Chapter 25 Emmy
Chapter 25
Permission to redo my submission for the hugging contest?
Emmy
IT’S BECOMING PRETTY obvious that Jason can cook. The salmon filets are on a maple plank on the grill outside, and I’m showing Mattie how to pop the stems off the fresh green beans. A mix of quinoa and heaven is simmering on the stove. And I’m barely holding it together.
“Oops! Just pinch off the top. Solo esta parte. ” I rescue half a bean Mattie threw into the trash and show him the stem.
Leah has gone home, and it’s just the three of us making dinner together. It would be fair to say I’ve fantasized about having dinner with Jason Connor at least two hundred times, but it was never like this, with his little boy on my lap, Jason going back and forth between the grill and the stove, and Alexa spinning a mix of Gipsy Kings and what Jason calls “Italian cooking music.” He started with a playlist he called Aerosmith, but Louder but I put a stop to that.
I wonder what Peyton is doing right now? If she were here, what would she be doing? Popping beans with Mattie instead of me? Stuffing down preteen angst around the fact that I’m dating? Entertaining us all with her never-ending chatter? And how would Jason be with her? Could he, eventually, love my daughter?
But I’m being ridiculous. Peyton is super lovable. Of course Jason would fall in love with her! I’m 100 percent sure of it.
No, that’s a lie. I’ve never trusted a man enough to let him try. I didn’t even trust her own father.
“Okay, I think we’re done!” The last bean is popped, and I set Mattie’s feet on the floor and dump the contents of the colander into the steamer. The guitar music is going crazy, and it’s got my head in a flurry along with the two glasses of wine I’ve had. As Jason blows through the kitchen and stirs the quinoa, he dances and sings along to the unintelligible Gipsy Kings lyrics. He grabs my hand and twirls me with a casual familiarity I’m not sure I’ve earned, even after spending all day with him.
I will say that I think I pulled off my goal of helping myself without hurting Jason. Nothing we posted today is even remotely sexy, but my fans are loving it and Jason’s getting less hate. Besides, it was fun. A lot of fun.
Jason releases my hand and heads to the kitchen, giving me a chance to check my notifications. The likes continue ticking up, and we made The Harper Rose Show , which is sure to launch our posts even further.
Then I read a text from my agent:
Jill: The videos are fun, Emmy, but kind of blah. Give us something juicy, will you? First place is calling!
What? Hells no!
I delete the text and chase the rock in my throat with a gulp of wine.
I don’t want to believe she’s right, but Jill’s been in this business way longer than I have. How much damage would it do if I just posted one photo? Something suggestive, but tasteful? Nineties-rom-com-level heat? Monet Water Lilies –level innuendo?
“Wash your hands, Mattie,” Jason calls, sliding the filets onto plates. The quinoa is next. Then the steamed beans. Before I know it, I find myself snuggled into this little family for dinner. It’s delicious in more ways than one. Mattie says something in Spanish—something to do with explosions, I think—and throws a steamed bean on the floor.
“Mattie, stop throwing your food, please,” Jason says.
Another bean hits the floor. Then a third. Jason shoots me an apologetic look. “He always does this. I don’t know how to handle it.”
I reach over and try a trick that always worked with Peyton. One by one, I collect his beans and arrange them into letters spelling his name. “ ?Que dice eso? ” I point. “It says Mattie.”
Mattie and Jason exchange the same shocked meme face. It’s freaking adorable. Mattie picks up a bean from the letter E and eats it. Then another. And another.
“I’m afraid to make any sudden moves,” Jason whispers, sitting frozen in his seat. “What witchcraft was that?”
I take a bite of salmon. “Presentation is everything.”
When dinner is over, I offer to clean up the kitchen while Jason gets Mattie to bed. I load up the dishwasher expertly (one of my talents, according to our Venn diagram) and wipe the counters and table down with a fierceness that almost hides how nervous I am about what comes next. When the kid’s asleep, what do the grown-ups do?
I finish my job and head out to the pool deck. The sun is a dark stripe of orange glowing on the horizon, and it’s chilly enough that I have to go back inside for my hoodie—I’m used to Augusts that are hot and humid deep into the night. The warm water from the Jacuzzi swirls around my bare legs. It’s not long before Jason appears at my side. He rolls up the cuffs of his pants, and his feet slip into the water next to mine.
“Is he down?” I ask.
“For the count. We’re finally alone. Well—except for Possessed Baby.” He shoots a glance at Mattie’s doll lying on her side on a pool lounger.
The orange stripe disappears, heaved over the horizon by an explosion of stars. The sound of the ocean permeates every cell in my body. I’m alone with Jason Connor, on his patio, at his house, and the world is a tinderbox ready to ignite.
