Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Farley
Isat on the edge of the bed and listened to the chaos outside.
Muffled voices. Camera shutters. Someone—Gladys, I think—was shouting about trespassing laws. And underneath it all, a silence where Samuel should have been.
I’d told him to go, that his life was a circus. I’d watched his face crumble and done nothing to stop it.
And now I was alone, which was exactly what I’d wanted when I came to this mountain. Solitude. Peace. Freedom from the complications of caring about anyone.
It tasted like ash in my mouth.
A soft knock on the bedroom door. Not Samuel—he wouldn’t knock. Hopefully not Ollie—I’d rather set myself on fire. than talk to him.
“Farley?” Gladys’s voice, gentler than I’d ever heard it. “Can I come in?”
I didn’t answer, but she came in anyway.
She settled onto the bed beside me, and for a long moment, neither of us spoke. Outside, someone called Samuel’s name again. I flinched.
“That ex of yours is gone,” she said finally. “I told him if I saw his face on my property again, I’d introduce him to my shotgun. He believed me.”
“Good.”
“That agent woman is still here. She’s on her phone, talking about ‘damage control.’” Gladys made quotation marks with her fingers, her tone dripping with disdain. “Horrible woman. No soul behind her eyes.”
“That sounds like her.”
“And Samuel...” She paused. “Samuel is still in the living room. He won’t leave.”
My chest tightened. “I told him to go.”
“I know. I heard.” She turned to look at me, her weathered face thoughtful. “I also heard what he said to that agent. After you closed the door.”
“What did he say?”
“After you left, Sabrina told him this was his chance. Said the drama of a breakup would play even better than the romance. Suggested he do a tearful interview about heartbreak in the mountains—really milk it for the sympathy angle.” Gladys’s jaw tightened. “You know what he said?”
I shook my head.
“He said, ‘I would rather never work again than let you turn the best thing that’s ever happened to me into content.’ Then he told her if she contacted any outlet about you—even hinted at your name—he’d sue her into the ground and make sure she never represented anyone in this industry again.
” Gladys’s eyes were bright. “That boy meant it, Farley. I’ve seen a lot of people make threats.
That wasn’t a threat. That was a promise. ”
I stared at her. “He said that?”
“Word for word. I was impressed.” She patted my knee. “That boy stood between you and her like he was ready to take a bullet. When’s the last time someone did that for you?”
I thought about Ollie. How every time I’d needed defending, he’d looked the other way. He was too concerned with his own comfort to rock any boats.
“Never,” I admitted. “No one’s ever...”
“That’s what I thought.” Gladys stood up, smoothing her flannel shirt.
“Now, I’m not going to tell you what to do.
You’re a grown man, and I’m just the lady who rents you a cabin.
But I will say this: that circus out there?
It’s not Samuel’s fault. He didn’t invite them.
He didn’t want them. And the second they showed up, his first instinct wasn’t to protect his career or his image. It was to protect you.”
She walked to the door, then paused.
“The cat is sitting on his lap right now. She won’t leave him alone.” A small smile. “That cat’s never wrong about people, Farley. Not once in all the years I’ve known her.”
She left, closing the door softly behind her.
I sat there, her words echoing in my head.
His first instinct was to protect you.
That cat’s never wrong about people.
I thought about last night. About the way Samuel had looked at me, the way he’d held me, the way he’d made me feel seen in a way I hadn’t felt in years. Maybe ever.
This morning, making breakfast together, moving around each other like we’d been doing it for years.
I thought about the look on his face when I’d called his life a circus. Like I’d taken everything we’d built and smashed it on the floor.
And I thought about Ollie—showing up the moment I was happy with someone else, trying to poison what I had with Samuel, framing it as concern when it was really just jealousy and control.
Ollie had seen the video and wanted to claim me. Most likely because of his fragile ego. Samuel had seen photographers invade our privacy and stepped in front of me like a shield.
The difference was so stark it was almost laughable.
I stood up. Walked to the window. Twitched the curtain aside.
The yard was still full of photographers, but they’d been pushed back to the tree line. And there walking toward the crowd—
Samuel.
My heart stopped.
He wasn’t running from them, or hiding. He was walking directly toward the wall of cameras, his shoulders squared, his chin lifted.
What the hell was he doing?
I pressed closer to the window, my breath fogging the glass.
The photographers went wild. Flashes exploded. Microphones thrust forward. A dozen voices shouting questions at once.
Samuel held up a hand, and—impossibly—they quieted.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The window was too thick, the distance too far. But I could see his face, calm and determined, as he spoke directly into the cameras.
Sabrina appeared at the edge of the crowd, her phone raised, her expression shifting from horror to calculation. She tried to approach Samuel, but Gladys materialized and blocked her path.
I needed to know what he was saying. I needed to—
I ran out of the bedroom, through the living room, and yanked open the front door.
Samuel’s voice carried across the yard, clear and steady.
“—not a publicity stunt. It’s not a love triangle.
And it’s not something my agent cooked up for engagement metrics.
” He took a breath. “The man in that video is someone I care about. Someone I’m falling in love with.
And I’m not going to stand here and pretend otherwise just because it makes better copy for your tabloids. ”
The cameras clicked frantically. Someone shouted a question about his contract.
“I don’t care about the contract,” Samuel said.
