Chapter 26
Ava
Iwake in a grand penthouse bedroom and immediately assume I’ve gone deaf.
No pitter-patter of tiny feet.
No bickering over who ate all the marshmallows out of the cereal.
No one banging down the door.
What’s going on?
I turn and find Harrison stretched beside me and the photograph sitting on the nightstand.
The way he looked at that picture last night…
Like I’d handed him my actual heart.
The nightstand is only a temporary home for it.
I’m already aching to find just the right place for it at Casa del Evans.
Maybe somewhere above the mantle.
Somewhere it can watch snowfall drift past those giant mountain windows while the kids sip hot chocolate in front of the fire and Harrison demands to know who spilled glitter in the carpet.
Home.
If I’m even home next Christmas.
God, why did I sign up for two back-to-back films?
Because a hundred actresses would kill for this opportunity.
And because it’s always been my dream.
I take a breath.
I’m sure Harrison will understand.
Yes. Absolutely.
Before his head explodes.
A broad hand slides slowly up my thigh beneath the blankets.
His laugh rumbles warm against my skin. “That tired, huh?”
“More like ensuring I can still walk.”
He rolls over me, sunlight spilling across broad shoulders and carved muscle while a mess of auburn hair falls across his forehead.
“Walking is overrated.”
He kisses me and my insides liquify.
“Why don’t I hear the kids?” I mumble suspiciously.
“They had to be out of the house early for Disneyland.”
That wakes me all the way up.
I push onto an elbow. “You arranged for the kids to go to Disneyland?”
“Technically,” he rolls to his back, “Jaime from Magical Travel arranged it. I just picked up the phone.” His lips curves slightly. “She’s assured me everyone’s about to have the time of their lives.”
I blink. “They all went?”
He nods. “Hannah’s always wanted to go. So has Mrs. D.” He shrugs. “And we both know Zac’s basically eight years old.”
I smile up at him. “Just the two of us? All day?”
His finger traces a lazy figure eight against my shoulder.
“All. Day.”
I immediately imagine an all-day sex marathon and wonder if I should stretch first.
Until he sits up. “Get dressed.”
I sink deeper beneath the blankets. “I thought you were devoting the whole day to me.”
“To you,” he corrects, his mouth brushing between my breasts. “Not your body.”
“Boo.” I pout. “False advertising is a crime, you know.”
His low laugh vibrates against my skin.
“Trust me, Pix. Your body’s still very high on the itinerary.”
Heat floods straight through me.
This man.
“How are you a real person?” I murmur.
“I’m not.” He licks my nipple. “You made me up. Who are you talking to?”
I snort into the pillow laughing.
He grins and climbs out of bed.
Which should require a permit.
Shamelessly, I soak in the glory of muscular legs and masculine perfection while he drags on gray sweatpants until they hang dangerously low on his hips.
He checks his phone.
“You have half an hour,” he says.
“For what?”
“The best day of your life.”
Excitement fizzes through me like champagne.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“A good surprise? Or surprise, you’re helping me bury a body beneath a redwood?”
“Depends on how bad traffic is.”
It’s beautiful.
“I’ve lived in LA my whole life, and I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” I admit. “I’ve always wanted to.”
“I had a feeling,” Harrison says, his fingers tangled with mine as we stroll beneath the massive white domes of the Griffith Observatory. Below us, Los Angeles sparkles endlessly beneath the winter sun.
“A feeling?” I glance up at him.
His mouth twitches. “I might’ve bribed Gabe for a list of your favorite movies.”
My heart does a dangerous little squeeze.
“If a man recreating your favorite romances of all time isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.”
I take it all in. The sweeping skyline. The palm trees. The hazy gold sunlight stretching over LA.
“Was I mildly terrified climbing onto the back of a Vespa so you could bring me here? Yes. Yes, I was.”
His mouth twitches. “It’s a little scene from Roman Holiday. You’re welcome.”
I throw my arms around him and kiss him hard. “So worth it.”
I spin in a slow circle like a giddy little kid. “This is very La La Land of you, by the way. I half expect Ryan Gosling to start playing jazz somewhere in the distance.”
Harrison looks supremely pleased with himself. “So you like it,” he asks smugly, because he already knows the answer.
And honestly, I can’t even pretend otherwise.
“I love it.”
His grin widens.
God, I love his smile. The dimples that always show up when he’s genuinely happy.
I didn’t even realize how much I missed them until they came back.
We wander through the exhibits, stopping every five feet because apparently I have the attention span of an over-caffeinated raccoon.
Harrison listens to every single thing I point out like it matters.
Not fake polite listening where someone nods while mentally drafting emails and grocery lists.
He’s actually engaged.
When I ramble about constellations and black holes and completely unrelated movie trivia, he asks questions.
What’s my favorite star?
What’s my earliest memory of the moon?
How have you never been in this bookshop before when you so obviously love it?
And before I can stop myself, the truth slips out.
“Because I’ve been too focused on becoming a star to actually look at them.”
I cringe and burst out laughing.
