by Nicole Helm
He didn’t sit. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, glaring. Hope fizzled a little.
“Aubrey has a proposal, if you’ll consider it.”
“I’ll consider a proposal from you. From her? Hell no.”
His eyes met hers, and she looked for some softness, some care. Some kind of smoothed line or relaxed fist that would allow her to believe he cared.
“Aubrey is part of my team. A proposal from her is a proposal from me.”
Nothing.
“It’s simple, really,” Aubrey began. “You come to LA with us. We’re going to do an interview with a big talk show host, not sure which one yet, and you’ll be a part of it. The ex-husband still desperately in love. You brought Celia here, not with blackmail, but something softer. We build up the image we’ve already got of Celia with you to counter whatever Cathy says. We’ll say you wanted to reconcile and you used your show to do it. We’ll give you that publicity no problem.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Consider it our gift to you.” She smiled, not at all pleasantly, and Celia wanted to turn away, but Aubrey pressed on. “In return, you play up the role of high school sweetheart. Midwestern hunk. Throw in a lot of gosh and golly gee. We’ll do flannel, maybe a little scruff. Cowboy boots, yeah?” Aubrey typed something into her tablet; all the while, Ryan’s knuckles grew whiter and whiter.
“You’ll corroborate our counter-story to Celia’s mother’s version. That way it’s not just her word against ours and we can gain some sympathy points if you talk about everything you witnessed as Celia’s boyfriend when she was being abused. We can really show that the kidney thing wasn’t nasty. It was fair and maybe, just maybe, we avoid the fallout and win mostly sympathy.”
“By lying.” Celia couldn’t name all the emotions she saw in his face. Frustration. Anger. She’d known he would react that way, and yet…
She’d hoped he might do this thing for her, even if it wasn’t something he’d wanted. Hell, she didn’t want it. Sometimes a person had to do what they didn’t want to get what they did, though.
“We’re embellishing the truth a bit. I’d hardly call it lying, especially considering whatever crap Cathy spews. You get a free trip to LA out of the deal, and the chance for you and Celia to do…whatever. That’s your business.”
“Is it?”
Celia couldn’t remember a time she’d ever seen him so…cold, his tone, his delivery, all so mild and emotionless.
He took a deep breath. “As wonderful as it sounds to walk around LA pretending to be some Podunk, lovesick asshole, I’m going to have to pass.”
Celia looked at her clasped hands. She’d known that was going to be his answer. Known it completely, and yet disappointment and hurt swelled up in her chest, an unhappy tide of pain.
Then he moved to stand directly in front of her so she was forced to look up into those determined green depths. He took her hand and the disappointment stilled, held its breath. Please. Please change your mind. Right here. Right now.
“What is the point in going back to LA?” He asked, searching her face. “Your mother is here. Fight her here. With me. Not with lies and pretending to be people we’re not. You and me. It’s all that matters. We can work something out if we’re ourselves, but pretending is never going to get us anything.”
Then disappointment washed over her again, because even if they could work things out, so much more mattered than just them. To him, this place and his family, they were everything, and she admired him for it.
But he did not feel the same way about the things that mattered to her. Whether it was right or not, she needed to pretend to live her life. She was nothing without her pretending, and she’d never get him to see that this wasn’t enough.
“She—and you—need to be on our own turf where I can control what goes down and what people see,” Aubrey interceded. “Being here doesn’t do a damn thing for Celia’s image.”
“Lying for her image doesn’t do anything for her. Not her. This isn’t guerrilla warfare. Who gives a shit about turf?”
“Obviously, you don’t know a thing about publicity,” Aubrey returned.
“I want her gone.” Ryan pointed at the door, but his gaze never left her. “I want to talk to you. You.”
The emphasis on the second you was so deliberate Celia had to look away. Because it cut to the heart of what she was struggling with. Which piece of herself did she choose? The dream who was only a facade? Or the nightmare who was real and loved? She had thought she could combine them, but what a fool she had been.
The nightmare didn’t stand a chance, even against love. “Aubrey, give us a few. Maybe head to the hotel?”
“If you’re going to brush me off, change your mind—”
“I won’t. I’ll be there by nine. Just let me finish this in private.”
“Fine.” Aubrey collected her things and Celia had to give her credit for leaving quickly, as quickly as she’d breezed in, upending all the things Celia was just starting to get a handle on.
“Finish it, huh?”
“Finish this conversation, yes.” Finish them…well, she couldn’t think about that or she’d get teary. She had to focus. To tell him what she needed, the way she hadn’t when she’d left before. To give them a chance to make it right.
And if he didn’t take that, it’d be a good-bye. Please don’t.
“I need you to compromise.” She stood, and this time she took his hand, looked him right in the eye, and put every last piece of her heart into the plea. “I need you to give a little. I know it’s not your first impulse. It isn’t mine either, to bring you into this. But I don’t have a lot of choices.”
He squeezed her hand, eyes blazing with certainty. “You have so many choices. Pretending is not a choice. It’s hiding. If there’s some chance in hell this could work, I need you to be you. I need you to not ask me to lie or pretend. The only chance we have is if we’re us. Not fake us.”
