Page 45 of Comfort Read

“He’s funny,” Kit says immediately, warming to his subject. “Much funnier than I would have guessed before I met him, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a fan. And he’s generous, with strangers and with the people in his life—he insists on overpaying everywhere we go, and I’ve met so many people he’s helped when they needed it, or whose businesses he’s gotten off the ground. He doesn’t even seem to think about it. He’s kind, especially when he thinks no one is looking, and down to earth, even though he could probably buy my whole town and have cash left over. He can be moody, for sure—sometimes he’s condescending or closed off or cold, and once or twice I’ve even seen him act like a bit of a dick. But he never means to be, and he never tries to make anyone feel small, and he never punches down, which would be so easy to do after the life he’s lived.”

Kit swallows, unable to look at Sage, but equally incapable of shutting himself up. “That life’s been pretty hard, I think, although I’m sure he wouldn’t say that himself. I’m not sure he’s cut out for being in the public eye all the time, for all the attention. I would have thought he liked attention—I would have thought all actors liked attention—but he doesn’t, not really. He likes the work. He’s the kind of person who gives all of himself to whatever he’s doing, who wants to bring the very best of himself to everything, every day, and it upsets him when other people don’t. He’s an idealist, in spite of being the most jaded person I know. He thinks people should do what’s right because it’s the right thing to do, and he can’t understand why or how everyone else doesn’t think like that, too.

“As for why I’m with him…” Kit spreads his hands, feeling the blush on his already-reddened cheeks deepening. Still, he forces himself to say it: “I’m not sure I understand the question. Who wouldn’t want to be with him? Who wouldn’t love someone like that? He’s the most interesting man I’ve ever met, the most driven, the most engaging. He makes every day feel like an adventure. He makes me feel like the best version of myself, like someone I never even knew I could be. I’d be lucky to have spent even an hour with him.”

Finally—long past the time when he probably should have—Kit closes his mouth. He looks down at the table to avoid Wayne’s piercing stare, his eyes hazel as opposed to blue but every bit as sharp as Sage’s. Sage himself Kit can’t begin to imagine looking at ever again. Frankly it’s a bit overwhelming even to look at Sage’s hands, which are clenched around fistfuls of his trouser legs.

Then Wayne clears his throat, turns back to Sage, and holds one of his own hands out across the table. He says, “Okay, then. Sold.”

EIGHTEEN

The silence in the limo is so thick Kit’s worried he’ll choke on it.

He can’t bring himself to look at Sage. Kit hasn’t been able to bring himself to look at Sage since ill-advisedly spilling his guts at Wayne’s table. He’s been making do with very occasional half glances to determine where Sage is, which hasn’t exactly been going great—Kit almost walked right into him as they left the house, and very nearly sat in his lap as he climbed into the town car after him. The narrow miss is the thing he’s currently most grateful for in the whole run of his life: It would have been mortifying no matter when it happened, but was an especially horrifying prospect just now. Luckily, he managed to catch himself in time, if only just.

He keeps his gaze fixed firmly out the window as the car winds down Wayne’s driveway and back onto the main roads, wondering if Sage is going to say anything. Kit certainly isn’t going to, having already said far more than enough. He can’t decide what would be worse: having to listen to Sage offer an awkward apology, or total silence the whole way back to Kit’s usual hotel. Either way this is likely the last time they’ll ever see one another, the plan from here being to stop doing public appearances together, have Frankie leak a few items about them having “a quiet holiday season” and “enjoying their privacy” to the press. Then, around the end of January, she’ll start sending in blind items about trouble in paradise, before a quiet announcement that they’ve decided to go their separate ways. She’d described this plan as “clean, simple and painless,” which Kit has to admit he disagrees with at this juncture. “Painless” isn’t usually the word people use when their heart feels like it’s been stepped on by a series of elephants.

Just when he’s decided that silence is his preference—that it would be a fitting end to this whole absurd farce to close it out with a wordless, awkward limo ride, that anything would be better than have to listen to Sage say agonizingly obvious things about why he doesn’t return Kit’s feelings—Sage clears his throat.

“So.” Sage’s voice holds no emotional clues to what’s going through his mind. His face might, if Kit could bear to look at it. “That went well?”

“Sure.” Kit swallows. “I mean, yes. He said yes, so… yeah. It did. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

Silence yawns out again. Kit bites the inside of his cheek to keep from filling it with a babbled apology, or some obvious lie about what he told Wayne being an act. It wasn’t one, and Sage, a professional actor for more than twenty years, surely knows that. Kit would just make himself look even more pathetic if he tried to go that route, and at this point, the name of the game is holding onto his remaining few shreds of dignity.