Jason’s hand falls over mine where it clings to the edge of the Jacuzzi. I open my fingers and let his entwine them. I know that when I lift my head, he’ll be there, ready. It’s not a surprise. I know his past. I’ll be just one more of many. Why do I want more than that? Who do I think I am?
When I raise my head, he’s looking at me, waiting with that effortlessly gorgeous face I fell in love with through screens so many times. So what if this isn’t perfect? So what if it’s only for a weekend? I’m with Jason Connor. Isn’t that enough?
This time I’m the one who leans in for the kiss.
My dashboard lights dance like the spinning stars above us. All my insides ignite with the slow movement of our mouths. He tastes like all my dreams come to life. I want so much for this to be more than a fling.
And if it isn’t, I want it anyway.
I slip into the water, fully dressed, and a surprised laugh escapes him as I pull him in with me. Together we sink to our chests, enveloped by shockingly hot water. My body against his is too eager; it tells him too much. How desperately I want him. How much more this means to me than to him.
He takes off my smartwatch and sets it to the side, brushes the hair out of my face, and smiles in a move so tender that my brow furrows. He doesn’t have to do that. He’s already got me.
“Jason…”
His kiss cuts me off, soft and restrained. Under the water, I cling tightly to his shirt, like otherwise I might get dragged down to the bottom by my own demons. “What?” he whispers into my mouth.
“What were you going to say to me? During the contest?”
He stiffens and then pats my arms and pulls away. The disconnect is jarring. I can barely see his face in the dim light as he sinks down onto the hot tub seat.
“Emmy, I’m not a good guy. You know that, right?”
What the hells? I lower myself onto the seat across from him. Now we are just two people sitting, fully clothed, in a hot tub. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“You don’t understand. Everything I touch turns to shit. I don’t want to drag you down with me.”
Actually, everything Jason Connor has done since I’ve met him has helped propel me skyward. What he’s saying sounds like an excuse. My heart gives a little shudder. “Do you… not want to be with me?”
“That’s not it, of course not!” He shakes his head, studying me in a way that suddenly makes me self-conscious. “What do you want, Emmy Ellison? What is it you really want?”
It’s that same question—the one I hate, the one I don’t have a real answer to. Right now, I want Jason Connor to have the same feelings I do, to want me the way I want him, and not just for a night. I want the bar scene to be magically rewritten so I don’t have it hanging over my head. I want to forget about bestseller lists and ad clicks and what might send the Twitterverse into its latest temper tantrum. And, more than all that, I want the world to fold up and then unfold itself in a way that lets me have it all: fame, fortune, glamour, glitz, cozy dinners, kid cuddles, and all the people I love in one place.
But I can’t tell him any of that. Besides, Jason has something else going on right now, and I don’t think it has to do with me at all. So I tell him a different truth. “I want to be here for you right now, whatever that looks like.”
His face changes. I’m not sure I’ve seen this expression before. It’s too raw and sad for memes. “You know I lied to you that night we were talking on the phone.”
What? Another bait and switch? I’m not sure I can handle this. I try to control my expression. “You did?”
“I told you the dumbest thing I’d ever done was punching that guy in that bar. It’s not. The dumbest thing I ever did was miss my son’s birth.”
My heart relaxes. If he needs to get something else off his chest, I can handle it. I can be there for him. I want to.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can tell me.”
He sighs. “I was with someone the day Margarita went into labor. I met her at one of Sean’s parties. My phone fell between his couch cushions somehow. Turns out it’s hard to receive phone calls when you don’t have your phone. Margarita ended up with an emergency C-section, and I didn’t even know it. I found out later that Mattie lay alone in an incubator at the nurses’ station until Margarita woke up because there was no one there to hold him. Because I wasn’t there to hold him.”
He blinks and stares out at the blackness. “I was supposed to cut the cord. I’d watched all the YouTube videos. He was twelve hours old before I even knew he existed. I had to wake up first, right? Take some ibuprofen. Eat something. Figure out what happened to my phone. Care enough to drive over to Sean’s and get it. I didn’t even think about them, either one of them, all that time. That’s the kind of guy I am.” He laughs wryly. “Wanna like my page now?”
“But your dad had just died, right?” I ask softly.
He nods. “Yeah, that’s true, but it’s no excuse.” He sniffs hard and runs the back of his hand across his nose. He manages to make even that look good. “I’ll never forget what it felt like to read Margarita’s texts from the night before. It was like my stomach was being shredded. Jason, it’s happening. Jason, come to the hospital quick. Jason, where are you? Jason, why aren’t you answering your phone? Jason, something’s wrong. Jason, they’re taking me into surgery. Jason, I’m scared. What if the baby’s not okay? And then I think it was a bunch of ‘eff yous’ after that.”