“It wouldn’t have to be fake all the time. And what would you lose lying a little? Playing a part a little? It’d mean a chance for us, isn’t that something worth sacrificing just a little for?” She needed it to be. Needed him to show her she was worth that.
“I’m not pretending to be something I’m not so you can get a few more fluffy roles. If you want an us, do this my way. I need to be more important than your image.”
He didn’t understand. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe pretending, acting, lying, it was just out of the realm of what he could do. Maybe there just wasn’t a way to make this work.
Ryan stood in front of her, hands still grasping hers, eyes never leaving her face. “Stay. Let’s figure this out together.”
She swallowed down the despair and the nagging feeling they couldn’t find middle ground. One last shot. “I’m asking you to come to LA and figure it out with me there.”
“So your handlers can tell me what to do and who to be? So I can watch them do the same to you? I’m not going to be a part of your circus. I’m not going to pretend at a shot for you when I want it to be real. Do what you didn’t do then. Stay.”
“Do what you didn’t do then. Compromise. Don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“I didn’t make a mistake in the first place!” He dropped her hands and flung his own into the air. “I wanted to be your husband. I did everything I could to give us a better life. I wasn’t going to compromise that.”
“That tells me everything I need to know. I thought we’d realized we both made mistakes. But you still think of yourself as the hero, and that’s not what I need or want. So good-bye, Ryan. Give my regrets to Vivvy and Nate, and I hope you’ll forget the blackmail. You can contact my people about the annulment. I’m…done.”
He sneered at the already packed bags she pulled onto her shoulder. “Just like before. You don’t trust me. You don’t believe in me. You want this to be about compromise, but it’s not. I was willing to compromise. To visit you. For you to visit me. This isn’t about comprom
ise. It’s about your inability to put your faith in me. It’s you.”
“You know what, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am the problem, because I want someone who will bend at least a little bit for me, who will stand beside me even if it means pretending a little. I should have known all along that was never going to be you.” She marched past him, too devastated to cry. In the wake of her devastation, she was nobody. And that felt pretty damn perfect at the moment.
Chapter Sixteen
Celia watched as Kansas disappeared under the clouds. She was leaving two planes, an unfinished reality show, and so many pieces of her heart behind she was nothing but an aching, throbbing sack of hurt.
But this time she’d said her good-byes, and she’d given Ryan a chance. He’d accepted neither and that was not on her. Not one bit.
“All right. We’re in the air. Time for you to make some choices. I’ve got some interest from three big players, but we need to make a choice and put our terms together. Who were you thinking for the interview?”
Celia wasn’t interested in making any choices. The one she picked would inevitably be the wrong one. That was the lesson of the month. Year. Decade. “Pick one.”
“Don’t start this pouty crap,” Aubrey snapped. “You pick one. You’re the boss.”
“So you can tell me all the ways the one I pick is the wrong one, and the one you pick is the right one, and how could I not see that John Granger is a more sympathetic interviewer than Patsy Jane.”
“Don’t take your broken heart out on me. I’m not the jerk who said no to helping. I’m busting my ass to help, and not just because I’m your publicist, Celia. I didn’t have to come to this hellhole, but I did because I’m your friend.”
Celia didn’t dare look at Aubrey, fearful that her friend’s anger and frustration might actually rub off on her and she’d have to feel something. Taking off from the private airport outside of Topeka was her starting point to not feel anything. Ever again. She could fake it for the cameras. “I thought I paid you to tell me what to do.”
Maybe when she got home she’d sell the mansion. She’d hire a real estate agent to find her a new place. It would be something sight unseen, small and cozy, where she could hide herself away from the harsh, demanding lights of Hollywood once they found out what she really was.
Celia clenched her fists when she realized she was picturing Ryan’s house instead of some unknown place in the middle of some strange new land. Demo might be strange, but it certainly wasn’t new. It was the damn beginning of this stupid circle that was her life.
“You are really trying every last nerve.” Aubrey tapped her fingers against her ever-present tablet.
“So quit.” Celia waved a regal hand. She had to enjoy being regal while she could afford it, too. “Or give yourself a raise. I really don’t care.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed you don’t. You know what you did care enough to do? Start this whole mess. So how about you care enough to fix it?”
Celia shrugged and thought yet again about firing Aubrey, about firing everybody. Just letting the whole Celia Grant empire implode.
But then she’d be left with no one.
Pathetic.
Aubrey wasn’t giving up. Aubrey still pushed where no one else would. Celia squeezed her eyes shut. She was not going to think about Ryan. Not today. Not ever again. “I said I’d do the interview. I don’t know why you keep yelling at me.”
“Because you’re sitting there like a robot. You’re not getting involved at all. I might be orchestrating this counterattack, but I need you to make it work. I need Celia Grant to make it work.”
“Maybe I’m tired of Celia Grant.”
“See? It’s shit like that. You don’t want to be Celia Grant, you should have stayed in Kansas with your husband. But you said sayonara and now you’re here. So don’t sit there like a bump on a log. Participate.”
Celia just shrugged, knowing it would piss Aubrey off even further, but she was just so far past caring about, well, anything. Let it all blow up in her face. Let Ryan not change at all. What was the damn point?
