Eventually, they settled down, content to watch the bonfire let out its final sigh.
“Did you get everything you wanted for your birthday?” Brinton asked.
He leaned down, then kissed her forehead. “I did now.”
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 whitedenim 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, forher.
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 shepopped 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 tothink.