After another few minutes, Sage clears his throat and says, “So. Um. What you… said. Back there.”

Knowing he’s not doing a good job of containing his wince, Kit steels himself for the worst-case scenario. “Yes?”

“Did you mean it?” The tone in Sage’s voice now shocks Kit enough that he whips his head around, meeting Sage’s eyes before he can remind himself not to. He sounds, and looks, not just genuinely curious, but hopeful. Kit’s stomach flips, nerves and desire warring for control until he feels like he’s going to be sick trying to contain it. He swallows again, hard, and tries to get a grip on himself, to think of a normal, non-committal answer.

When this fails, he grimaces and runs a hand over his face, feeling the heat of his own cheeks radiating out against his palms. “God, Sage. What? Of course I meant it. Is it somehow not mortifyingly obvious? I know this was supposed to be a business relationship, or whatever you want to call it, but I’m so totally gone for you that I feel like people can probably see it from space.” Wishing he could dissolve into a fine mist of horror, he swallows hard and whispers, “Can you say something, or change the subject, or, like, do anything to stop me from talking about this? Please? I humiliated myself enough the first time⁠—”

“No, you didn’t.” Sage’s eyes are bright in the dim light of the backseat, so blue they’re almost hypnotic even in near-darkness.

Against his will, Kit snorts out half a laugh. “For God’s sake, what would have been humiliating enough, then? Should I have stripped naked and sung it, or⁠—”

“I meant that you didn’t humiliate yourself.” Sage looks down at his hands and cracks every knuckle, one after the other, the clicking audible in the sudden quiet. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “I thought… I mean… Doesn’t it put you off? All the…” He sighs, and gestures helplessly around them. “Everything? You’ve seen how it is for me; by now, you have to understand. The press, and the exposure, and the lack of privacy, and the way I’ve straight up told you that I ruined all my exes’ lives? I was so afraid, when we kissed on that red carpet, that I could hardly look at you for weeks. Until then I could at least tell myself that you knew what you were in for, that you were getting something out of it, that it was all an act anyway. But to brush against something that real—to hear you say those things to Wayne tonight—you should be terrified, if that’s how you feel. I’m terrified.”

“Sage, for God’s sake, you didn’t ruin anyone’s life!” Kit says this too sharply, the words seeming to bounce around the inside of the car. “You’re not responsible for the press hounding those people⁠—”

“Aren’t I?” The question and the expression on Sage’s face are both devastating. He’s so sincere that it’s a knife, cleaving Kit’s heart in a stroke.

“Jesus Christ, Sage. Of course you’re not.” It comes out hoarse, almost whispered. Kit clears his throat; it doesn’t help. “That’s on the people doing the hounding. And you’re the one who gets the worst of it, anyway. You’re the one who has to carry it, you’re not some kind of—of monster for wanting a partner who will weather it with you. Isn’t that what a relationship is supposed to be? Someone who stands with you through the good and the bad? Someone who looks at the risks and says, ‘For you: Hell yeah, bring it on’?”

Sage’s eyes are wide; he’s breathing hard. It’s difficult to tell in the flickering glow from passing streetlights, but Kit’s pretty sure he’s shaking. “But doesn’t it scare you?”

“Of course it scares me.” Kit can barely hear himself now, and Sage has to lean in to catch what he’s saying, his face abruptly and intoxicatingly near. “It all scares me, your life is insane and it’s terrifying to care about someone this much, it’s horrible. Most of the time I’m amazed it hasn’t killed me! But the thought of being hunted by paparazzi for the rest of my life is so much less scary than the thought of never seeing you again that it’s ridiculous. It’s honestly laughable.”

Kit would say more, but he doesn’t get the chance: Sage growls from low in his throat, launches himself across the backseat, and kisses him.

Kit gasps against Sage’s mouth, the shock of what’s happening briefly eclipsing even the absurd glory of it. It’s a fairly chaste kiss, Sage’s mouth closed and obviously hesitant against his, but he lingers against Kit’s lips long enough that Kit’s hands flail at his sides, lifting and falling again as his brain tries to catch up.

Sage pulls back, flushed, his brow furrowed slightly as he murmurs, “Is this okay?”

“Is it okay,” Kit repeats, dazed. He shakes his head, clearing it, his eyes finally focusing on Sage’s nervous half smile. “It’s better than okay, it’s—it’s—you know what? I don’t know what it is. You’d better do it again so I can figure it out.”