“I don’t give a damn about the network or the ratings or whether this helps or hurts my career.
All I care about is him. And if being with him means losing all of this,”—he gestured at the cameras, the chaos, the circus—"then fine. Take it. I’d rather have him. "
I couldn’t breathe.
“His name is Farley,” Samuel continued, and something in his voice cracked.
“Farley Davenport. He’s brilliant and prickly and he makes lists about everything and he can’t admit when he’s scared, so he pushes people away instead.
And just now, he pushed me away, and I understand why—this is overwhelming, and I brought this chaos into his life without meaning to. But I need him to know...”
He turned, scanning the cabin, and his eyes found me standing in the doorway.
“I need you to know,” he said, speaking directly to me now, the cameras be damned. “This isn’t a circus to me. You’re not a story or a scandal or content for someone’s feed. You’re the first real thing I’ve had in years. And I would rather lose everything else than lose you.”
The photographers were going insane, flashes everywhere.
I didn’t care about any of it.
I walked off the porch. Across the yard. Through the gauntlet of cameras and questions and strangers who wanted pieces of us.
Samuel watched me come, his expression raw, hopeful, terrified.
I stopped in front of him. The entire world was watching, and I didn’t care.
“You’re an idiot,” I said.
His face fell. “Farley—”
“You just told the entire world you’re falling in love with me.” My voice was shaking. “On camera. Permanently. You can’t take that back.”
“I don’t want to take it back.”
“Your career—”
“Is not more important than you.” He reached out, tentative, and took my hand. “Nothing is more important than you.”
I looked at our joined hands. At the cameras still clicking. Gladys was on the porch now, watching with a satisfied smile. At his slimy agent, who looked like she’d swallowed a lemon.
Then I looked at Samuel. At his beautiful face and his earnest eyes and the way he was looking at me like I was worth sacrificing everything for.
“I’m terrified,” I admitted.
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to do this. The cameras, the attention, the—”
“We’ll figure it out together.”
“You said you’re falling in love with me.”
“I am.” He squeezed my hand. “I have been since you showed up at my cabin.” He lifted his free hand to cup my face. “Stay. Please. Not because I’m asking you to be part of my circus—but because I’m asking you to be part of my life.”
The cameras clicked.
I kissed him.
Not a careful kiss. Not a private kiss. A kiss that was going to be on every tabloid cover within 24 hours, a kiss that would trend on social media for days, a kiss that said yes, I love you too, and I choose this and I choose you.
Samuel made a sound against my mouth—relief and joy and something that might have been a sob—and kissed me back with everything he had.
The photographers went absolutely berserk.
I didn’t care.
Let them watch, and take their pictures. Let the whole world see.
This was real. And I wasn’t hiding from it anymore.
When we finally broke apart, both of us breathing hard, Samuel rested his forehead against mine.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a yes.” I pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. “I love you too, by the way. In case that wasn’t clear.”
His smile was incandescent. “It was pretty clear. But I’m glad you said it.”
“I’m going to need you to fire Sabrina.”
“Already done. In my head. Officially happening as soon as we go back inside.”
“And we’re going to have to figure out... logistics. Geography. How to make this work when you live in LA and I live in New York.”
“We will.” He kissed me again, softer this time. “Later. Right now, I just want to enjoy this.”
“This” being the fact that we were standing in the middle of a media circus, holding hands, having just declared our love for each other in front of a hundred cameras.
It should have been overwhelming. It should have sent me running back to my room to hide under the covers.
Instead, I just felt... happy. Terrified and overwhelmed and completely uncertain about the future—but happy.
“Come on,” I said, tugging his hand. “Let’s go inside before Gladys actually shoots someone.”
“Good call.”
We walked back toward the cabin together, hand in hand, ignoring the shouted questions and the clicking cameras and the chaos that would probably follow us for weeks.
On the porch, Gladys was grinning.
“Thank you,” I told her. “For everything.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank the cat.” She nodded toward the window, where Purrsephone was watching us with her mismatched eyes, looking insufferably pleased with herself. “I bet she’s what brought you two together.”
Samuel laughed. “We should get her an agent. She’s clearly got a talent for matchmaking.”
“She’s got a talent for meddling,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“Same result.”
Somehow, Samuel’s agent beat us inside. Sabrina was on her phone, but she looked up as we entered. Her expression was calculating, already spinning.
“Samuel, that was incredible. The footage is already everywhere. If we can—”
“You’re fired,” Samuel said pleasantly.
“Excuse me?”
“Fired. As in, you no longer represent me. As in, please leave this cabin and don’t contact me again.” He smiled. “I’ll have my lawyer send the paperwork.”
Sabrina’s face went through several colors. “You can’t fire me. I made you.”
“You exploited me. There’s a difference.” He nodded toward the door. “Goodbye, Sabrina.”
“You ungrateful son of a bitch!” A lock of peroxide blonde hair fell over her eyes. Then she left, slamming the door behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.
The cabin was finally blissfully quiet.
Purrsephone jumped down from the windowsill and wound between our ankles, purring loud enough to be heard across the room.
“So,” Samuel said, pulling me close. “What now?”
“Now,” I said, “we figure out the rest of our lives.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It does.” I kissed him. “But I think we’ll be okay.”