Chapter 18 #2
“She wanted to know whether I loved you enough to let you figure out who you are without me.”
My heart cracked clean in two. A slow, deep splintering I felt behind my ribs. The kind of ache that echoed.
“She said you had a fire in you,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “That if I tried to hold on too tight, I’d only smother what I loved. That the girl I loved needed to fly. Even if it meant flying away from me.”
The tears came fast, unannounced, stinging in the corners of my eyes.
“I didn’t want to hear it,” Easton said, softer now. “Every part of me wanted to argue. But I looked at her, and I knew she was right. You needed to grow into yourself without me standing in the doorway.”
His voice faltered, then steadied again.
“I sat in my car for a long time afterward,” he said.
“Just…sitting. Gripping the steering wheel like it could hold me together. Knowing I could walk up to your door and try to fight for you. That I could knock until you opened it, beg you to come with me. And maybe you would’ve.
Maybe you’d have said yes. Maybe we would’ve packed your suitcase, and we’d be living in some shoebox apartment in L.A.
, trying to make sense of the rest of it. ”
He paused, his thumb brushing slowly across the top of my hand. That’s when I realized—my fingers had found his. Sought him out without permission, without awareness. Just instinct.
“But if I had,” he whispered, “maybe you would’ve come with me. Maybe you would’ve stayed. But maybe you would’ve always wondered if you gave up a piece of yourself just to hold on to me.”
His words sank into me like soft rain into dry earth, like something my soul had been waiting to hear for years.
“I left,” he whispered. “But I didn’t stop loving you. Not for one day. And not because I wanted to let go. Because someone wise reminded me that real love isn’t a leash. It’s a lantern.”
My throat thickened.
“You needed space to find your own light,” he said, looking at me—not flinching, not looking away. “And I had to believe you’d find your way home.”
My heart splintered under the weight of it…because I remembered that version of myself. The girl who stood on the ed ge of everything, terrified that love would make her small. That it would claim too much. That she’d disappear into someone else’s story and forget how to write her own.
But this boy…this man, he hadn’t tried to pull me back. He’d stepped back instead. Lit the road behind me, not to lead me away from him, but to make sure I could see.
I opened my mouth to say something. Anything.
But then his phone buzzed.
It was soft. Just a quiet hum against the bench beside us. The kind of thing that would’ve been easy to ignore if we weren’t both sitting in the stillest, most suspended moment of the entire night.
Easton didn’t move.
He didn’t look at it. His eyes were still on me. Still holding my gaze like it mattered more than whatever name was lighting up that screen. Still holding my hand like it was a vow.
I might’ve pretended it hadn’t happened, might’ve written it off as nothing—if not for the second buzz.
Then the third.
His lips parted like he was about to apologize for the world intruding.
And then, without letting go of me, he finally picked it up.
He didn’t glance at the screen first. Just turned the phone over like it didn’t matter. Like it was routine.
I didn’t mean to look.
I really didn’t .
But I did.
And my stomach dropped, a slow, sinking spiral of nausea that felt like it started in my heart and dragged all the way down.
It was a photo. A nude one, so to speak. Of her.
Vanessa Blake .
Easton’s costar. Hollywood’s latest obsession.
All glossy lips and effortless curves and a sultry voice that probably came with its own theme music. Golden skin and bedroom lighting and the kind of confidence that only came from knowing exactly what your body did to men. Knowing they’d look. Knowing they’d want.
And she wasn’t just his costar. She was the one he’d been filming with for weeks now. The one who’d been interviewed beside him at those press junkets. The one who looked up at him with stars in her eyes and fingers on his arm in every single photo.
The one whose name had been linked to his in every damn headline since production started.
“Hollywood’s hottest new pairing?”
“Behind-the-scenes sparks—are Maddox and Blake heating up offscreen?”
“On-set lovers or real-life romance?”
I’d seen them.
Of course, I’d seen them.
Every link. Every photo. Every blinking, buzz-worthy reminder of why getting over Easton Maddox was not as simple as putting away an old hoodie or deleting a number from my phone.
And now, here she was.
On his phone.
Naked. Glowing. Posed like she was meant to be framed.
“Fuck,” Easton hissed, his whole body tensing. He went immediately to erase the picture, but it was too late.
I looked away, my chest squeezing so tight it was a miracle I could still breathe.
“I didn’t ask for that,” he said quickly.
I laughed, short and brittle. “You don’t have to explain it. It’s not like we’re…anything,” I added, waving my hand like I was erasing the last few days from existence. “We’re just hooking up for the week, remember? And it’s not like we have to do that.”
He growled, low and sharp, like he couldn’t stand the words even coming out of my mouth. “Natalie.”
“It’s fine,” I said, standing too quickly and absolutely loathing the weird mix of hurt and agony I was experiencing at that moment. My legs didn’t feel steady anymore. “She’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous. It’s not surprising.”
