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“That’s not what I’m doing. Please try and understand how huge the stakes are for me, for my future.”
The overhead lights cast dark shadows beneath his eyes. “Gilly, can’t you see how invested I am in us?”
Jack O’Leary believes if he pushes hard enough, the world will tilt the way he wills it. When he’s made up his mind, there’s no reasoning with him.
I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes before I look at him. “The situation has gone beyond what you and I want. It’s going to damage both of us, and possibly even Meg and the show, in a huge way if we don’t end it now. Please accept that.”
He paces back and forth in front of me. How I love his adorable skinny legs with huge bare feet that have a slight turn out like a dancer. The stance he takes before me is far from a graceful pirouette. It’s no-nonsense battle ready. “You could stand not talking to me for nearly a week when I was going mad with missing you.” Weariness softens the angles of his face. “That tells me our being together means more to me than to you because I’m in fecking misery and you’ve chosen to move on.”
Frustration with this whole damn situation raises my body temperature a thousand degrees. I stamp my foot hard to keep from blasting apart. “This is killing me, Jack. Absolutely killing me.” A flicker of hope lights his eyes. I can’t let it get any brighter. “If word of our relationship ever got out, you could recover. I won’t.”
“You’re givin’ too much power over to Meg and True Time.”
“It’s not just them.” I scrape my foot across a seam in the floor tiles. “It’s fans who drive the success of this show. I mess with that, and it could piss Bobby off enough to get rid of me.”
“Bobby and I are tight. I’ll come clean about how much I adore you, and he’ll have to be on our side.”
Adore.
Fuckingadore.
Not love.
This is Treat all over again. Gilly Bettencourt is worth adoring but not loving. A rush of anger heats my face.
What is so lacking in who I am that the men I let into my heart can’t say they love me? I won’t lay my future on the line only to be adored. Not this time.Adoredhas an end date. A drop of sweat slides down my temple. I will walk away. “This is as far as we can go.”
He turns his back on me to grip the top bar of the weapons rack. His robe falls off his shoulders, and I see the muscles of his back ripple. “So, you’re writing us off as a mistake.” His knuckles are so white I’m afraid the bar is going to bend. “You’ve decided I’m nothing more than the next in a line of unattainable men you’ve welcomed into your bed.”
Air rushes out of my lungs so fast he might as well have punched me. I clutch my chest and try to take a breath.
His fists drop to his side. “Where’s the Jack O’Leary in that?”
Firstadoredand then this. After what we’ve shared, how can Jack reduce my affection to a mistake, to a list? Does he truly believe I don’t know him for the wonderful man he is? Can’t he see it’s our situation and not me that’s crushing what might have been?
I double over, clutching my stomach, and stagger out the door.
Jack’s panting and grumbling masks my exit. He apparently doesn’t realize I’ve left the room until the door almost swings shut.
“Gilly, oh Jesus God. I went too far. I didn’t mean it. Come back.” His feet slap on the floor, coming closer, so I speed up. He only voiced what must have been festering in his mind.
And maybe there’s truth in it. I knew Treat was off limits, but I let us happen anyway. Now I’ve done it with Jack. From our first rendezvous in the stables, he laid out the obstacles. What did I do? Play the game again. Attach myself to the impossible. If I want to be loved, why do I keep accepting inevitabilities that, by their very nature, can’t go beyondadored?
Tearing down the corridor, I shut out the sound of my name being called as he tries to follow. When I reach the crossover to the other wing, I slam the door behind me and lock it with Jack O’Leary on the other side.
ChapterTwenty-One
Istumble down the hallway like I’ve downed five pints. I feel like the puppet I had as a kid, the type where you push up on its base and all the strings holding it together go slack.
Forget the writer’s room. Too many people will be nearby pounding keyboards to finish their version of the last episode.
And Jack might come looking for me there.
I hurt him, and he hit back.
Leaving Treat felt nothing like this. Walls collapse, trapping me under wreckage. My spirit is crushed into smaller and smaller pieces.
Doolin’s language classroom is dark. I duck inside and slam down the switch before the automatic lights go on to reveal my hiding place. I skirt the table to the farthest corner of the room and slide down the wall. Hugging my knees, I rock back and forth, wailing inside while trying to keep quiet on the outside.
