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“I hate the rumor mill in Elmer. Loathe it.” Her declaration dripped with venom. “When it goes into overdrive, it can get out of hand. And ugh, I get a little, well, actually a lot, panicky when the rumors are about me.”
“I see.” I didn’t yet, but if she kept talking, I might. One video had her falling apart. I needed to know more.
“No, you don’t yet, but once you live here, you will. If this doesn’t work out—not that I’m betting against us—the rumors will never stop. You and I will hear about that time when we dated until we die. And someone will repost the video of us kissing. It will keep reappearing for decades.”
Decades. Until we die. I linked the words and ideas together in a heartbeat.
“This isn’t about a kissing video, is it?” I voiced the question with a wince. I didn’t want to bring up this topic on our first official date.
“No,” she whispered.
I waited, pulling her tight to my side and pressing a kiss to her temple, willing her to open up to me. Trust in all its forms was what I needed most from her to keep the reminders of Veronica at bay.
“Every year on Brian’s birthday, our anniversary, and,” she took a deep steadying breath, “the day he was killed, people call, message, post, and gossip about what happened. They mean well most of the time. But it hurts, and not just me either. Bailey, his family, my family. It’s our private grief, but it gets trotted out like a favorite holiday movie for the town’s entertainment.”
Silence lingered between us, filled by the low hum of other diners’ conversations and clicking cutlery. I ached for her having to endure the gossip that picked at the scab of an old wound, keeping it fresh. I couldn’t imagine how awful that cycle would be.
“You once told me you’d wondered if Bailey would have been better off growing up somewhere else where people didn’t know her past. This is why, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She played absentmindedly with her oversized steak knife.
“LA is the opposite of Elmer. Big, overcrowded, and superficial. It thrives on rumors too. In a very different way than Elmer does. There, most rumors are malicious. They end careers, marriages, and companies. Here, when people told me about your history, it came from a place of love. They wanted me to understand so I knew how amazing you are.” I squeezed her knee under the table. “You’re a survivor.”
She shook her head at my words, not willing to accept being cast in that role. Yet I knew she was. So did this whole town. And that was why we all loved her.
The realization of the depth of my feelings for her hit not like a shotgun blast but like a single snowflake at the start of a blizzard. One minute it wasn’t snowing, and the next, you were in a whiteout. Poof. Love. I’d felt nothing like it before. It seeped into my bones and flooded my veins. My new normal.
“I want to not care when people talk. I pulled it off the other day at the sheriff’s office when I sprung you.” She raised her eyebrows in a moment of comic relief.
I chuckled. And looking at the woman I loved, my heart raced, every beat thumping her name. She’d ignored the talk for me. Amazing. Humbling.
“It felt pretty badass.” Her crooked smile warmed a place in my chest that had been cold for far too long.
“You are badass. I’d bet one hundred thousand dollars you never let gossip change your course of action when you know you’re making the right choice. Do you?”
She put down the knife and twisted to look at me, blinking slowly as she considered my question.
I raised my eyebrows and waited.
Chapter 28
Cameron
Alifetimeofchoicesand consequences flitted through my mind at warp speed. Every major decision I’d made for most of my life blinked in and out of my consciousness. And as the database of my past actions scrolled through my mind, a startling insight dawned.
The crippling concern for what people might say had never made me compromise when the choice was important. Not once. Oh, I worried about what people said and felt like people were judging me, but I stuck to my guns. I did plenty, despite the gossip. It didn’t control me.
The most recent case in point: me on a date with a freaking billionaire at Bowie’s.
“You’re right.” It surprised the hell out of me, but he was.
“I often am.” He dipped his head for a sweet kiss, brushing our mouths together. Arrogant jerk, but a wonderful one.
I cupped the back of his head, not letting him pull back. I deepened the kiss, my tongue boldly licking the seam of his lips, asking for entrance. He obliged. We kissed until we were breathless, and not once did I think about people watching us. I lived one hundred percent in the moment. Because Wilson Phillips was a hell of a kisser.
He ran a thumb down the length of my neck and over my collarbone. Shifting my thighs together, I fought the liquefaction of my bones from his caress. I wasn’t interested in dinner or talking about gossip anymore. I wanted one thing: Wilson naked. Maybe steak dinners to go would be an option we could investigate.
“Huh, looks like they forgot to light your candle.” Jude removed a match from a book with Bowie’s logo on the cover and struck it.
