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“Hey, hey.” Thorne’s voice rumbled through the night air in front of me, and then I felt his hands pulling on my own, yanking them away from my head and enveloping them in his. “We’ll get through this together, I promise.”
Would we? Because last I checked, we pulled his career out of the gutter, but it seemed we’d just singlehandedly destroyed my parents’ place of business.
“But how?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll fix this. After all,” he offered me a soft smile, “we make a great team.”
“Team?”
“Well, yeah.” He shrugged. “Just look at what we’ve already accomplished. Thanks to us and our relationship, Trainer believes the movie is going to start back soon, and your parents got out of the lawsuit unscathed. We’ve achieved everything we set our minds to in a fraction of the time I thought it would take.”
Something about his words needled under my skin. Or maybe it was the way he referred to us like we were a business transaction that bothered me the most. Then again, wasn’t that exactly what we were?
How had he put it that very first day in the bakery? That he had a business proposition for me?
“You’re forgetting how our being irresponsible has destroyed everything,” I said. “Just look around you. Look at what being distracted has gotten me.”
“We were being teenagers, Scarlett. Two people who were having fun and doing something innocent. Mistakes happen. This wasn’t your fault.”
Two people who were having fun.
The words hit me in the solar plexus.
So much for his claim of feeling something real for me.
“Well, it sure seems like it’s my fault,” I said, shoving down the hurt.
“We weren’t dousing the kitchen in kerosine or leaving the gas on next to a lit flame.”
“We might as well have,” I yelled and waved toward the smoldering remnants of the building, my stomach in knots.
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I glanced away from him, then back again, wondering how he could be so cavalier. “Everything’s so easy for you. You can just screw up right and left with zero consequence because you have money and fame to fall back on. I mean, isn’t that what we’re doing here?” I asked, pointing to my chest. “That’s what started this whole thing, right? You and I. Because you screwed up and earned a crap reputation, you decided you’d fix it with a fake girlfriend, a goody-two-shoes to make you look good. Well, it worked out well for you. Not so much for me.”
He stumbled back like I’d slapped him, and there was a moment where I wanted to take the words back, wished I could shove them back inside and into the dark recesses of my soul. But I couldn’t. And now that they were out there, it felt natural to finish the job. “This isn’t working out for me anymore.”
Thorne’s eyes darkened, and it was a moment before he said, “What are you talking about? This isn’t over.”
I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, unable to look him in the eye. “Listen, things are going well for you. The press loves you right now. Even your agent said they’re looking at starting filming in the next couple weeks. You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m not worried about me,” he snapped.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You really don’t see it?” A vein in his forehead throbbed as he stared me down.
“No. Why don’t you enlighten me?”
He let out a sound that was half a laugh, half bitter. “If I have to tell you, then there’s something wrong with that.”
“You’ll keep the role. Mission accomplished. What more could you want?” I asked, turning my eyes to his, begging, pleading with my own. “It all worked out, just the way you wanted.”
His throat bobbed, and he placed his hand on his hips, his gaze at my feet. “Can you honestly say you got everything you wanted? That you’re done? That the kiss in there,” he motioned toward the direction of the shop, then met my eyes, “meant nothing to you?”
