“You can put them over there,” he says, waving toward me. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” I say, setting them down on top of a box by the door. I linger there, watching him sort through paperwork, feeling guilty because I know he’s doing my job.
“Did you need something else?” he asks, raising an eyebrow as he looks at me.
“No,” I say, hesitating. “Well, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
“Sorry enough to want your job back?”
“Not quite.”
He laughs, turning back to the paperwork. “Had to try.”
“Anyway,” I say. “Thanks for taking a chance on me when you did.”
I walk out of the office, not wanting things to get too sentimental. The store is pretty busy, not unusual for a Friday.
I’m heading for the exit as the delivery guy switches out the magazines by the registers. Instinctively, my eyes turn toward them, drawn to a certain one—Hollywood Chronicles. My footsteps stall as I inhale sharply. It feels like I’ve been punched.
I snatch up the top copy. The world around me is trying to tilt. My heart pounds hard. As panic floods my system, my hands start to shake.
Turning away, I walk out of the store, taking it with me as I drive straight home. The apartment is quiet. Jonathan is walking Maddie home from school, so I’m alone for the moment.
I go straight to my bedroom.
Sitting down on the bed, I stare at the front page of the tabloid.
JOHNNY CUNNING'S DOUBLE LIFE
Along the top, there’s a picture of us—me, and Jonathan, and our daughter. Our faces are plastered on the front of Hollywood Chronicles. It’s unavoidable, I know. He lives his life beneath a scorching spotlight. We’d inevitably get drawn into it.
And it’s strange, but he looks happy.
It’s one of the only times they’ve ever printed a picture of him smiling.
Beneath that, though, tells a different story.
There’s a picture of him in a bar, the caption claiming it was a few days ago. He’s standing beside Serena, and she’s holding her drink out, offering it to him.
I flip through it, finding more pictures. More of us. More of them. Close to midnight on Monday—the day of his appointment. It says they met up at a hotel in the city, when hours before, he finally broke his silence about their relationship while walking his daughter to school.
Closing the tabloid, I toss it aside.
A few minutes pass before I hear the front door, Maddie’s laughter filtering through. She runs through the apartment, into the hall, yelling, “Hi, Mommy! Bye, Mommy!’ before disappearing into her bedroom.
Jonathan comes to the bedroom, asking, “So, how’d it go at the store?”
I look at him in silence for a moment before saying, “It went about like I thought.”
“Good? Bad?”
I shrug.
His brow furrows as he steps closer, noticing the tabloid on the bed. Grabbing it, he groans and sits down beside me. “You bought this shit?”
“No, I kind of just took it.”
“You took it.”
“Yes.”
His eyes scan the cover before he flips through it, going straight to the article. He skims it, scowling, before tossing it aside.
“Since when do you shoplift?”
“I don’t,” I say. “It was a mistake.”
“A mistake,” he says. “I’ve made my fair share of those.”
“You make any lately?”
“Maybe a few.”
“Like?”
“Well, for one, that article I just read.”
“Which part of it was the mistake?”
“The part where I wasted brain cells reading it,” he says. “For the record, I didn’t drink that night. I know it looks bad, but I was waiting for my car and she happened to be there. There’s nothing going on between us, which is what I told that asshole when he claimed I broke my silence.”
“Good to know.”
Reaching over, Jonathan grabs my hands, placing his over mine. I’m fidgeting, I realize.
“Don’t do that,” he says. “Please. Don’t ever doubt me over something they print.”
“It’s just, you know… the photos.”
“It’s a split second snapshot,” he says. “Anything can be made to look bad if taken out of context. And they’ll do it, every chance they get.”
“I know.”
“But back to the subject. Another mistake is spending even an ounce of energy entertaining their bullshit when there are much better things we could be doing.”
I close my eyes as he pushes me back onto the bed. His mouth meets mine, and he kisses me, tongues mingling together. His hands roam, stroking my side, one slipping beneath my shirt. He palms a breast, squeezing it, sliding beneath my bra. I moan when his fingertips brush against the nipple, sending sparks through my body, but it’s gone again, drifting south.
His fingertips trail along my stomach before slipping past the waistband of my pants. I inhale sharply when he starts rubbing, stroking me through the soft cotton of my underwear. Heat rushes through me. Tingles consume me. Just a touch from this man sets my world on fire.
“Oh god,” I whisper, arching my back as his fingers work their magic, sparks flowing down my spine. I’m getting close already. I can feel it building up, tightening in my gut. I bite my lip to keep from making too much noise.
So close…
So close…
Oh god, so—
“Daddy!”
Maddie’s voice shouts down the hallway as footsteps head our direction. At once, Jonathan pulls away, standing up. “What?”
She bursts in as I force myself to sit up, still breathing heavily. I feel my face heating. I’m shaking, aching… clenching my thighs together to try to make it stop.
“I’m ready to do some lines!” she says, grinning, again wearing her Breezeo costume.
Jonathan laughs. “Ready to run lines, you mean.”
Her brow furrows. “That’s what I said.”
“No, you said…” He trails off. “Never mind.”
“You’re running lines again?” I glance between them as Jonathan goes to the duffel bag he lives out of and starts digging through it. “That’ll take, what... five minutes? Ten?”
I’m trying to gauge how long he’s going to leave me hanging.
Jonathan pulls out a thick stack of papers, waving them at me. “Probably a bit longer than that.”
The Breezeo script. Ghosted.
“Whoa,” I say, reaching for it, but he yanks it back, away from my grasp.
“No touching,” he says before handing it to Maddie. “It’s top secret material.”
“What?” I scowl at him. “How come she gets to read it?”
“Because I’m Breezeo, duh,” she says before running off with the script, not letting me near it.
“Yeah,” Jonathan says, leaning down to kiss me—just a brush against my lips. “Duh.”
He tries to move, but I’m not done with him, yanking him down on top of me.
Laughing, he kisses me some more, real kisses this time, and presses himself into me. He’s hard. “Is that what you want, baby?”
Baby. Hearing him call me that makes me shiver in his arms. “Oh god, yes…”
“Daddy!” Maddie whines from the living room. “Hurry up!”
“Pity,” Jonathan says, biting my bottom lip before he pulls away. “Guess we’ll have to reschedule.”
I gape at him as he heads for the door. “You son of a…”
“Bitch?”
He laughs.