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“Shit. I’m sorry.” I take his hand, unsure what other comfort I can offer except the knowledge I won’t let him go like his useless excuse of a father did.
“But the fish thing is valid, too.”
He makes me smile, despite everything. “As is my offer of protecting you.”
“Well, maybe I’ll paddle.”
“I’ll take that,” I say, as I peck a kiss to his lips and, suddenly, everything feels as it should again.
I don’t need William to tell me he loves me. I just need him…and I have him. He’s here. He’s given me so much of himself, and I can wait for the rest. One day, he’ll have been mine for twenty years and the idea that he took some extra time to repeat three words will seem irrelevant. We’re together. That’s all that matters, and that’s what keeps the smile on my face when I leave him on the terrace to take a shower and get dressed. Us. Our future. All the pages we get to fill.
I could never imagine it would be so short-lived.
“What is it?” I press as soon as I return from the bedroom, towelling through my damp hair. I find William in the kitchen, leaning over the counter, all colour drained from his face. “William, what’s wrong?”
“That was Lucy,” he says, nodding toward his phone on the counter. “Becca’s in the hospital. She fell getting out of the loft. What was she doing in the fucking loft?” he adds, more to himself than me.
“Oh my God. Is she okay?”
“Uh, yeah. Well, no. Broken leg and something about a herniated disc in her spine. I need to go home.”
My pulse starts to quicken, thudding in my ears. Being a selfish bastard, Rebecca Walker is lying in hospital with broken bones and all I can think about is whether I’m losing him. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Ned’s staying close by. I’ll get him to arrange a car to take us to the airport.”
“No. You stay,” he says, never meeting my gaze.
I’m sure, in that moment, I die a little inside. “William…”
“This is my family, Laurence. I need to deal with it alone.” He starts making his way through the villa, toward the bedroom, making my heart sink into my stomach when he strolls right past me. But then he stops, turns back and grabs my arm. “You’ve got the festival. It’s important.”
“Not as important as you.”
With his grip on my arm, he spins me to face him and kisses me. Hard. And I take it all in, the roughness of his stubble on my lips, the taste of coffee on my tongue, the scent of his skin and the wetness of his mouth…because I have an almost debilitating feeling that I won’t experience this again for a while.
He breaks away too soon, resting his forehead on mine. “Call Ned,” he says…and then he’s gone, disappearing into the bedroom, taking the biggest piece of me with him to date. A piece so instrumental to who I am, I don’t think I recognise myself without him anymore.
Two days later…
“We can’t wait any longer, kid. They already sent Trent off before you.”
I nod in response to Andy, but my eyes are still glued to my phone screen. Nothing happens. It doesn’t light up. Doesn’t ping. Same as the last thousand times I’ve checked it. Sighing, I tuck it into my jacket pocket.
“Ready?”
Again, I nod, and Andy signals go to the driver up front. We make our way round to the front of the convention centre, pulling up alongside the red carpet. As I always do, I take a few seconds to stretch my neck, breathe, and fix my smile in place before stepping out into the circus.
“Good luck out there,” Andy says. “See you inside.”
The car door is opened for me, breaking the sound barrier. The noise is incredible, my name being yelled in a thousand different voices, accents from all over the globe.
“Laurence! Over here, Laurence!”
“This way, Laurence!”
“Little to the side, Laurence!”
That’s just photographers. Scores of fans crowd the barriers, screaming, chanting, crying. They wave and hold things out for me, each one trying to stretch a little further than the last in the hopes I’ll choose them. It would be easy to ignore them today, to fake smile and pose and throw up a few waves before disappearing up the carpet-lined steps, but I’m pretty sure Andy would end my life.
So, I follow the drill. Approach the barriers, shake some hands, sign some posters, smile for some selfies, and make some girls cry before heading over to the dude with the microphone for my brief carpet interview. He asks me how I’m doing. I lie, say fantastic. He wants to know about Fractured, my movie that’s premiering here today, and I feed him some bullshit lines I learned in my media training…and then Shelley Zhou, my co-star arrives on the carpet and my time is, thankfully, up.
