by L. A. Witt
He grunted softly and kept doing that. After a moment, though, he sighed and let me go. While I poured my coffee, he leaned against the counter and sipped his own. “It’s weird to be leaving. Feels like I’ve been here longer than three days.”
“I know, right? I’m going to miss you.”
“Well, not for long.” He grinned. “You’re still coming to LA, right?”
“You better believe it.” I screwed the lid onto my travel mug and set it next to my wallet and keys. Then I faced him and rested my hands on the counter, bracketing him between my arms. “I’m really glad we did this.”
“Me too.” He put the coffee cup down again and draped his arms over my shoulders. “I didn’t expect this weekend to turn out like this at all, but now it seems like this is exactly how things should have played out.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Exactly.” I kissed him softly. “Can’t wait to do it again.”
“Neither can I.”
We shared a long, gentle kiss. Not one that would have us stumbling back up to the bedroom, though. Of course even looking at him or touching him turned me on, but we really did have to get going soon, which meant there was no time for another roll in the hay.
Adam broke the kiss and glanced at the clock. With a heavy sigh, he met my gaze. “We should get moving. I don’t want you getting in trouble at work.”
“Yeah. And you’re probably going to hit some traffic.”
“I live in LA, hon.” He winked. “I can handle the traffic.”
“I know you can. But if you want to make your flight, you might want to start hitting it sooner than later.”
“Ugh. You and your logic.” We separated, and he finished his coffee and rinsed the mug while I collected my lunch and everything else.
Lola was in the backyard, and I called her in so I could put her harness on.
“You take her to work with you?” he asked.
“No, she goes to doggy daycare.”
“Doggy day—that’s a thing?”
“Yeah.” I chuckled as I clipped her leash to her harness. “I thought it was kind of ridiculous, too, but honestly it keeps her happy and gives her something to do besides destroy my house.”
“Sounds like it’s worth it, then.”
“So much.”
We gathered our things, and I led Lola out to the car. After I’d buckled her in, I left the driver door open so she could still have some air while I said goodbye to Adam.
He’d just finished putting his suitcase into the backseat of his rental, and turned to me. “I can’t wait to see you again.”
“Neither can I.” Though we were out in the open, this wasn’t a very busy street, so I didn’t worry too much about stealing a brief kiss.
And then, all too quickly, we were in our respective cars. We waved, headed off in opposite directions, and our weekend together was over.
I sighed, feeling a weird combination of sad and giddy. I hated that our time together was over, but I was ridiculously happy that it had happened. And that we would see each other again. That he wanted to see me again.
We’d work out those details soon. For now, my normal life waited, and I had to somehow pull my head out of the clouds and get back to it.
Fifteen minutes after I’d left the house, I dropped Lola off at doggy daycare. The first couple of times, she’d been uncertain, and she’d kept glancing back at me. Leaving her there had been heartbreaking. These days? She was off and running before I’d even finished signing her in.
“Bye, Lola,” I called out to her with a laugh. She didn’t notice. She was already chasing Burt, a young Black Lab who was galloping around with a big stick in his mouth. Yeah, I wasn’t too worried about leaving her here anymore.
Chuckling to myself, I went back to the car. As I walked, my phone buzzed, and I had a text from Julian.
So what did you do this weekend? Hmm?
I furrowed my brow. Okay, kind of weird. He’d asked me last week if I wanted to go to Portland with him and a couple of friends, but I’d bowed out without much explanation.
Well, I didn’t have time to call him now because I needed to get my butt to work, so I just texted back, Nothing much. You?
Then I put the phone on the passenger seat and drove across town to the clinic, all the while humming to myself and grinning like an idiot. I’d have to check airfare during my break today. How much was it to book a last-minute plane ticket? I didn’t fly often, and usually planned way ahead, so I had no idea. Could I afford to go see Adam sooner than later? Like maybe next weekend? That wouldn’t be too soon for him, would it?
I thought about the gleam in his eyes when we’d talked about seeing each other again, and the disappointment when we’d finally had to say goodbye. Nah, he probably wouldn’t mind if I showed up that soon. Hopefully.
I parked outside the clinic, and when I picked up my phone, I had three more texts.
From Julian: Mm-hmm. Nothing much. Call me, girl. I want deets.
From Quinn: OMG CALL ME.
From Julian again: Don’t hold out on me, baby.
Something twisted in the pit of my stomach. What the hell was going on?
I gathered my coffee and lunch and hurried into the clinic. My phone buzzed in my pocket. When I walked into the reception area, Phoebe and Christina looked up from Phoebe’s computer screen and shot me wide-eyed looks. My phone buzzed again.
Heart thumping, I stopped at the desk. “What’s going on?”
“We were going to ask you the same thing,” Phoebe said.
Christina gestured at the screen, and Phoebe turned it so I could see when I leaned over the desk.
And my heart stopped.
Has America’s Loneliest Sweetheart Finally Found Love?
Below that were two pictures of Adam and me. I instantly knew when they had been taken—one was while we’d been talking about something on the Underground tour. The second was in that moment on the same tour when I’d leaned in to suggest the restaurant where we’d ultimately eaten lunch. Of course it had been snapped at an angle that it didn’t look like I was just discreetly talking to him. It looked like I was kissing him on the cheek.
