Chapter 4
Jonas
“C’mon, slowpoke,” Emma says with a bright smile two days after I woke up hungover on her deck. “You’re almost there. And it’s adorable .”
She’s maybe ten feet ahead of me on a path through a rainforest. We’ve seen parrots and cuckoos and iguanas and tamarins. I helped her up when she tripped over a massive root. She pulled me out of a spider web and promised not to tell anyone about the way I shrieked and danced.
Clearly, you’ve never had an on-set dance instructor for spider web extraction , she said. I’ll forever judge Razzle Dazzle for that oversight .
It was such a dry, spot-on delivery that I laughed longer and harder than I thought I was capable of this week.
And now, we’re apparently almost to our destination, where we’ll eat the picnic the resort staff fixed for us.
Didn’t see myself enjoying my time in Fiji when I left home. I just wanted to be away from the true-but-unflattering press coverage and all of the questions that came with it.
Instead, I found a mission to make something good out of the crap hole that I was in, and here we are.
For the first time in months, I feel like myself.
Happy. Optimistic about the future again, even if it’s small optimism.
Big optimism will probably take some time.
I might even be ready to take a call from my mother sometime in the next day or so. But I’ll still likely start with Begonia. Or maybe Hayes. He’s less irritable now that he gets sunshine twenty-four seven with her in his life.
“I’m tired.” I plop down on the ground five feet from Emma. “We should stop and eat here.”
Her mouth forms a perfect O . She’s in a bucket hat with her blond hair pulled up under it—I assume the hairstyle and the light pink tank top are measures against the heat—and she’s also in at least a gallon of sunscreen.
I know because it took an extra half hour for her to be ready to go while she slathered more and more on.
“ Oh my god .” She points at something in front of her. “It’s right there .”
I grin.
She does a double take, and then she laughs.
“Okay, okay, I’ll dig deep.” I moan and groan and make a show of trying to get off the ground. “I’ll find the energy to make it another seventy-four miles.”
“How does your family tolerate you?”
“Why do you think they keep me buried in movie scripts and never visit me on set?”
She laughs again.
This is definitely the reason I’m supposed to be here.
To be her friend.
Two days of hanging out with Emma, and she’s a different person.
She’s happy . There are still moments of lingering sadness—that look on her face is haunting sometimes—but I know a few good jokes. I’ve pulled her out of it whenever I can.
Now, though, she’s trying to pull me. “C’mon,” she says, holding out a hand. “Let me get you up.”
Her fingers are long and slender, much like the rest of her. When I take her hand and she tugs, there’s not a lot of heft behind it.
I act like there is, leaping to my feet like she has the power to throw me over her shoulder. “Jeez. Watch it with those muscles.”
She rolls her eyes with a smile. “If you think my brother hasn’t tried that on me ten million times, you’re mistaken.”
“Brothers are the worst.”
“ Older brothers are the—no, they’re the best. Except on occasion.”
And there go the clouds in her expression again.
I don’t know her well. We’ve stuck to superficial topics the past few days.
But those clouds feel wrong on her.
“Whoa. Hey, Emma, did you know there’s an old village right there? Where did that come from?” I say, and I do it in my best Ryan Reynolds impression for fun. Cracked her up yesterday.
She smiles again, but it’s a small smile.
Still have work to do to get that full-force smile back. It disappears every time she talks about her brother. Or her friends.
We haven’t touched her ex beyond the few things she said about him that first morning.
I don’t want to know what that would do to her expression.
I watched the video again a few times the night after we met, and I don’t like him.
Can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now. She almost married him.
“Oh, gosh,” she says lightly, “it must’ve sprang up from nothing just because it knew we were here and wanted to impress us.”
“Is it sprang or sprung ?”
“No idea. I’m an accountant who learned grammar from Razzle Dazzle films.”
“You did?”
“ No .” She laughs, a bigger laugh this time, and heads toward the first of five bures that we can see in the small clearing on the hillside.
The straw huts are all the same size, each with a plaque in front of it.
Below are the brilliant green waters off the beach, complete with a line where the water turns a deep, deep blue and goes on forever with just a couple small islands dotting the horizon.
A breeze rustles through the jungle, carrying more bird songs with it. A monkey answers. And the solitude of where we are hits me.
I like my family. I don’t mind the press most days. Have a job I love.
Except recently.
“I should move here,” I hear myself murmur.
“To this village?”
I glance over at the five bures on either side of a dirt path cut into the clearing on the hillside. Start calculating.
