Emma
TWENTY-TWO
There really is a thin line between love and hate.
I should’ve known I’d fall in love with Matt’s world.
With his bookcase filled with endless stories he promises he’ll read to me before bed.
The way his arms hold me tight against his chest like I’m his most precious treasure.
The scent of his sheets, warm and expensive, so addictively him. It’s easy to imagine a life like this.
But not because of the extra comfort that comes with having a hillside mansion. That’s a perk included in the possibility of being in love with Matt Hunt.
He’s lying half-awake beside me, hair messy from last night’s activities, or maybe that’s how it is in the mornings. Either way, I can’t get enough of it. His thumb traces lazy circles against my belly underneath the covers.
“Hi,” I mumble, tilting my head up toward him.
“Morning, honey.” Matt leans down and plants a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth. “How did you sleep?”
I snuggle further into the bed to drive my point home. “Better than ever,” I admit. It’s annoying, but it’s the truth. I’d live out of this bed if I could.
“I bet. Between baseball and me absolutely ruining you for the rest of mankind… You were out cold before I even got out of the bathroom,” he teases.
“You’re going to have to pry me out of your bed now.”
“Who says I want to?”
Matt wiggles his eyebrows childishly. I slap him on the chest, but he’s faster than me. He grabs my wrist and tugs me forward until I’m straddling him. The shorts I borrowed, which I don’t intend to give back, ride up my thighs.
“How about we go into the kitchen and I make us some breakfast? You’ve got to be dying for some caffeine right about now.”
Prior to the reminder, my body had been functioning solely on Matt’s touch. Now he’s said it, though…
“Sounds too good to pass up,” I say.
We untangle ourselves from the sheets—and each other—and head to the kitchen as if we’ve done this a thousand times before. Matt’s in his underwear. I’m wearing one of his T-shirts which on me looks less like clothing and more like a failed attempt at a grungy dress.
I sit on one of the stools and watch as he pulls out all the ingredients necessary to make my coffee exactly how I like it, down to the oat milk.
“Why am I not surprised?” I ask, as the smell of fresh brew fills the space.
“I had to be prepared,” he says proudly. “You never know.”
We take breakfast out to the terrace overlooking the hills. Morning sunlight spills over the rocky mountains, turning everything hazy. Somewhere below the city hums awake. But here it’s quieter. I can actually hear birds chirp.
Once I finish chugging down my coffee like the addict I am, I curl into Matt’s side. He opens his arms for me and my heart clenches at how automatic the gesture is.
Then, as I taste the last drops on my tongue, I remember something he’s said a couple of times over the past few weeks. My coffee order in his fridge just about confirms my current suspicions.
“Hey.” I sit up, turning to him and crossing my legs. “You know how you said you haven’t dated for almost two years?”
“Ask away,” he says with a grin. “I know you’re dying to dig deep and uncover all the juicy details.”
“Did it have anything to do with me?”
For all I know, maybe I’m romanticizing things because I had life-altering sex with panoramic views.
“It did,” he confirms, sheepishly.
“Why? We hated each other. It should’ve had the opposite effect.”
“You hated me,” he clarifies. “I bickered because it was the only way to get a reaction out of you.”
“You just waited?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
Matt laughs. “I didn’t wait. That makes me sound like a creep,” he says. His cheeks flush enough for me to notice. My heart clenches. “Waiting would mean I thought it was actually going to happen… I tried going on a date once after I met you. It was bad.”
“How bad? Stinky breath and catfished, or you-crashing-my-date-with-Tom bad?”
He closes his eyes. “Not my finest moment,” he groans.
“Answer my question, sir.”
“If you call me that too much, I might start liking it.”
“Matthew!”
I throw a pillow at him. He catches it before it hits his face, then hugs it against his chest as if he needs a shield from his honesty.
“She wasn’t you, Emma.”
My mouth parts. His voice drops low and steady, stripped of every trace of teasing. He reaches out and laces our fingers together.
“It was almost like nothing else could hold my interest long enough,” he admits. “Then you’d start talking about random things, like whatever you’d found at the market that week, and I was done for.”
A small smile pulls at his mouth. “I think in a life as fake as mine, having you in it—someone so unapologetically real—felt like finding water in a desert.”
Suddenly I’m free-falling through his honesty, the only thing grounding me the feeling of his fingers threaded through mine. My brain’s gone on strike. Too many future-deciding statements in too short a timeframe. It’s not willing to process any of them.
Matt reads every bit of panic across my face, but he doesn’t back off. If anything, he softens.
“I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time wanting to fight men I don’t even know,” he confesses. “How could they not realize what they had? At one point, I almost had Harrison convinced to do a drive-by with me.”
I snort. “You’re so dramatic.”
“I’m serious.”
