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“Me either. I thought I’d be watching you on television tonight, not making omelets.”
My eyes felt hot. I could not cry. Not in front of him. Knowing Atticus, he would want to rescue me if he saw how close I was to breaking down, and I could not have that.
“The helicopters and all they represent--that’s what I live with all the time. Nothing’s private. They go through my mail. If we carry on for long, you’ll start to see how awful it is. How you lose all sense of privacy. All sense of what’s real.”
“I’m real. This moment is real.” He patted his chest. “Can we just see where this goes and then decide about the rest?”
The rest. What was the rest? I would go back to LA and leave this fine, good man behind. It was inevitable. The two of us might be forever bonded, but we had no business in each other’s lives. I would only taint him with the dirty, salacious mess my life had become.
“Annie?”
“I’ll ruin your life. Whatever feelings you develop for me will soon be replaced by anger and a great need to run away as fast as you can.”
“Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?” Atticus asked, moving closer and taking my hands. He brought both to his mouth and brushed his lips across my knuckles in an old-fashioned gesture. “We’re here together right now, in this moment.Can we enjoy it? I’ve waited for two decades to look at your pretty face again, not on the screen, but here beside me. In my kitchen. It’s a dream come true.”
I couldn’t help but smile back at his earnest, sweet face. Atticus was a nice guy. Hard to find in my world.
Had I thought Ben was a good man? I’d been so discombobulated by his love bombing, I couldn’t have decided one way or the other. He wanted me. That’s all I’d thought about at the time. He’d vowed never to leave me. He was nothing like my mother, he’d assured me, and yet in the end, he’d done exactly as she had. Cheated and fled.
“If I give in to what I’m feeling,” I said, “when it all ends, I don’t know if I can make it through. Not another one.”
He let go of my hands to brush back my hair. “When I built my company, it was not an overnight success. The same might be said for winning your heart. But I was never one to shy away from a challenge. Stay with me through the holidays. We’ll see what’s here and then decide if a broken heart’s really in our future.”
“You mean another one?”
“It only takes the right love to finally mend a heart,” he said softly. “And if there’s a chance in hell you can love me, I’m going to risk it.”
I breathed in the scent of him, soap and shaving cream in combination with something almost piney, like the forest. “Please don’t hurt me,” I whispered.
“That’s the very last thing in the world I’d ever intentionally do.”
With that, he leaned closer and kissed me. I hadn't thought our first kiss could be improved. I was wrong.
“Tell me about Potter,”Atticus said, pushing aside his now-empty plate. “Did you have any idea he was cheating?”
“None whatsoever.”
We’d finished our dinner and were now sitting at his kitchen table with an open bottle of wine.
“I found out the same time as the rest of the world,” I said. I’d been at my computer looking through paperwork Celeste had sent over from the producers ofThe Betrayalwhen I got a text from her that said:Do not look at internet. On my way over.
Of course that meant I had to look. What had she thought a normal person would do when given that directive?
“I looked. It was one of the worst moments of my life.”
“He is a total idiot,” Atticus said, pouring me more wine.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Maybe a little truth serum never hurt anyone?”
“Have you heard of the termlove bombed?” I asked.
“Is that where someone goes in super strong and showers you with gifts and expressions of love?”
“That’s right.” I hadn't understood at all what was happening at the time. I was so touched by the attention. He’d encouraged me to spend more and more time with him, asking me to change plans with friends so that we could spend time together. I was so naive that I didn’t see it was all control, until I made a decision he didn’t like.
“He didn’t want me to take the part inThe Betrayal,” I said.