Oh.
Fuck.
“Are these real?” Christina asked.
“Uh. Yeah.” I cleared my throat, which suddenly felt tighter than it should have. “Could you send me that link?”
“Sure. Will do.” Phoebe started to say something else, but I hurried past the desk and into the back.
I shared an office with Alicia, and thank God she didn’t come in until later. I closed the door, dropped my lunch bag and keys on the desk, and sat down to check my email. Phoebe had sent the link already. With my heart in my throat and my stomach queasy, I ignored my phone—which was buzzing yet again—and clicked the link.
Under the photos, the caption read, Actor Adam Jacobsen, 28, gets cozy with a man who is believed to be Brian Stewart, 34, whom Jacobsen dedicated his Best Actor Filmmaker Association Award to last month.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I groaned into the silence of the office. I scrolled down.
…spotted together in Seattle on the famous Bill Speidel's Underground Tour…
…when asked, reportedly denied who he was…
…notoriously secretive about his private life…
It was the usual tabloid shit where they speculated about the underlying meaning of every gesture and expression a celebrity made. They’d all decided a long time ago that Adam was painfully lonely and in dire need of a boyfriend, so clearly if we were seen in public together, it was only a matter of time before we eloped. Fucking idiots.
And then I reached this paragraph:
Stewart, a nurse from Everett, Washington, appeared with Jacobsen on Los Angeles This Morning last month, apparently meeting the actor for the first time since a fateful encounter at a diner where Jacobsen worked. Since then, Jacobsen has dodged questions about whether the men have remained in contact, but it appears they have.
> I swallowed bile. They only knew a few details about me—my age, my job, and my city—but it was enough to make me ill. Had they gleaned that information from the talk show? Had someone done some digging? Christ, what did they—
The phone on my desk screeched to life, nearly sending me toppling out of my chair. It was an outside call, so I put on my best professional voice and picked it up.
“Family Health, this is—”
“Is this article for real?” My sister, Holly, didn’t waste time with greetings. “Are you really dating Adam Jacobsen?”
I blew out a breath and covered my face with my free hand. “It’s… the pictures aren’t…”
“But that’s really you? And him?”
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard, dropping my hand to my lap. “He visited over the weekend. But that picture”—I waved at the screen as if she might see it—“looks like I’m kissing him or something, and I totally wasn’t.” At least, not right then. Did a lot more than kiss him behind closed doors. But out in public… in front of cameras… “Fuck.”
“Wow. I didn’t even realize you guys were still in touch. After the talk show and all that.”
“Yeah, we are. We didn’t get to talk much that day. They pretty much shoved us out on the stage together, and as soon as it was over, he got dragged off to catch a flight. What you saw on the show is literally all the interaction we had.”
“Seriously?” The wrinkle of her nose was almost audible. “That’s kind of shitty for them to fly you all the way there and just give you ten minutes.”
“I know, right? So, we decided we wanted to actually see each other again.”
“I get that.” She was quiet for a moment, and then softly—almost cautiously—asked, “So, are you dating him?”
I closed my eyes. “No. We’re just friends. Hell, we barely know each other.” I didn’t want to deny what was going on with Adam, and it felt gross to lie about it. What else could I do, though? If I let it slip to anyone that we were dating, all it would take was one person to let it slip to someone else. Right now, the media was just speculating. If I confirmed it…
“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about the article,” she said. “Things like this die down pretty fast. As soon as some actress has a baby or someone cheats on someone, everyone will forget about you and Adam.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” I muttered.
“Trust me. Anyway, I just had to ask because everyone is talking about this.”
I groaned again.
“Sorry,” she said. “Don’t sweat it, though, okay? And are you guys going to keep hanging out?”
Well, I thought we were. I moistened my lips. “I don’t know. Hanging out with him was fun, but he’s a busy guy.” A busy guy constantly hunted by the paparazzi. “So, we’ll see.”
We talked for a moment longer, until she had to go take her kids to school. After we’d hung up, I stared at the screen. At the photos of Adam and me. They were completely innocent moments, and someone had made them skeevy. Or maybe I was just overreacting. Reading even more into it than this damn reporter had.
I’d spent a good portion of the weekend naked and sweaty with Adam. I’d relieved him of his virginity and made him come so hard he’d teared up. We’d kissed, talked, fucked, cuddled, showered. There’d been so many deeply intimate moments that, thank God, hadn’t made it into a camera lens.
But somehow the shot of me whispering to him, angled just right to imply I was doing more than suggesting a place for lunch, was violating. It made me sick that someone was getting clicks by exploiting a lucky camera angle. My skin crawled at the thought of thousands—possibly millions—of people looking at that photo and speculating about my relationship with Adam.
My email pinged. It was from Phoebe, and it was just the words here’s another one followed by a link.
I couldn’t help myself and clicked. It was more of the same. Different wording, but the same conclusions—that someone had busted me stealing a kiss on Adam’s cheek, and so clearly we were madly in love.
A few paragraphs down, my breath hitched.