His voice cracks, and his eyes are glassy in the dim light. “People say newborns don’t need much. Food. Warmth. Somewhere to sleep. If you don’t bond with your baby right away, don’t worry about it, they say. But at the hospital, he felt like a stranger in my arms. This tiny person, this little piece of me… Honestly, it felt like I was at work, on set, holding somebody else’s baby. That’s when some paparazzi posing as a parent snapped the picture in the ‘Hey, buddy’ meme. I’m not saying, ‘Hey, buddy,’ in that picture. My face doesn’t look like that because I’m emotional at being a new dad. It looks like that because I screwed up, again, and I’m coming to terms with the fact that this child in my arms isn’t going to have the wonderful father that I did. That meme shouldn’t say, Hey, buddy . It should say, Sorry, kid. You deserve better .”
He squints and pinches the skin between his brows with one hand. I reach for the other one. “I’ll never use that meme again.”
He forces a laugh. “Don’t worry about it. It’s par for the course, Emmy. I do something stupid, and the universe amplifies it.”
I shake my head. “You’re not being fair to yourself. I’ve watched you with your friends and your fans, all those kids from the fundraisers. You have the most generous heart and a fun-loving energy that’s contagious. And as far as Mattie goes, Jason, you’re a great dad! So you screwed up that first day. You’ve more than made up for it. It’s clear how much you love Mattie, and he knows it.”
His eyes are starting to look puffy. “I want to do right by him. I want to be the best version of myself. I just don’t know if that’s even possible. Everything I do turns out wrong. Even when I think I’m doing something right, it turns out wrong. It’s like I’m cursed. Or clueless. Or just… an asshole who doesn’t realize he’s an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.” I can’t stand listening to him berate himself like this. The words spill out of me. “You want to talk about sucky parenting? I never told Peyton who her father is.”
He blinks. “Wha-what?”
I nod, as shocked at my confession as he is. “Put that in the Venn diagram.”
He leans forward, my hand captured in both of his. It’s his turn to listen.
I take a deep breath. I can’t believe I’m about to do this. “Peyton’s dad is Rhett Castle, the director. Do you know him?”
“Of course I know Rhett Castle. He’s the jerk who abandoned you guys?”
I grimace. “He didn’t technically abandon us. He doesn’t know. They don’t know about each other.”
His face crumples in confusion. “But you said…”
“I lied, too.” I press my lips together. “I met him at a party when I was a student at UCLA. I’d stalked him to pitch him my screenplay.”
Jason’s hands around mine are the only thing grounding me as I speak. I don’t tell him everything: how distinguished Rhett looked in his suit and blue tie, tugging on his lapels. How I secretly craved his attention. The sound of my high heels clicking across the marble tile floors as we left the party.
“He said he wanted to go somewhere more private where we could ‘talk.’ I should have seen the red lights on the dashboard. I guess I just wanted it so badly—the opportunity, the dream. Even when it became obvious we weren’t talking about screenplays, I told myself it would be worth it for the foot in the door.” I pause, remembering the slippery bedspread, the musty hotel room smell. “Afterward, he looked at my screenplay for, like, eight seconds, and then told me it wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough. Neither one of us was ‘special.’”
I risk a look at him, damp curls ringing a soft expression. His voice is tender. “My dad always said there’s no such thing as ‘special.’”
“Do you believe that?” I ask him.
“Don’t you?”
I bite my lip to keep the tears at bay. “I really don’t.”
“That’s a shame.”
For a moment, only the ocean speaks.
I continue. “After I found out I was pregnant, I went to one of his premieres to tell him. He had this whole entourage. We made eye contact across the room, but… I couldn’t do it. I chickened out, left, went back to Florida. Had the baby. Never came back. Until now.”
“Oh, Emmy—”
“So—” I cut him off with a fake smile because the last thing I want right now is Jason Connor’s pity. “Maybe you weren’t there for the birth, but at least your baby knows who his daddy is. Besides, birth isn’t something you necessarily want to watch. There’s a lot of yelling and… bodily fluids.”
His face lights up in a meme. “Are you kidding? Bodily fluids are my favorite!”
I giggle, relieved that the tension is broken. Since we’re being all honest, I should tell him about the scene in the book so I won’t have to worry about it anymore. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe he’ll forgive me, seeing how pathetic I am right now.
“Jason, there’s something I need to tell you. About the book. There’s a scene—”
He stops me with a hand up. “No spoilers! I told you I was going to read it.”