One grass hut for a kitchen.
One for guests.
One for a massage room.
One for me.
One for a gathering room where my guests and I can eat inside when the storms come in, tell stories, act out old plays like I used to make Hayes do with me when we were kids.
And then I shake my head, internally laughing at myself.
Emma lifts her pale brows at me.
Just thinking about how I expect five houses and an entire village for myself isn’t something I intend to admit out loud.
And then I remember I didn’t even think about where my normal security detail would live.
Though at the moment, I sincerely wish I didn’t need a security detail.
They’re great people. Don’t get me wrong.
But being here solo? Not needing protection from unfortunately real threats?
This is nice.
I like it.
“Not big enough for you?” she asks.
I blush.
My cheeks actually burn with embarrassment. “Not sure I deserve someplace this beautiful as my home base,” I improvise.
She looks back at the ocean. “I live somewhere just as beautiful for different reasons.”
“Where’s that?”
“Rocky Mountains.”
“Ah, yes. The Rockies. Shot a few films there.”
“You don’t say.”
“I’ve also gone snowboarding and climbing and rafting.”
“Yes, I saw those movies too.”
“You’ve seen them all, haven’t you?”
“Multiple times. My friends and I always try to figure out when you’re using stunt doubles for those dangerous, dangerous bunny hills.”
“I don’t have stunt doubles,” I mutter.
She grins. “I’d hope not. That movie where you fell for your ski instructor? We were well aware you saved her on the bunny hill and not the double black diamond you all acted like it was. That’s the only one we’ve never watched twice.”
“I can ski bigger hills too.”
Her face freezes, undoubtedly at my suddenly testy tone. “Oh, don’t be mad. Please don’t be mad. I was teasing. I’m sure you enjoy yourself when you’re not working too.”
Everything I know how to do, I learned for a role in one of my family’s films.
Enjoyed it all. Don’t get me wrong. If this movie star thing has completely fallen apart, I have a solid basis to learn whatever skill I want to do next.
But I don’t know who I’d be or what I’d do if I hadn’t been born as a third generation heir to the Razzle Dazzle film and amusement park empire.
I loop my arm around her neck and steer her back into the village. “Not mad. Just a lot on my brain.”
“Scandal and horrid publicity will do that to a person.”
Doesn’t matter how lightly she says it, I know it’s bothering her too.
We’re very different. Different worlds. Different goals, I assume, from a few hints that she’s dropped. Different lives ahead of us.
But in this moment, we’re both in a pile of shit in our personal lives, blasted all over the world by social media and the press.
“So if owning a Fijian village is my dream house, what’s yours?” I ask while we casually stroll closer to the first bure, my arm still draped around her.
Her nose wrinkles. “I—I don’t know anymore.”
She’s not going totally sad, so I give her a little prod. “Go on.”
“When I was little, I wanted to grow up and live in my friend Sabrina’s grandparents’ house. It’s in one of the fancier neighborhoods in town. A little more land. Creaky wooden floors. Big kitchen with the most amazing view of the mountains. And we had a treehouse there. But?—”
The rainclouds take over her expression again as she cuts herself off.
I should drop it.
This is about fun. No stress.
“But?” I prompt instead.
“My—ex—is her cousin. It’s technically his grandparents’ house too.”
Eject. Mayday. Abort mission . “Ah, look.” I point to a straw-roofed structure that doesn’t quite fit. “An ancient picnic table in an ancient gazebo. It’s a sign from the heavens. We’re supposed to eat.”
The sadness clears about eighty percent of the way, and I’m reasonably certain that’s a real smile she gives me as she shakes her head. “Clearly a sign from the heavens,” she agrees.
Honestly?
Watching her be happy—helping her be happy—is helping me look on the bright side in my own life again.
Everything will be okay.
I can be okay.
We set up our picnic lunch, but since we have a blanket provided by the resort in the backpack I’m carrying, Emma insists we sit on the ground.
Unlike the morning we met, when both of us could barely stomach dry toast and ginger ale, she’s happily diving into pineapple, mango and passion fruit salad. She helps me eat the fish soup, and she steals more of the cassava bread than she lets me have.
We’re about to dig into dessert when Emma cuts herself off with a squeak.
Except that’s not Emma.
That’s a chicken crossing the dirt path and clucking her way toward us.
“Oooh, chickens ,” she breathes.
“I didn’t think there were chickens on this island.”
“Why wouldn’t there be?”