Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
After Jamie took Brinton home, he sat on his couch, hunched over his notebook, reworking a verse for a new song. Something to crystalize his prismatic feelings for Brinton. He wanted to share a lot more with her. He wanted to be hers.
Holy shit.
Something unnamable but undeniable swirled in his gut and flooded him with endorphins.
He felt it when he held her and every time he looked into her eyes.
He felt it down to his bones. She’d wanted to take things slow, which he was more than happy to do, but he didn’t want her to leave Iris next week without knowing that he wanted to be together. Like, official.
They still had to figure out how to do that strategically, of course, but he’d solve that too.
There was a knock at the door. For a moment, Jamie’s excitement got the best of him; was it Brinton?
He’d only left her an hour ago, but he wouldn’t turn down a few more together.
He opened the door to find Kendall smiling wryly, an open bottle of champagne in hand.
She wore a crisp white denim corset top and matching mini skirt that only looked angelic.
“Happy birthday, Mr. Crawford,” she purred in her best Marilyn Monroe homage. She pushed past him and beelined for the wet bar, which was built into a stone wall near the kitchen. The champagne bottle clanked on the distressed wood countertop as she rifled through cabinets.
He dragged a hand down his jaw. She always had a way with timing. “Ken, come on. It’s late, and I’ve got an early morning.”
Kendall ignored him and filled two champagne flutes, pouring until fizz gushed over the rim. “I thought I was being fashionably late, but I had to find out from Tucker Hayward—who you know I hate—that you’d already left your own birthday party. And without getting the very best gift of all?”
She met him at the front door, her black-heeled boots clomping across the hardwood, and pushed the glass into his chest. Jamie set it on an end table.
Kendall clicked her tongue, then drained her glass in a single swoop. “C’mon, Jamie. This is our tradition. We both know you’re not one to change.”
Change. Hadn’t that been what all these months were about? He remembered what Brinton had said a few days ago in his father’s recording studio.
Everyone has a chance at redemption.
Brinton believed in him, and he wanted to be a better version of himself, for her.
In this moment, he needed to own up that it was his own fault that he became known as the Heartbreak Prince. Not Kendall’s, or his team’s, or the media’s, or whatever bullshit excuse he’d made over the years. Kendall had opened her heart to him, and he left her hollow.
He needed to make this right.
“Let’s get to unwrapping your present, shall we?” As she popped brass buttons down the front of her top, Jamie rested his hands on her shoulders to stop her.
“Kendall, this part of our lives…It’s in the past.”
He exhaled deeply, still holding her shoulders steady. “I’ve met someone who I really care about. So this can’t happen anymore.”
Jamie dropped his hands. She stumbled backward, clutching her chest like, once again, he’d hollowed her out.
Her eyes were wide and glassy. “The journalist?”
He nodded. “Brinton.”
“Your daddy know?” Her typically syrupy voice sounded pinched, as if the oxygen couldn’t come fast enough.
Jamie considered lying. Kendall and his father were clearly a united front. But like with the ghostwriting and the Heartbreak Prince persona, he was done carrying that weight.
“No,” he admitted. “And I’d like the chance to tell him.”
She slipped her phone from her back skirt pocket, then flipped the screen to show she’d highlighted Jamie Sr.’s number in her Contacts. She was one tap away from torching Jamie’s fresh start. His redemption.
“It don’t gotta be like this,” Jamie pleaded, scrambling for a few spare moments to think.
“I’m sure he’d disagree,” she snapped. But there was something more than anger in her eyes.
A flicker of pain. It was probably always there, but he’d chosen to ignore it.
Like the lies he’d told, it was easier in the moment than to do the right thing.
He stepped toward her. “I owe you an apology. I’ve owed it to you for a long time.
I thought, if we kept this casual thing going, somehow it’d make up for the fact that I wasn’t brave enough to tell you the truth.
I should’ve been more careful with your heart when we were together, and I regret that I wasn’t. ”
She stared at him for a few tortuous seconds, thumb hovering over the call button. Then, miraculously, she slipped the phone back into her pocket. Leaning on her heels, she roughly swiped a thick black mascara tear that streaked her reddened cheek.
“Why now?” she demanded. “All this time, you’ve been sitting on this revelation? You met somebody else, and then—”
“Look,” he started. “I fucked up, and I’m trying to be better. About a lot of things. I’ve never really been with somebody, but I want to try. I need to. And I want that for you too.”
“So why not me?” She laughed bitterly. “What didn’t I do? Or say. Or give? We were so good together, things were—we could have made it, you know? The way I felt about you was real.”
Jamie shook his head, unsure of what to say. “Do you really believe that though? With our teams telling us what to say, where to go. It wouldn’t have…I couldn’t give that to you.”
Her lips parted like she wanted to speak, but she didn’t.
“Kendall, I’m truly sorry.”
Unexpectedly, she stepped forward, arms slipping beneath his.
She gripped his shoulder blades. “Deep down, I knew it too,” she rasped into his chest. “It’s just that, I wanted it to be real.
So fucking bad. And I’ve wanted to hear you say you’re sorry for so long.
It’s been burning me up inside. I was so angry.
But—I wanna move on. I think I needed to hear you say it. ”
He let her cry in his arms, let her feel what she needed to feel, until they said their good-byes and her waiting SUV’s taillights faded into the dust.