He cups his hands around my face, and his eyes burn into mine, passionate, sincere, and I’ve never felt more loved, more seen. It’s as if he can see into the whole of me and he miraculously likes it all, the good and bad and insecure and uncertain, and it’s all fine. And I feel the same. He’s opening his heart, and I can see all the parts of him, the incredibly charismatic movie star whose mere presence ignites the world, but I can also see Remington, the lonely, quirky, funny guy who gets my nerdy jokes and who needed someone to reach out to him as much as I did.
And I can see the beautiful, complex man I’ve gotten to know here in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the man who is kind and gives his jacket to a homeless man without making him feel lesser. The man who tries to protect the people he loves, even if he thinks it means giving them up. The loyal friend and the caring brother. He has a painful past that makes him a little broken and a turbulent life that makes him a little jaded. He isn’t perfect, but I’m glad of that, because I’m not perfect myself.
I’m not cut out for the glamorous, fucked-up world of super celebrity he occupies, but I suspect he’s not either. So maybe, together, we can figure it out.
“What about all your reasons for staying away? What about the new project? And the fans? And the travel? All those things that you swore meant we would never work.” I have to ask, because if I let the walls back down and he does another 180 on me, I’m not sure I can survive it.
“I turned down Max Thunder.”
I gasp. “W-what? You can’t do that, Chase! That’s the biggest job in Hollywood. Even I know that no one would say no to something so iconic.”
“I can and did.”
“What job did he turn down?” I recognize Mr. Jensen’s voice. I look up and see my dinner party crowding around the kitchen doorway, their heads sticking in, watching us like we’re a K-drama on television.
“He was supposed to be the next Max Thunder,” Daisy says to the rest of the audience.
“And he turned it down for Olivia!” Audrey exclaims.
“How romantic.” Mrs. Maples sighs.
“Max Thunder! Olivia Evans, did you make this young man turn down Max Thunder?” Mr. Jensen glares in accusation.
“Wow. I’ve never seen you fired up before, Mr. J. You must really like those movies,” Daisy says.
“Everyone likes those movies!” Mr. Jensen exclaims. “You can’t make him turn it down.”
“I didn’t make him turn it down!” I shoot Chase a fierce glance. “We need to talk. In private,” I say pointedly to my dinner guests.
I take a small step away from Chase just so I can think, but he grabs my hand and twines his fingers with mine. Warmth shoots up from where our skin touches.
“Okay, everyone, back to the table,” I shoo everyone toward the dining room with my hands. “We’ll be back when we’re done talking.” I look at Chase. “My room?” I ask. He raises an eyebrow but nods.
“Sure, talking,” Daisy says with a wicked grin before she herds the rest of my friends back to the dining room.
“Oh, young love,” Mrs. Maple says. “I remember all that talking I’d do with Mr. Maple when we were first dating.” She cackles wickedly.
“They’re not coming back, are they?” Mr. Jensen asks mournfully. He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d get the chance to meet Max Thunder.”
“It just means more dessert for me,” Audrey says, grabbing the tray of cupcakes from the counter.
I shake my head at my friends’ antics and usher Chase up the stairs to my room. We walk silently, hand in hand, me leading the way.
He closes my bedroom door with a firm thud. He looks around my room, missing nothing. His perusal unnerves me, and I’m suddenly aware of the evidence that I’m still in my childhood bedroom. There’s my favorite stuffed bear, Porridge, on the bookshelf, along with my collection of Winnie the Pooh books, which I have to admit I still reread occasionally. Porridge still smells a little smokey, but I couldn’t get rid of him.
Chase grins and picks up a book.
“Pooh is my philosophical guru. Nothing bothers him. He accepts life as it is. He’s very Zen,” I say with a blush.
I snatch the book from Chase’s hand and place it gently back on the shelf.
Chase picks up my bear next. “I’m not judging,” he says with a laugh. “Is this the bear you told me about? The one named Oatmeal?” Chase teases.
“You know very well he’s Porridge.” I glare at Chase.
And that’s when I realize I’ve confided to Remington about my ridiculously named favorite stuffie, and, when we texted into the night, told him about the four-poster bed with the romantic netting I put up when I was sixteen and went through my Out of Africa phase. He even knows I added the twinkly lights on my bed frame one Christmas, and I just never took them down.
He knows it all, even if he didn’t know my name.
My legs feel weak, and I sink onto the bed.
He stands in front of me, looking down. I crane my neck to see him better, and he kneels.
“Did you mean it?”
He doesn’t ask what I mean.
“Every word,” he vows.
“Even—”
“Especially the part when I said I love you.” He traces a line down my nose and ends at my lips. Everywhere he touches burns. All I want is to kiss him, but this is too important.
“You can’t turn down the movie role, Chase. This is your career. I can’t ruin it for you. What if you resent me?”
“I’m not turning it down because of you, Olivia. Or, if I am, it’s only because you’ve inspired me to take control and figure out what I want from my life, to risk the status quo that’s not working for me. If it’s a question between some movie role and you, I’ll choose you every time.”
My heart flips, but I still need to make him understand. “But that’s just it. You don’t have to choose. We can figure this out. I don’t want you to sacrifice your career or who you are. That’s not love. I want the man I’m with to be better because of me.”
“This is what I want. I love movies, but I want to be involved with stories that matter to me. The director I sent my screenplay to loved it. He wants to make it. It will be a long road, but it’s a start. Just like you predicted when you read it years ago.” He looks down, a tinge of red appearing on his cheeks, and I’m charmed by that tell of insecurity in such a strong, brilliant man.
“The Forgotten Ones,” I say on a breath. It was the screenplay Remington had sent to me. “Oh, Chase, I’m so happy for you. It’s so good. So raw and beautiful, and I know it’s going to be amazing on screen.” I throw myself at him, almost toppling him, and hug him, quick and fierce.
He pulls us both up to standing and hugs me back, and he feels like home.
I shift away just enough to look at him. “The main characters are runaways. It’s about you. Your experiences.”
“Loosely. But yes, I drew from my childhood. There are so many kids discarded by society. I was the lucky one, so I need to give back. I want to tell their stories because I want kids like I was to know they matter.”
He says it with passion, and I realize that he never spoke about his movie career like that before. He didn’t seem to mind his job, except for the fame part. But he never had a fire for it. Not like this.
“My agent and manager want me to keep racking up the big roles to line their pockets. My PR company wants me to keep the fame up, because that’s their job. I always just assumed that’s what you did. You got on this roller coaster, you felt grateful they wanted you, and you never left unless they kicked you off. I was just along for the ride, but you helped me realize that’s not what I want.” He leans back to look at me.
“I want to do work that matters to me. Max Thunder isn’t it. Thanks to The Wanderers, I have more money than I can spend in a lifetime. I don’t want a yacht or an island somewhere. I want the freedom to choose work that interests me and to not be chased by paparazzi.”
He smiles at me, and the joy in his face echoes the joy in my heart at his words.
“I want to be able to live wherever I want,” he says. “I want to date the girl of my dreams and show her that, despite the lies we started with, what we have is very real, and I can be trusted with her heart.”
The heart he refers to is beating overtime. “So, that other place you want to live?” I ask.
He scratches his chin. “I wouldn’t mind San Francisco.”
I tilt my head. “I kind of like Malibu, at least for part of the year. The weather is pretty nice in the summer. And that girl you want to date?”