“Wow. That sounded profoundly wiser in my head.”
“Pix.”
“Oh no.” I lift a hand between us. “Not the soft voice. The terrifyingly perceptive soft voice.”
His mouth twitches, but his eyes stay locked on mine.
And that’s the dangerous part.
That look always feels like he’s scaling every wall I’ve ever built just to touch the softest edge of my soul.
He studies me for one long, quiet second.
“You need time off.”
“I take time off.”
He pockets a hand, amused. “Do you?”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it again because he’s right.
And Harrison would spot a lie before I even finished telling it.
His thumb brushes softly across my cheek. “Why does this feel so new to you?”
God.
There it is again.
That impossible way he sees past all the polished, camera-ready versions of me and still finds the girl underneath.
Why does it feel new?
My life became schedules and call sheets and making sure my mom never had to panic over another bill after her retirement imploded.
Keep moving.
Keep smiling.
Keep performing.
Somewhere along the way, I got so good at acting happy, I forgot what real happiness felt like.
It’s warm.
And easy.
And fits like the perfect pair of fluffy socks on the coldest day.
Then Harrison Evans crashed into my life with his flannel shirts and devastating dimples, and suddenly, I want more.
I want this.
Him.
More time with the kids.
More laughter. God, so much more laughter.
More love than I even know what to do with.
And I want to say all of it out loud, but I’m terrified that the second I do, this beautiful thing between us will disappear.
Because frankly, when it comes to men, I’m cursed.
So instead, I smile softly and say, “Because every day with you feels new.”
Then I kiss him beneath mythic constellations drifting across the planetarium sky.
We eventually find our way back out through the dark maze of stars and planetarium exhibits, his hand in mine, kissing along the way. By the time we leave, the sun hangs high overhead.
Wind slips through my hair as Harrison steps behind me, both arms wrapping around my waist.
“Cold?” he murmurs against my temple.
“A little.”
His warmth wraps around me. Soap and cedar and something that is so completely Harrison it almost hurts.
Home.
And maybe that’s the scariest thing of all.
“You got quiet,” he murmurs.
I lean into him, letting myself have this for one tiny, selfish second.
I swallow the truth whole. The part where Iceland is coming, and I already don’t know how to go back to a life that doesn’t have him tangled up in every part of it.
I force a smile. “Wondering where my lumberjack tour guide is taking me next.”
We reach the Vespa, and Harrison slides the helmet onto my head before fastening the strap beneath my chin like I’m five years old.
“Next stop.” He lifts my hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss across my knuckles. “Lunch.”
“I love this so much,” I admit, curled beside Harrison on a thick blanket spread across the winter grass overlooking the world famous Hollywood sign.
Below us, Los Angeles. Haze curling through the hills while helicopters hum faintly in the distance.
The air is crisp enough to sting my nose, but not cold enough to matter tucked beneath Harrison’s arm.
Honestly, it’s perfect.
Too chilly for the beach.
Perfect for a picnic.
“Fresh wraps and smoothies? I couldn’t be happier if a flash mob suddenly erupted from the hills behind us.”
“Shit,” he mutters. “I knew I forgot something. And thank God, because I’d rather die.”
I grin and steal another bite of my wrap. “I was genuinely terrified you were about to recreate Pretty Woman and drag me into some wildly overpriced place on Rodeo Drive.”
His mouth twitches.
“That,” he says gravely, “would be a big mistake.”
He spreads his arms wide, smoothie in one hand, wrap in the other. “Big mistake. Huge.”
I laugh so hard I nearly choke.
“Oh my God.” I snort. “You watch rom-coms.”
“Not regularly.” He shakes his head, his masculinity visibly offended. “Last Thanksgiving there was a fight over what the family was watching after dinner. The womenfolk wanted The Holiday.”
I sip my smoothie. “Let me guess. The cavemen wanted football.”
“Um, it’s a national tradition,” he points out. “Anyway, we agreed to split the difference. One movie, then the rest of the night was football. We kind of fall into that same cadence whenever we all hang out.”
I grin. “How diplomatic of you.”
“It was not diplomacy,” he corrects around a bite of wrap. “It was survival.”
“Survival?” I draw out. “Is that why you’ve seen Roman Holiday and Pretty Woman and accidentally know the entire soundtrack to La La Land?”
“Yes, survival.” He points his wrap at me. “I have a daughter. Before I start threatening every idiot boy she brings home, I need to understand how her brain works.”
“She’s six.”
“She’ll be sixteen before I know it,” he says like he’s already pricing shotguns.
No truer words.
He motions between us. “Besides, I’m one hundred percent committed to understanding you on a deep, cinematic level.”
I laugh. “So you can understand how my brain works?”
“Exactly.”
I finish my wrap, and Harrison immediately hands me a fudge brownie he somehow had hidden in the bag.
“I’m starting to think you missed your calling as a rom-com hero.”
“Please.” He stretches one arm across the back of the blanket, sunglasses sliding down his nose. “I own enough flannel and emotional baggage to fill a 747. I was born for this.”