Chapter 20 A Rush of Reality #2
Archie chuckles, and there’s not an ounce of humor in it.
“Clearly. But no matter. I was just dropping this script off.” He pops open the briefcase Sage hadn’t noticed in his hand and tugs out a thick stack of ring-bound papers.
“Given you seem intent on ignoring your emails, I thought I’d hand deliver it. They’re eager for a response, son.”
“Jesus, Dad, it’s three days after Christmas.”
“You know how the Americans are. Always eager to take advantage of an opportunity.” His eyes slide to Sage again, and she bristles at the implication.
She’s not even sure he’s purposefully making it, but it doesn’t matter.
That thing in her chest goes tight anyway, and if the way Theo is looking at her says anything, he knows it.
“You should go,” Theo says to his father. “I’ll call you about”—he lifts the script with a defeated air—“all of this.”
“Call Jan while you’re at it,” Archie instructs. He motions between Theo and Sage. “If this gets out after all of that vehement denial, it’s going to make Comic Con look like a breeze.”
“There won’t be any press,” Theo grits out.
Archie sighs. Suddenly, he looks tired. Sad, even. “Be realistic, Theo. It’ll save you so much disappointment.” And then he straightens. Smooths his hand down the lapels of his sports coat. Gives his son a nod.
“Sage,” he mutters to her. “Lovely to meet you.”
And then he walks out the door, leaving nothing but bitter silence in his wake.
“Fuck,” Theo swears under his breath. He turns to face her, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea he was coming over.”
Sage tries to gather her thoughts—she really does. But there’s a heaviness in the flat that wasn’t there before, and she’s having trouble paying attention to anything other than the fact that she feels like she shouldn’t be here.
“There won’t be any press,” Theo reiterates.
Sage wets her lips and curls the sleeves of his sweatshirt around her hands. “What …”
“I promise you,” Theo says as he begins to close the distance between them. “I’ve already talked to Jan, and I—”
“I don’t know that that is the most important takeaway from what just transpired,” Sage carefully interrupts.
She doesn’t even realize it until she’s said it, but it’s true.
There’s so much to what Archie just unloaded on them, and Sage isn’t even sure how to sort through it all when Theo is standing before her looking so … lost.
His brow furrows, his head cocking as he says, “What do you mean?”
“Did you miss the part about Americans and our penchant for taking advantage of people?”
His shoulders drop slightly. “He doesn’t think that about you,” he insists. “His wife—my mum—was American. He had thirty years of teasing her about it. He doesn’t even know you.”
And that … that might be the very point, Sage thinks. He doesn’t know Sage or her intentions, and after all of that, she’s not keen to sit down and discuss it with him.
She’s not even sure she’d have anything to say.
Figure out the rest seemed like a Future Sage and Theo problem. Not a “one day after they land” problem. But it’s like his dad came in and threw cold water on them, startling them both awake from whatever dream they’d extended from Skye.
Sage swallows, her eyes finding the ceiling, and blinks hard. Suddenly, her throat feels tight.
She’d thought Archie had known she was coming. Why didn’t Theo …
“Why didn’t you tell him it was me you were bringing?”
Theo runs a hand through his hair as he lets out a frustrated breath. “Because I knew that’s exactly how he’d react.” He moves to the kitchen island and drops the stack of papers there. “He’d make it a thing, and it doesn’t have to be one.”
It does, though, Sage wants to argue.
It is.
“Theo. Maybe we should—”
Talk about it is what she plans to say. But Theo whispers a soft hey, like he knows she’s on the precipice of a spiral. He steps into her space, his hands warm as they take hers. “I already got it all worked out with Jan. It’s going to be fine. I promise.”
The words building in her throat—the ones that say it isn’t just about New Year’s Eve, but everything else—won’t come. Not when Theo’s gazing down at her with those bright eyes that never seem to be able to mask what he’s really feeling.
“Trust me,” he says, the hope in his voice reflected in his irises.
She wants to trust him. She does trust him.
“Okay,” she breathes.
He squeezes her hands and nods toward the kitchen. “I have to go to a fitting in about an hour and a half, but … how does breakfast sound? I can make a fry-up?”
He’s doing that thing he does—compartmentalizing the messy. Tucking away the grief and the tangles.
She shouldn’t let him.
But suddenly, everything feels so fragile, and she doesn’t want to be the one to make the wrong move.
To shatter it.