“They weren’t bad guys,” I deflect. Easier to focus on third parties than on the fact that Matt was ready to square up with random men on my behalf. “I wasn’t what they wanted.”
“You’re a ten, Mills. Even that is selling you short.”
“I’m five-foot-two with an attitude.”
“Feisty and easy to throw around…”
I gasp, the last surviving lightbulb in my brain flickering back to life.
“What about…” I start, suddenly unsure I want the answer after all. “You know…”
“Sex?”
I nod. He exhales slowly, then shakes his head.
“Bullshit,” I blurt.
“Nope.”
“But you’re a guy.”
Matt huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. One who gets turned on by overalls.”
Right. Solid point. Once again, I’m left speechless. There’s never been someone in my life who’s wanted me this steadily, this intentionally. And apparently, I’ve wasted the last two years blinded by our bickering, enough to miss the signs.
“I know the perfect way to get you out of this spiral,” he says, standing and taking me with him.
Yes! His bedsheets are calling my name.
“We’re going for a swim.”
“What?”
“Emma’s central control room is clearly overheating. Immediate cooldown required,” Matt says. His hand slips under my shirt and settles on my waist, sending another wave of goosebumps all over my skin.
“I don’t even have a swimsuit,” I tell him, voice barely above a whisper.
“We skinny-dip.” He leans down and presses a quick kiss to my lips. “Hands up.”
I do as I’m told even thought this feels like an objectively terrible idea. What if someone sees us? We’d be all over the news. Naked.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “Trust me.”
Once we’re in the pool, my muscles loosen instantly. Warm air. Cool water. Matt’s hand gripping me tight. Relaxation rolls through me so fast I finally understand why science insists it’s all chemical.
“I could get used to this,” I mumble. I cling to Matt’s chest like a panda to a tree while he drags us to the deep end.
“Which part? The house or me?”
“Both,” I admit. “Although one of them keeps distracting me enough to forget my basic motor functions.”
We behave for most of the morning. Matt washes my clothes while we shower, and then head out for a quick lunch before parting ways. The normalcy of it all makes the ache in my chest grow stronger with every passing minute.
I don’t want this to end. And I can’t help thinking if my track record with relationships has a say… something’s bound to go wrong.
The restaurant’s AC is blasting, a much-needed relief from the Californian summer heat.
Matt orders a salad—per Jennifer’s strict instructions to keep his diet in check—and gets me a cheeseburger and a basket of fries.
He makes me feel less guilty about it by stealing some off my plate, which he then replenishes with an order to-go.
Our knees brush under the table, and I make it my personal mission to rile him up by discreetly dragging my foot up his leg. His jaw tightens harder each time. The man can survive Hollywood press tours, but apparently a small brush against his upper calf is where he draws the line.
Between the teasing, we trade stories about everything imaginable. Childhood memories. Family disasters. Our relationship with Julia and Harrison—we both acknowledge the risk of this.
Matt brushes his thumb over my knuckles. “We’re better together,” he says simply.
I believe him.
For the past three weeks, we’ve barely spotted paparazzi around, which is exactly why it feels like we’re illegally ambushed when we step outside and there’s a swarm of cameras shoved in my face.
Matt’s protective instinct kicks in right away. Thank God, because I’m stuck, frozen on the spot. One hand settles firmly over my back, urging me forward, while the other lifts toward the cameras.
“Matt! Is this a new girlfriend?” someone yells.
“Are you officially off the bachelor list?” another shouts.
Everything happens too fast. One second I’m laughing over fries, the next I feel like I’ve been dropped into freezing water. I wouldn’t even care about the cameras if they weren’t such a brutal reminder of how serious this is now. Public. Visible.
Worst of all, we’re still working together.
By the time we reach the cars, the paps have left a decent distance between us. Matt turns to me, his expression softer now we have a second “alone.”
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod. He leans down to kiss me like he’s been doing for the past couple of days and panic spikes through me before I can stop it. My hand presses lightly against his chest, holding him back.
Immediately, everything shifts.
Matt frowns at first, confusion flashing across his face. Then understanding crashes against him as hard as it hit me.
“Emma…”
I still work for Golden. I’m on assignment until the article’s published. This can go very wrong in the blink of an eye.
“I can’t do it in front of them.”
He gives me a small nod. “Right.”
He tries to play it off, hide his disappointment, but I still catch it. A tiny crack in the domestic ease we’ve created these past few days. There’s still a wall between us we’ve blissfully ignored.
The article.
The guilt of hiding the truth about my career.
What it means for his own.
I watch him drive away, the ache in my chest has now so sharp it borders on unbearable. Because for the first time since this started, since I met him, even, I understand how much there is to lose. He might not feel the same, or as strongly as I do, but…
I can’t imagine my days without Matt anymore.