She just nodded her head stiffly.
“I want to get past this.”
“I don’t see that happening,” she told him.
“So you’re just going to stay mad at me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s completely justified,” he said.
“Why did you lie to me?”
“I signed an NDA before coming out here to work and the press is insane. That little thing with the paparazzi was just a taster. Normally they hound me everywhere—”
“I get it. You’re super famous and everyone wants something from you. But I didn’t. I just thought you were this sweet, hot guy.”
Those words... Was this more than regret and guilt sweeping through him? He wasn’t sure. All he knew for certain was that this womanmattered. He reached for her and this time he allowed his hand to fall on her shoulder.
Maybe there was a chance to save this. She wasn’t pushing him away physically.
But as he leaned in to kiss her, she turned her head away.
“Okay...” He cleared his throat. “Do you want dinner?”
“Are you kidding me right now?” she snapped, and he saw her mask slip as anger flashed. “I am barely keeping everything in check. So, no, I can’t pretend everything is okay and dine with you.”
“Understood.” He put his hands up. “What can I do?”
“Don’t talk to me. I’m waiting for Lyle to come back and then I’m going home. You can come and get your stuff tomorrow.”
He was starting to get the feeling that she was cutting him out of her life. That felt...like something he hadn’t felt since he’d been legally emancipated from his mom when he was seventeen. Suck it up, he told himself. He had always known there would be consequences for deceiving her.
But he had traded on their closeness. He thought the bond they’d created as lovers would be something that could bridge this. How had he read her wrong?
“Okay.”
“Is that all you’re going to say to me?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face then released a ragged breath. “Let’s be honest, Paisley. There isn’t anything I can say at this moment that you will actually hear. I mean, even a screenwriter—”
“Don’t do that. Be the man you truly are. I don’t want you to act a part...but that’s what you’ve been doing since the moment we met, isn’t it?”
Jack, his alter ego, would lie and soothe her, but she wanted the real man. “Yes, it is. I mean, at first you were just this sexy woman with a cute smile and I didn’t know you so I wasn’t intentionally lying.”
“But once you knew me? You lived in my apartment, Sean. You should have said something. I let you into my life...”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“Why now?” she asked. “I mean, the lie was going so well for you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. If he had actual emotions, he thought, that jab of hers would have hurt. “I’m done filming and heading back to LA on Monday.”
“Oh.”
He’d never in his life heard her sound so small and almost...broken.
“I was hoping we could figure out a way to keep seeing each other,” he said.