The couple reportedly connected via social media after the Filmmaker Association Awards. Stewart tweeted to Jacobsen that he had the autograph mentioned in the acceptance speech, and it would seem that the rest is history.
My mouth went dry. It didn’t bother me that the narrative wasn’t quite accurate. Adam and I had connected on Twitter, but the only thing in public was a single semi-cryptic tweet.
A tweet that was embedded in the article. With a live link.
I picked up my phone and ignored the dozen or so texts vying for attention. I opened the Twitter app.
You have got to be kidding me.
Last night I’d had maybe two hundred followers. Some friends, but mostly other dog lovers and Seahawks fans.
Today I had almost a thousand followers. And my mentions? Oh my God. I took one look at the three-digit number, and closed the app. I put my phone aside, planted my palms on my cool desktop, and took a few slow, deep breaths.
Oh God.
What do I do now?
Chapter 21
Adam
Uh, honey? You want to tell me what’s going on?
The message from Vanessa made my blood turn cold. I had just finished turning in my rental car and was waiting for the shuttle to departures. Her text had been the first thing to pop up on the screen.
Heart thumping, I wrote back, About?
The shuttle stopped, and I boarded. By the time I’d taken my seat, Vanessa had replied. The message was nothing but a link, and the preview almost made me throw up. Though it was a tiny thumbnail, it only took a glance to make out my face. And Brian’s.
Oh. God. No.
Gut taut with horror, I tapped the link. It was nothing I hadn’t ever read before. They’d said the same things—almost verbatim aside from the parts about the autograph and the talk show—about me and Casey Davis after we’d had the audacity to grab coffee last fall. Casey was used to that kind of thing too, and we’d had a damn good laugh about it.
But Brian… fuck.
I closed the article and was just about to send him a text when he beat me to it.
Did you see the article?
I winced. Oh yeah, I’d seen it. Still cringing, I wrote back, Yeah. I’m sorry. :(
It was stupid, but I didn’t know what else to say.
The next message came from Vanessa: So, are you seeing this guy?
With anyone else, I might’ve snapped back that it was none of her fucking business, but part of her job was running interference with things like this. She and my publicist were way better than I was at responding to rumors, so she was well within her rights to demand answers out of me.
The shuttle stopped in front of my airline. I collected my things and got out, secretly grateful for something to occupy me for a minute or two while I figured out how to respond.
Inside the airport, I stood out of the flow of traffic with my back to a wall, propped my suitcase against my leg, and wrote back: publicly, no. b/w you & me, yes.
I glanced at the check-in line. It wasn’t all that long, and I still had a solid three hours, so I hung back for a moment to wait for a response from Vanessa. I really wasn’t in the mood for someone to read over my shoulder right now.
She didn’t text back. She called.
“Really?” She sounded curious, not confrontational. “You guys are a thing?”
I looked around, making sure no one was within earshot. “Yeah.”
“Since when?”
“Since I came up to Seattle to see him this weekend.”
“Wow. And here I thought I was imagining you ogling him on Los Angeles This Morning.”
Any other time, I would’ve laughed, but I just felt sicker.
“So you really want to keep this quiet?” She sounded like she was wincing as she spoke.
“I need to,” I whispered. “He’s not used to this kind of thing.”
“I get th
at. I do.” Vanessa sighed heavily. “But you know that’s not how it works, right? Even if you two weren’t on the radar already, things like this don’t stay a secret.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I know. I… I know. But I need to talk to him, and… and…” Exhaling, I dropped my hand and let my head fall back against the wall. “I don’t know. I don’t want to deny it because I don’t want him to think I’m embarrassed of him, but I don’t want… fuck. I don’t know what to do.”
Something clicked rhythmically in the background. She was probably tapping a pen like she always did when she was thinking. “When are you going to talk to him again?”
“As soon as I can. I need to check in for my flight, but I was going to call him after we’re done talking.”
“Okay. Good. Listen, Rachael and I will drag our feet a bit on making a statement. That should buy you some time to touch base with him. Then let us know how much you want to make public, and we’ll go from there.”
I slowly pushed out a breath, thankful for the millionth time that I had her and Rachael. They were way savvier in dealing with the media, and they could be objective about things when I was too emotional. “Okay. He’s at work right now, so I don’t know when he’ll be available, and I’m flying out soon, so—”
“Are you going to be back in LA tonight?”
“Yeah. I get in this afternoon.”
“Perfect. Text me when you get home, and we’ll talk, okay?”
“Okay. Okay. Yeah. I can do that.”
“All right. Go get checked in. Safe travels, sweetie.”
“Thanks.”
We hung up, and I stared at the darkened screen. Vanessa and Rachael were getting some seriously fat bonuses this year. Without them, I’d be—
My phone came to life with another text, startling me so badly I almost dropped it.
Brian had written: I don’t even know how to process this.
I flinched. Suddenly I needed to do more than just text him, so without a second thought, I sent the call.
He picked up immediately. “Hey. I’m between patients, so I can’t talk long.”
“That’s okay.” I swallowed. “Listen, I’m sorry about this. I had no idea they’d sell—”
