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Every single person in the room was frozen still.
“Get up,” I said, trying to grab Jack by the shoulders and—What? Somehow hoist all two-hundred-plus pounds of his solid muscle back up? “You don’t have to do this.”
But he was unbudgeable. Duh.
“I really need your help,” he went on. “I have to be here for my mom, and I can’t show up here and bring danger, or risk, or—you know—assassinations with me. And I can’t make this moment any harder on her than it has to be. Please, please take the assignment. And please help me protect her by concealing who you really are.”
“What are you doing?” was all I could think of to say.
He pulled my hands into his. “I’m begging,” Jack answered. “I’m begging you.”
His expression was so earnest, so plaintive, so intense… for a second, I thought he might cry.
And I was dumbfounded. Again. For the second time that day. Because nobody cries like Jack Stapleton.
Do you remember how he cried in The Destroyers? Most people remember the moment when he blows up the mineshaft. And of course the scene where he gives himself surgery with no anesthesia. And the catchphrase, “Never say goodbye.” But what actually made that movie great was the sight of an action hero, at his darkest moment, thinking he’d lost everyone he loved and failed them beyond recognition, weeping tears of grief. You never see that, ever. That’s what made that movie a classic. That’s what made it better than all the hundreds of others just like it—that raw, human moment of vulnerability coming from the last guy you’d ever expect. It made us all want to be better people. It made us all love him—and humanity—just a little bit more.
Anyway. This scene in the reception area was a little like that.
But with ficus plants.
He didn’t wind up crying, in the end. But just the suggestion of it was enough.
Jack Stapleton—the Jack Stapleton—was on his knees.
Begging.
And here’s the truth. This should have been the epiphany when I realized that Jack Stapleton deserved all his fame and more. Everything he did right then held me, and everyone else, spellbound.
The man could act.
He leaned his kneeling body forward and looked up at me with his hands clasped. “I’m begging you to help my sick mom,” he said.
I mean, come on.
I’m not made of stone.
“Fine,” I said, summoning a rather Oscar-worthy fake nonchalance. “Stop begging. I’ll be your girlfriend.”
And then I went ahead and snuck one peek at the slack-jawed expression on my terrible ex-boyfriend’s lousy, ratty, deplorable face.
Which, to be honest, felt like a win for the good guys.
And for humanity.
And especially, at last, for me.