“Sounds great,” she says, and she hopes he can’t hear the uncertainty in her voice. “How can I help?”
theosharpeswife rewatching THAT SCENE in Legends.
@theosharpe, I would die for you
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maddiesgotsnacks THE THIGHS
legendaryfanfic ugh I miss himmmmm. Why hasn’t he posted anything lately?!
hotpotato @legendaryfanfic because y’all literally bullied a friend of his???
legendaryfanfic @hotpotato omfg they weren’t even friends she literally SAID she had just met him. We’re just protective! people use celebrities all the time!
Dec 29
Theo’s been fiddling with his cuff links—Bulgari, yellow gold with black onyx—for the last fifteen minutes.
They’re in the back of a nondescript black SUV with a posh leather interior, and though he looks utterly relaxed in his black, single-breasted Savile Row dinner suit—long legs sprawled out in front of him, jacket unbuttoned to accommodate his lounging—his fiddling gives him away.
“Do you get nervous for these?” Sage asks, drawing his attention from the rain-slicked, double-tinted window. They’re crawling through traffic, the city alive with New Year’s Eve fervor despite the wet cold.
“Not really,” he admits. He picks at the cuff link again, and Sage raises her brows as she tracks the motion. He follows her gaze down, and flashes her a sheepish smile. “Ah. I guess tonight’s a little different. I just … want it to go well.”
He looks at her from beneath his lashes, and with his hair styled to look tousled in nearly the exact same way Sage knows it looks when he just wakes up, the effect is absolutely devastating.
She glances at the seat in front of her, where Jan the publicist is typing away on her phone, the incessant clicking a strange sort of backing to the low music the driver has put on.
She’s been trying to give them the illusion of privacy, and Sage appreciates it, especially as she reaches for Theo’s wrist and squeezes, a silent reassurance.
“Feeling all right?” he asks.
He’s been doing this quite a bit—checking in with her. Reiterating the plan. Running through the logistics just one more time so she won’t be surprised. By the time they met Jan in the entryway of his flat to go through the run of show for the evening, Sage could’ve recited it word for word.
They haven’t talked about Archie’s visit. She’d gone to shower after their breakfast and when she’d come back, Theo had left for his stylist appointment and the script was gone with him.
But the aftertaste is still there.
It followed them to the Indian restaurant in Shoreditch and on the double-decker tour bus she forced him on, disguises firmly in place. It snuck over her shoulder in front of Big Ben and hid in the courtyard of Saint Dunstan in the East.
It’s left a cloud hovering over them these last few days, and no matter how much she knows Theo wants to ignore it, she’s not sure how much longer they can.
Figure out the rest as it comes, he’d said.
Well, it had come. Archie had all but brought it through Theo’s front door three days ago, and yet … here they are, still pretending reality isn’t breathing down their necks.
It makes tonight feel like a strange sort of test.
She wonders if that’s why Theo looks like it’s his first red carpet.
“Yeah,” she finally answers. “Feeling fine.”
He slides his wrist from her hold so he can interlace their fingers together, his thumb taking its usual path, up and down the side of hers.
For a long moment, he simply takes her in, his eyes moving from her curled hair to her dark-red painted lips to each and every place the champagne chain mail dress she’d found at Harrods hugs her beneath her wool topcoat.
She’d dubbed the cost yet another Future Sage problem—a new habit, it seems. She knows she’s going to regret it when her credit card statement rolls around, but for tonight, it feels worth it.
Especially when Theo leans in, his long, lithe figure stretching across the seat until his lips are nestled against her ear, and murmurs, “You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
Her cheeks heat, goose bumps pricking her skin as he places a light kiss to the hinge of her jaw. There’s a hint of a smirk on his face as he pulls back, as if he knows just how affected she is.
Sage reaches for nonchalance and falls short of it by a mile as she says, “High praise, given you once shared a red carpet with Natalie Portman.”
Theo’s smirk only grows as he settles back in his seat, her hand still firmly clasped in his. He presses his mouth to the back of it, lips soft, stare heated. “Remember that time you claimed you didn’t Internet stalk me?”
“It was Natalie I was looking into.”
“Right, right.” He contemplates that for a moment, then shrugs. “Can’t blame you for that, honestly.”
“Five minutes out,” Jan calls from the front. There’s a pause, and then her clacking picks right back up.
“Thanks, Jan,” Theo says. He gives Sage’s hand a final squeeze before he releases it, his spine straightening as he smooths his hands down the front of his jacket.