “You are doing okay. None of us really know the right thing to say. We can’t edit the dumb stuff that we blurt out... I know I wish I could. And...well, I’m trying to let it go. As you pointed out, I was hiding things too.”
“Some parts of ourselves are harder to share. I don’t know about your past relationships, but when I’m dating I tend to try to be the best version of myself,” he said.
“Yeah, me too. I never lead with ‘my dad’s a felon.’”
He laughed, as she’d hoped he would, then took her hand in his, pulled her close and claimed another kiss. She sighed when their lips met and her tongue brushed over his as her fingers tangled in the hair at the back of his neck.
She wrapped her arms around his chest this time and he lifted her off her feet so that her body was pressed to his.
“That kiss...” she said when he put her on her feet.