“That’s not the point,” he said, stepping toward me.
“No, the point is, she’s clearly comfortable enough to send you that, which probably means she thinks there’s a chance you'll appreciate it.”
“I don’t,” he said flatly, his tone carved from stone.
I forced a smile. “I’m not mad. Honestly. It’s…whatever.”
But my voice was too bright, too easy, and we both knew it. I was usually a confident girl, but something about seeing her perfect body had unraveled me in a way I hadn’t expected.
Easton’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?” I asked, retreating half a step.
He followed. “That thing where you pretend you don’t care. But you do. And I’m not letting you walk away with that look on your face…not after everything we just said. Not after what I told you.”
I stiffened, trying to protect something inside me that had already cracked. “I’m not walking away. I’m going inside.”
“No.”
His voice was low and rough, a warning and a plea. “You don’t get to walk away from me like this.”
Then his hand closed gently around my wrist. Not hard. Not controlling. Just grounding. Just… anchoring.
The fire behind us crackled and faded into the background as he stepped into my space, eyes locked on mine, his chest brushing mine with every uneven breath.
“You are mine, Natalie.”
My breath caught on the edge of his words.
“You always have been mine,” he said, voice a rasp of emotion and steel. “And I don’t care if a thousand women throw themselves at me. Strip down. Light themselves on fire. I wouldn’t look twice. Because I already found the only girl who’s ever mattered. ”
The world stopped spinning.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out…because what could I possibly say to that?
He reached for my other hand, lacing our fingers together like he was stitching us back together one piece at a time.
“Come with me.”
I shook my head, but my fingers were already threading through his, instinct stronger than logic.
“Easton—”
“I’m not doing this here,” he said. “Not with people watching. Not with your heart retreating from me like usual.”
Someone shouted our names behind us, a question tossed on the wind like confetti, but Easton didn’t glance back.
His grip on my hand tightened, his stride unwavering as he led me inside the bed-and-breakfast, up the creaky stairs, past the garland lining the railing.
He didn’t stop until we were inside our suite—our shared, complicated suite—and the door had clicked shut behind us like the sealing of a promise.
The air around us pulsed as he pushed me against the closed door.
“You need to hear this,” he murmured, eyes burning into mine. “I’ve kissed actresses in movies. Held their faces like I meant it. Had fans scream my name like it belonged to them. I’ve had directors say I’ve got insane chemistry with women I couldn’t pick out of a lineup now.”
He leaned closer, close enough that I could feel the words against my skin.
“But you?” His gaze dipped to my mouth, then back up to my eyes. “You’re tattooed on my memory. You’re not chemistry. You’re gravity. You are the standard. The girl every other girl has failed—and will always fail—to be.”
A single tear slipped down my cheek, hot and uninvited. I swiped at it, furious at myself for breaking.
“You think I’d risk what I want, what we could be…for a nude?” he asked, his voice sharp, eyes searing into mine. “A pi cture from someone I don’t even think about when I’m off set? No. That’s not me. That’s not who I am. That’s never who I’ve been with you.”
I tried to speak. But I couldn’t. The words were tangled and knotted behind my teeth.
“You think I don’t see what you’re doing?” he said, his voice quieter now, but no less intense. “You’re scared. You’re looking for any reason to bolt. To tell yourself you were right to leave.”
I flinched. It was too honest. Too exact.
He exhaled, like he hated calling me out but hated lying to me more.
He stepped even closer.
“But I won’t let you run this time. I’m not letting you go. I let you fly once because you needed to grow. But now you’re back. And this time, you’re mine .”
I was shaking. With anger. With heartbreak. With the terrifying truth of how much I wanted to believe him.
“How do I know it won’t happen?” I whispered, my voice thin and cracked. “How do I know that one kiss on set, one late night in a trailer won’t spark something you didn’t see coming?”
His answer was a vow.
“Because I’ve seen what life is like without you,” he said, pressing his lips gently to my forehead, like I was fragile porcelain he didn’t dare drop. “And I’ll never live it again.”
The wind blew against the double doors that led out to the balcony, rattling the glass. But we didn’t move.
We were fire and storm and everything in between.
“I don’t want anyone else,” he whispered, the words slipping past my skin, carving straight into bone.
“And no one else could ever touch what we had. What we still have. And if I have to tell you that every single day until you believe it, I will. I’ll break down every wall, every doubt, every scar you’ve tried to hide behind. ”
I looked up at him, heart hammering, vision blurred with the tears I refused to let fall. I searched for the lie. For the thing he wasn’t saying.
There wasn’t one.
There was just Easton. Just his truth.
Just the two of us, suspended in the kind of moment you don’t walk back from.
The last breath before the fall.
And this time…I wasn’t sure I wanted to catch myself.