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I tell Brian about the studio, the renovations we’ve got going. “Gwen’s still singing, so we go to Nashville once a week, like she told you.”
“How’s that going?”
She beams. “I’m in talks with a small label about a record deal.”
I can’t help grinning, too.
We talk about the bears—all doing well—and I go through Kellan and Lyon’s story, and Kell and Cleo’s. When I think I’ve given all the facts and have started thinking about peeling Piglet’s little jean shorts off, Brian says, “Just a few more things. I need more details for the character sketches.”
Gwen takes a swig from her water bottle, passes it to me. I take a long swallow.
“I’d— Can you tell me more about when you first came here?” he asks. “You were watching her. What was that like?”
I look down at my boots. It’s something Gwen and I have talked about, of course. But I don’t want to share it.
“You liked her right away?” Brian prompts. “Were drawn to her in some way?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Obsession.”
Brian blinks and glances down at his recorder, then looks up at me intensely. “That’s what you would call it?”
“I just did.”
“Obsessed with the outcome?”
“With her fate, and mine. Obsessed with her. I wanted her from the first time I saw her. When she kicked me, though…” I shake my head. “When we talked in the woods… I— Left. I tried to get away from her because,” I rasp, “it scared me. How I felt for her. It felt…out of hand. I couldn’t stop.”
I wrap an arm around Gwennie and pull her close to me. “I can’t stop loving her. I tried,” I tell him quietly.
“Oh, I tried too,” she chimes in. “After he told me on the mountain. And he left.” I hear the pain in her voice as she remembers the night I hurt her so badly by leaving her with Jamie. Leaving just like Elvie did. It’s on my long list of regrets.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her again now, because I need to. Every time. If there’s an audience or not.
“I don’t blame you, B. You know I don’t.” She strokes my cheek. “Our situation is unusual,” she says to Brian. She smiles. “I guess that’s why you came to me about it.”
He nods. “But what I like the best is how you are together. Not the facts, but you, the people. Characters sell movies. Love stories like this one… People see it as redeeming.”
“It is.” I’m surprised by my own quiet words. I didn’t plan to speak. It happens more since I woke up. I’ll just…say something. Doc says it’s a good thing. That I’m moving further from my old self and becoming more like a civilian.
“Tell me more about that,” Brian says.
I arch my brows and kind of want to kick myself. But I know what he wants. I think I know what he needs more of. I decide to give it to him so he’ll leave and I can fuck my fiancé.
“I did a lot of bad things. Some for the job, and other things because I fucked up as an individual. Like the hit and run.”
“Which you’ve paid a fine for.”
I nod. “And I’ll be doing some community service there before the summer ends.”
A gentle summer breeze drifts through the trees, and I feel Gwenna’s hair against my shoulder. For a second, my eyes close. It’s so damn strange. That this is my life.
I felt so damn dirty when I tracked Gwen down those months ago. So wrecked and ruined. Like I would never, I could never, be clean again. Every time she smiles at me, I feel like I’ve been baptized. Her love cleanses my soul, restores me, in a way I had no fucking clue was possible.
“I have a perfect life,” I tell the man in front of us. I look at Gwen. “One that I don’t deserve. But you can’t earn somebody’s love. It’s given or it isn’t love to start with. I don’t know why this happened to Gwen and me. If it was God or something like that. But it’s one of hell of a coincidence.” I smile at Gwen. “We’re going to spend our lives together, and this—it’s just the start. It’s just the first chapter of our story,” I say, giving Brian a funny look, then smiling back at Gwen. I can’t help it. “After the movie is over, our story will still be going. Just the two of us.”