“Bottom line, you have two choices. Keep doing what you’re doing. Let your career and life fall apart because your mother is a vindictive bitch and your dead father was an abusive asshole. Let everything you worked your ass off for disappear because the guy you’re mooning over didn’t make some grand declaration of love before you left.”
“That’s enough.”
Aubrey snickered. “Well, there is a little backbone in there left after all. Good. Use it. Use it and choose the other option.”
Celia sighed, examined her fingernails with a bored expression. “And what is that, Aubrey? Make a bunch of decisions, only to have someone tell me they’re the wrong ones. Do some heartfelt interview and pour my guts out in front of the whole world. Save a bunch of little pieces of what used to be a career. Have everyone’s perception of me change, and everyone know exactly everything I dealt with, everything I did in response. Have all those things I ran away from magnified by millions because they won’t just be in my own head anymore.”
“What makes you think you’re not strong enough to do that? What makes you think that the real you under the fake version isn’t worth having some kind of say?”
“What makes you not understand I don’t want to go back to the worst place of my life and, not just remember, but remember on national TV? You’ve been here from the beginning. You created Celia Grant with me. What changed?”
“You stopped being happy.”
Celia snorted. “What are you talking about?”
“Ever since the Oscar, you’ve been moody and directionless. You haven’t even signed on for another movie! You reached all your goals and then maybe you realized you wanted more.”
“What the hell more is there?”
“Uh, being happy. Let me add ‘duh’ to the end of that concept.”
“I have everything I ever wanted.”
“But you’re not happy.”
“What is people’s sudden obsession with happiness?” Ryan had asked her the same stupid thing. Happiness was fine and dandy, but it was no great washer-away of pain and memories.
Except the past two days with Ryan had been kind of nice, even with the memories and the pain. Thinking they’d changed, that bittersweet aching hope of a future even knowing it was so far-fetched. There had been a goodness to it. Except it didn’t matter because he couldn’t give her anything. Not one inch.
…
It didn’t matter how bruised her heart was, how much she dreaded reliving the past. No, none of that mattered. In fact, if there was anything the past few days taught her it was that she could survive rehashing the past. Maybe even healing parts of it, or at least trying to.
That was something she should have realized and owned a long time ago.
She could survive any damn thing.
“Let’s do Dia Walker’s show. She was abused, and she talks about it pretty openly. Maybe…that would make things…easier.”
“Thatta girl,” Aubrey said, patting Celia’s knee before frantically tapping away at her tablet and phone alternately. “Maybe live? Really boost the appeal?”
“Yeah, sure.” Celia took a deep breath, watched out the plane window. She was on her way to LA. And on her way to herself. That might have been a victory if she wasn’t so alone or so stupidly heartbroken all over again.
…
Ryan stood in front of the TV, remote in hand, debating. It would be stupid to watch it. If he watched it, saw her on the screen, listened to her talk about her childhood, about him…
It would be a stupid thing to do because he wouldn’t be content to just sit on the sidelines. He’d want to do something. Fix something. Fix them.
And she’d made her choice, made it clear she didn’t want that.
Since when do you care about that? The little voice had been poking at him for a week now, but he’d ignored it. He’d buried himself in filming the show and then wo
rking his ass off to drum up more customers for their hangars-for-lease. Not because they needed it, but because he needed something to throw his mind into while Vivvy scrambled for a way to make the show work.
What a joke. Failure was like a stain he couldn’t wash away. How could he not have found a way to make her stay? How could he not have found a way to make it work? Why couldn’t he ever make a damn thing work?
Before he was done berating himself, before he could fully talk himself into or out of turning on the TV, a knock sounded at the door. Before he could answer it, Nate and Vivvy were walking in.
“What are you two doing here?”
Vivvy went right over to his couch and settled in. “Supporting you.”
“Supporting me what?”
Nate slid in next to her, draping his arm over her shoulders. “Whatever it is you need.” Then looked pointedly at the remote in Ryan’s hand.
Ryan scowled. “Not necessary.”
They shrugged in unison. Christ, were they just going to do everything in tandem now that they were engaged?
“Just because it isn’t necessary doesn’t mean we’re not going to do it.” Vivvy nodded at the TV. “Turn it on. I don’t want to miss the opening.”
Ryan opened his mouth to argue, but hell, what was the point? What was the point of turning away people who cared about him? He could admit it now that that’s part of what he’d come back for. Family.
He dropped into his recliner and clicked the power button, flipped to the right channel. He tried not to feel the nerves Celia must be feeling.
Failing at it.
Dia Walker appeared on the screen. She introduced Celia Grant—the successful movies she’d done, her Oscar win. Flashing pictures of a smiling, beautiful Celia. And then the screen went dark. “But with all Celia’s fame and success, it turns out the woman we all thought was America’s Sweetheart has a past we never expected.”
The screen turned to the opening to Dia Walker’s show and Ryan had to swallow down the uncomfortable closing feeling in his throat.
The scene opened in some kind of living room. Dia introduced it as Celia’s living room, a big leather couch, some stuffy-looking paintings. It looked like a set. Staged. Anything but a home.
