“I love you too,” she replied without pause. My heart ached.
“I need to be honest with you,” I began, trying to relax the most I could. “The three years I spent away from you were hell, they were literally the worst. I spent so much time thinking about you. When your first movie came out, I went and saw it every day it was in theaters just so I could see your face,” I said, not feeling embarrassed about it anymore. “I spent so much time thinking about you, hoping you were happy, wanting to talk to you, missing you…” I continued.
She looked like she was being careful with her heart. I could tell she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I spent so much time wondering what would have happened if I went to New York with you, or if I tried to actually get in contact with you. I spent so much time wondering if I could have kept all of this from happening if I just told you sooner. If I let you know I knew what was going on in your life. If I had actually kept you safe instead of purposefully keeping myself on the outside,” I continued on, the words just bursting outside of me now.
“Spending time with you for the last couple days, just eating junk food and joking around. Getting to kiss you, getting to talk to you, it’s all been more than I could ever hope for, it’s been amazing,” I said. I paused to think of how exactly I should phrase it. Brooklyn took my hand in hers and held it tight.
“I’m not ready for it to be over,” I said, not able to make eye contact with her. She ran her fingers over my hand, soothing, and it guided me along. “I know it’s selfish, and it’s awful, but I can’t just let you walk out of my life,” I said, feeling the guilt rise over me like a tidal wave.
“I love you, and I want to stay with you,” I explained, breathing out a sigh of breath as I finally got it off my chest. I squeezed her hand and looked up at her face, finally, wanting to see what she thought. She leaned over to me and caught me off guard by kissing me.
25
Brooklyn
When I woke up, Adam was turning on the shower.
I was relieved that he wasn’t already gone. I had dreams of us running off together, of us going literally anywhere in the world together, anywhere but here. Waking up to the stark reality of the decision we had made felt like being hit by a truck.
It felt like I was losing a part of myself.
So when he sat down and sweetly explained his feelings to me, I felt like he had plucked his fingers through my dreams himself. It was like he had seen into my very mind and spoke my thoughts. As I kissed him, I tried to ease his heart, tried to undo just part of the pain we had been through in the last couple years.
“I am worried about ruining your career,” he mumbled as we broke our kiss. I wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.
“I hate acting,” I admitted, shrugging and feeling my face contort into an odd sad smile. “I hate it; they treat me like a commodity to make them look good. I’m the one whose public image is on trial, I’m the one who has to keep up a certain look and lifestyle. I’m the one who has to have cameras on me all the time. Yet, they treat me like a trained monkey who should get paid less than even a secondary character, just because he’s well known and a dude in his thirties,” I said, finally getting that complaint off my chest.
It was true. I had spent so much time on set, so much time in the sun or a forest being sunburned or bug bitten. I was their doll to pose as they wanted. In the beginning it was nice to not have to control my own life. It was nice to have someone else take the reins for me. In the end though, it was just empty. It left me not knowing who I was, not sure I wanted to know.
Here, though, with Adam with me I felt truly alive. I felt like I had run out of the fog that covered my life and had found myself on the other side. I wasn’t just falling in love with Adam, I was falling in love with myself all over again, getting to know the woman I was. I was glad to have Adam with me while I made these discoveries, while I found out how much I had grown.
He looked surprised.
“Honestly, I spent so much time wondering what you’d think of me. I was worried you’d think I was fake or plastic, or that I was letting it all get to my head,” I added.
“My career is already dead as far as I’m concerned,” I explained.
“That doesn’t mean you need to throw the rest of your life away for me,” he started, but I wasn’t having it.
“My parents are dead, my aunt is a piece of shit, and literally the only person I have in the world that I truly care about, that I truly love, is you.” I kissed him again, wrapping my arms around him, holding him tight.
“I love you,” he said softly as our lips broke apart. He wrapped his arms around me and I felt safe, I felt like I had found a home, a place where I belonged, for the first time in my entire life.
“Run away with me then,” I said softly, sighing against him. “We have money, we have time. We could go literally anywhere, although it’s probably best if we drive so that we aren’t checked out so heavily,” I added. “We could start a life together, just the two of us, away from the eyes of your uncle or the media,” it sounded like a dream.
I didn’t care that I just made up with my friends, I didn’t care that there were people in “The Business” who depended on me, I didn’t care about any of it. I cared about how I felt for once in my life. I cared about my own happiness. I would let myself be selfish for the first time in three years. I deserved that much.
