Shelley looks at her for a long moment, twisting her mouth to one side. Nick might be worried about her exposing their relationship if she’d given him more than a cursory glance when they first shook hands.
“I might be able to rustle up some kind of deal,” Shelley says, and gives a number that’s altogether too tempting—until she gives Ramona a suggestive lift of her eyebrows, so slight that Nick can’t predict what’s coming. “I hate to ask this, but you wouldn’t mind FaceTiming with my daughter, would you? She’s never going to believe this.”
Nick is utterly dumbfounded—the gall of her to make this kind of request while atwork. He has to fight every urge to leap in and say,Absofuckinglutely not.
But the smile plastered on Ramona’s face, one of her fake ones, doesn’t budge. “I’d be happy to! So glad that she’s a fan.”
Shelley grins at Nick. “I’ll send over the contract tonight!”
Yeah, like hell is he signing that and letting her get any of the commission.
They’re quiet in the car afterward, Nick’s mind in a hundred different places. The plan was to stop at the Lake Hollywood trail for a hike—Ramona’s been wanting to take him for a while, and they figured it would be less busy after sunset. Less risky.
“You’re upset,” Ramona says when they park. Their shoes hit the dusty path.
Up above them, theHollywoodsign perches on Mount Lee, Santa Monica Mountains spread in the distance. At first Nick doesn’t say anything, unsure where their boundaries are when of course he can’t understand what it’s like in her situation. But he knows how Ramona looks when she talks about her past. How people took advantage of her, manipulated her, abused her.
How furious it makes him.
Over the past few weeks, she’s shared more and more—the recovery from her warped body image, her good days and bad days. Every new piece of information cracks him in half.
“You just let her bulldoze you like that,” he says, grateful the trail is empty. “You sold yourself out, when we both know you hate doing that kind of shit. You didn’t owe her anything, Ramona.”
Nick doesn’t realize his pace is matching his words until Ramona has to hurry to keep up with him. “I was doing it foryou. And look. It got you a good deal, didn’t it?”
That is so far from the point.
“You tell me you want to be normal. The first day I meet you, that’s what you say.” He can hardly believe what he’s turning this into, but it felt so surreal, watching her turn herself into a product like that. “You can’t just turn it on whenever it benefits you.”
“If you haven’t noticed,” she says, voice rising, “I don’t get the luxury of being ‘off.’ Even now, trying to live my private life, going to school and helping you look for an apartment—there’s someone watching me. Maybe not forever. God,hopefullynot forever. But for as far into the future as I can see…yeah, I’m still under a microscope.”
This stuns him, this mention of the future, because suddenlythere’s so much else he wants to know about it. What will she be doing and where will she be living—
And in her vision of it, is he there, too?
Then they’re both quiet for a while, Nick understanding why Ramona likes hiking so much. In a world that’s continually crushed her independence, there’s a certain freedom out here. The whisper of the wind, the calm of the reservoir. Maybe nature really is healing.
He pauses in the middle of the trail, blows out a long breath as he turns to her. “I’m so sorry,” he says, giving the zipper of her fleece a soft little flick. “I don’t want to fight.”
She visibly deflates. Claws retracting. “I know. It’s stupid, right? I wish it could be different, but…”
And he wonders if she really does wish that. If she’d trade all the fortune and privilege for what he has: a regular, humdrum, ordinary kind of life.
Although it’s felt anything but ordinary since she scrape-and-crawled her way into it.
He doesn’t know the answer, but there’s no use ruminating. This is who she is, and there’s no way to change it. And he wouldn’t want to—he just wishes all of it were easier for her.
She presses closer, sliding her arms around his shoulders. He brings her into a tight hug. Drops a kiss to her head as all the outside noise quiets down, weaves his fingertips through her ponytail.
Calm. Safe.Maybe being this close to her has the same effect on him.
“That apartment wasn’t right anyway,” he says into her hair.
“Not enough space for the sex swing?”
“And nowhere to park your private jet.”
She laughs, and just like that, they’re back to normal, or whatever their version of it is.