“It’s kind of personal.”
He rolls his eyes. “If there’s a dirty sex scene in there, Emmy, don’t worry about it. We’re both adults.”
“It’s not—Well, there is a sex scene… it’s tasteful! But that’s not what I’m talking about. There’s another scene…”
“Okay. I’m listening.” Jason waits with an expectant, innocent smile. I imagine that smile melting away, all the playfulness draining out of his eyes when he discovers I exploited his real life and pain for my fake story. I can’t do it to him. I just can’t. Besides, what the hell am I doing worrying about a stupid scene in a book when I have the man of my dreams, Jason Connor, dripping wet right in front of me and talking about dirty sex?
My favorite dessert is éclairs, and when I order one at the French bakery, there’s this thing that happens between the time I place my order and the moment the velvety chocolate and rich cream hit my taste buds. An unbearable wanting springs up inside me, like a vitamin deficiency that will kill me if I don’t have it. Looking at Jason Connor’s wet shirt clinging to his chest, the shadows exaggerating his perfect, square jaw and that mouth I’ve already tasted, I’m getting that same physiological reaction. I’m starving for Jason Connor. I want him. Right now. Nothing else matters.
“Emmy?” His voice cracks on my name.
That sound fuels my desire even more, and I close the space between us in the hot water. “There’s a scene,” I lie, “where Nora tells Gage all the reasons she fell in love with him.”
“Oh really?” Jason says. “Miles must have cut that from the movie.”
With a finger, I trace a little square of collarbone visible above the neck of his wet T-shirt. “Reason number one is this spot right here.” I lean in and kiss it.
His expression shifts electromagnet fast to something darker and hungrier. “Then let me give you better access.”
In one movement, he yanks his shirt off. I continue tracing the little piece of his collarbone with kisses, my lips playing across his hot skin. When I look up, he’s watching me with eyes as indigo dark as the Pacific.
“What’s the second reason?” he asks, voice husky.
I offer my worries and fears like sacrifices to the surging moan of the sea. I trail my fingers up his neck to his ear, where the tips of his curls cling to damp skin. “Reason number two is this spot right here.” I suck a droplet of water off the lobe, my hands moving down to his chest, all muscle and sinew under my touch.
“And reason number three…” I bring my open mouth to his as he grips my upper arms and we inhale each other’s quickening breath. “Is right here.” The kiss is deep and uninhibited. Delicious. I lose myself in it, tasting him, relishing the way he tastes me. Before I realize what’s happening, he grabs the fabric at my waist and pulls my hoodie and shirt over my head, balling them up and tossing them aside. When they strike Possessed Baby, she falls to the patio floor with a sickening sound we both ignore. Then he lifts me up like I don’t weigh anything and sets my hips on the edge of the hot tub.
“Permission to redo my submission for the hugging contest?” The crack in his voice is still there, but this time there’s a dangerous edge to it.
Half-naked and shivering on the edge of the hot tub, I grant it.
All at once, his arms are around me, my body igniting at the feel of so much of his bare skin against mine. He presses closer, forcing my thighs farther apart, and all my major muscles go weak. One of his hands tangles gently in my hair while the other wraps across my entire back, pressing me into him so hard I gasp. His chin scratches my cheek; his breath warms my ear.
“Don’t you ever say you aren’t special, Emmy Ellison,” he whispers. “You are special. You’re special to me.”
I shiver from the weight of his words more than the chill of the air.
“Are you cold?” He propels himself out of the water and returns with a huge, soft towel. He wraps the towel around both of us, making a cocoon. Inside this safe, warm place, he holds me against him and kisses me slowly, deliberately, like I’m a thing to be cherished. His hands leave hot trails across my back. I kiss him harder, and he hikes me up off my feet. My legs cinch around his waist as our teeth bang together in ever more desperate kisses.
“Tell me you’re mine, Jason Connor,” I rasp.
“I’m yours.” He says it without hesitation, pushing open the French doors and carrying me into the warmth of the house, to the bedroom, his bedroom, with the rumpled white duvet and the view of the Pacific. When we reach the foot of the bed, he trips, and I cry out as my back hits the mattress and the satisfying weight of his body pins me down.
I smile as I tease a dripping curl away from his perfect forehead. “Say it again, Jason Connor,” I whisper, drinking in every line, every curve, every movement. Beneath the gravity of his body, every part of me is spooling up. “Make me believe it.”
His face changes. It’s all at once tragic and beautiful and certain and uncertain. He traces my lips with his thumb and kisses my mouth so very gently.
“I’m yours, Emmy Ellison,” he whispers. “I promise. I’m all yours.”