“You’re sure?” he asked, still seeming to have trepidation.
“Absolutely,” I said, trying to be as serious with my voice as possible. “I want to be able to wake up with you every day. I want you to be able to spend a life without looking over your shoulder. I want that more than anything in the world,” I explained.
“Then I’m all in,” he said, kissing me. I could feel myself trembling with happiness. It was like a light had finally shined down on us, like we finally had a chance at happiness. Tears started streaking down my face, and they were hot and thick with happiness, he wiped them away with his thumbs and we laughed between each other.
The man who saved my life would get to stay in it.
“We need to get packing then,” I teased. “Is there anything you need from California?” I asked, stretching against him as I finally relaxed.
“Everything I need is here,” he said, looking right at me. I didn’t care that it was cheesy, I didn’t care that we’d have to start from scratch.
It was perfect in every damn way.
Epilogue
Adam
The drive to Sayulita, Mexico, was a long one.
We didn’t really know where we were going, we just knew that Mexico was the plan and that the revolving door would spit us out where it wanted, like it always had.
We made detours here or there though, which made the drives easier. We spent a week in New Orleans, trying food and a culture that relaxed us after what we’d been through. It was beautiful and high energy and we almost convinced ourselves into staying, but we knew better. Staying in the country wouldn’t be a safe option for us, not for a long time.
After that we drove until San Antonio, Texas, spent a couple days there, and then broke through the border into Mexico. We were nervous as hell crossing the border, but they didn’t give us much trouble. They didn’t even seem to recognize who Brooklyn was, even though she was still a big name at that point.
It felt like we were changing, going through a metamorphosis, as we slipped through the border. Immediately we could relax, we could breathe. We weren’t even sure if my uncle had turned anyone on to our scent, we didn’t even know if we needed to run, but we were free. We didn’t have to worry.
We spent a couple days driving all over, trying to figure out where to stop.
We spent nights in Monterrey, Durango, and Guadalajara, the locals were all friendly, especially once they saw how much we spent. Brooklyn surprised me, and most of the locals, when she was able to speak in Spanish. I didn’t know she knew any, but she said she’d lear
ned a lot of it on a location filming she’d done a couple years ago.
It started to settle in how crazy it was that I moved to a country where I couldn’t speak any of the language, even after living in southern California for so long. I had Brooklyn teach me some, but it wasn’t until we actually made it to Sayulita that I was able to have someone, who spoke Spanish as their first language, teach me.
Spanish is a beautiful language. I had one hell of a hard time grasping it in the beginning though.
When we finally found Sayulita it was like arriving home. The city was beautiful, its people, its beach, its culture. The buildings were mostly terracotta colored, people mixing in blue or turquoise to personalize and add life to them. Every building was art. There was tourist traffic, but it was mostly surfers so we weren’t worried about being recognized. I thought about becoming a surfer for a while, until my leg started acting up again.
The first night we spent there we went to a bar on the beach, completely open air except for grates that rolled down when it closed for the night. Brooklyn and I spent most of the night drinking and dancing together, the beach air salting our skin.
When the bar closed I knew it was meant for us. We could spend every day enjoying the beach, hire some employees to take care of it when we wanted to just spend time together. We offered the owner way more than it was worth, I’m pretty sure he thought we were crazy, and that’s how we came to own a bar sooner than we owned a house.
I loved Brooklyn, I loved seeing her enjoy the nightlife and enjoy the beach. She seemed more relaxed at that bar than I had seen her anywhere else in the last few years.
We found a house not more than a mile away from the bar, it wasn’t huge but we didn’t need something giant. Two bedrooms, a small hot tub in the back, and a porch large enough for fifteen people to party on if we wanted to.
We made a proper home for ourselves, painted the walls, got mostly second hand furniture to fill it with.
A month after we got there, we came across an article online about how they were looking for Brooklyn, calling it a man hunt. They were acting concerned about her, speculating she had gone on a drinking bender and needed help, but it was pretty obvious from the article that they were just feeding drama.
We still were forced to look over our shoulders for a while.
It was home, but we had to be careful. We were still never sure what my uncle told anyone, or if he told anyone. We didn’t even have any signs that I was being looked for. We couldn’t find anything in the articles about Brooklyn that incriminated her for anything, or said she was mixed up in murder, but we wanted to be safe.
It just felt too good to be true.
Like a world that we fell into and didn’t deserve.
At one point a tourist caught a picture of Brooklyn and reporters flooded our city, our bar, and we ended up hiding out in the house for a couple weeks. We paid our employees extra to make sure they wouldn’t spill the secret about us. Brooklyn called it our “staycation”, and used it as an excuse to adopt a small stray dog we named Rainey.
Rainey was absolutely Brooklyn’s dog and loved the hell out of her, but I still was the one who got stuck taking her for walks.
Eventually the articles about Brooklyn started dying down and less people came around looking for her. The photo got called a hoax by several papers. We found it hilarious and joked many times that if Brooklyn entered a “Brooklyn White Lookalike” contest that she’d probably get third place.
The news sites and the paparazzi, seemed to latch onto a new starlet eventually, a new up and coming name. Brooklyn was a little jealous at first, not that she wanted to be back in the limelight, just that she liked to be wanted by the media. They finished the last of Brooklyn’s movie with a body double and reused a lot of her face shots, when we saw it in theaters we almost got thrown out from laughing at the bad editing.
My uncle eventually passed away.
I wasn’t sure what happened with him. I always assumed that he’d tell, so he probably did. Knowing his ass he probably went to the police and laid out any information he could grasp at, probably even made guesses about where Brooklyn and I had vanished off to. He could be convincing when he was passionate about something, so I couldn’t figure out why they never came after me.
It would have made the local police force look good for finding a murderer after so many years. It would have given the town some drama. In the end I guess they just figured the world didn’t lose much from my dad dying. He was an asshole, an abusive asshole, and Brooklyn had told me time and time again that the whole town knew.
Maybe they thought I was justified.
Either way, a couple of years into our stay in Mexico, we stopped looking over our shoulders. We stopped worrying about being found, hell we posed for a couple fan pictures (there were way less MMA fans than Brooklyn fans, mind you).
I never found myself having the urge to beat or hit or abuse, and the most exercise my body got anymore was running down the beach. I couldn’t feel myself becoming my dad, and Brooklyn said she didn’t see it happening either. I stopped seeing my father’s face when I got angry.
We were finally happy. We had each other, a comfortable life, a new language and country to explore, and our freedom. Regardless of how much we could do and be when we lived our lives in California, we weren’t really free until we had each other.
Thank You
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Natasha Tanner
Natasha Tanner is a hopeless romantic. She loves to write about bad boys and her stories always wind up with a happy ending and some steamy moments. She resides in Vermont and hopes you enjoy every one of her books as she strives to become a full-time writer.
Roxy Sinclaire
Roxy Sinclaire writes steamy, suspenseful romantic stories as the main genre, and this includes a variety of different topics. Some of these include dark romances, action packed romances, mafia romances, and many more. She currently works in customer relations in New York City, but is trying to fulfill her passion in writing and eventually have her dream job become a reality.
For more information, be sure to check out the links below!
@RoxySinclaire
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Preview
Excerpts:
Excerpt from Shotgun Wedding: A Bad Boy Romance:
Oh my God, Grayson is kissing me.
Is he still the man of my dreams? Or is he a killer?
Do I care?
I should care.
I'll start caring in a second.
His lips are so full and surprisingly soft. He's firm but not demanding. He gently presses his lips to mine, holding me in place with the lightest of caresses. He slowly pulls back, just a hair's width, then barely bites my bottom lip. Then he kisses me again, running the tip of his tongue lightly across the place he'd just bitten.
Then he pulls away, still holding my face firmly but somehow delicately—cradling me in his palms like I'm precious, like I could break, like I matter.
All I can see are his gray eyes, that strong jaw, the scar, his full lips that tasted like mint—
"Kat," he murmurs. It hits me that he used to sometimes called me "Kat" when we were little, but mostly Kate or Katie. All day he's called me Kat, Katya…or babes.
I shouldn't like that nickname so much. My body shouldn't betray me and shiver with excitement just because he calls me a generic, stupid, ridiculous nickname that implies some sort of intimacy—
"Babes," he says.
Dammit. My body, the traitor, does it again.
I shiver in his arms. He feels it, and if I thought his eyes were intense before, well holy hot damn. When I quiver in his arms, in his hands, it's suddenly like staring into molten steel.
Dirty Fighter: A Bad Boy MMA Romance Page 12
