by Lauren Layne
My eyes water again. I’m turning into a regular weeper over this guy, and I’m not digging it.
“Oh my God,” Mom whispers, squeezing my hand.
My attention snaps back to the present, and I glance at Mom’s and Marjorie’s shocked faces before forcing myself to turn my attention back to the TV.
Gage is holding both of Paisley’s hands, and she lets out a happy laugh. “I get it,” she says, her words gushing out. “I so get it, and it’s more than fine, and I’m so happy for you, because…and I think you already know this…I’m in love with someone else too.”
My jaw drops open. “What? What? What did she just say? What?”
Marjorie reaches out and puts a hand over my mouth as all three of us watch Gage wink at Paisley. “You’re absolutely right, Pais. I did know that. In fact…” He offers his arm. “Care to walk with me a bit?”
Paisley sets her fingers on Gage’s arm and the camera follows them for the short walk along a winding pathway until they reach the wedding set where we saw Adam earlier. Except this time the chairs aren’t empty. They’re full of people, all of whom turn and smile when they see Paisley and Gage.
“I don’t understand,” Mom mutters. “Are they getting married even though they’re not in love?”
“If they do, I’ll boycott this show so hard,” Marjorie says threateningly.
A moment later Adam steps up to greet the couple. “Gage. Paisley. I can’t say any of us at Jilted saw this ending coming, but if this is what the two of you want…”
Gage shakes his head. “This moment’s not about me. This is all about her.”
Adam fixes his attention on the bride. “Paisley?”
She doesn’t answer, but her eyes scan the gathering until they find what she’s looking for, and her entire face transforms with blissful happiness. The camera follows her line of sight to reveal…
My jaw drops. “Ed?”
“Oh my God, is that the hot surfer guy?” Marjorie asks.
Mom reaches behind me to bat excitedly at Marjorie’s shoulder. “I told you they had chemistry!”
“Chemistry, yes, but…”
The camera’s back on Paisley now, who lifts a hand to hide her giggle. Adam’s smile is just the slightest bit pinched, but his words are kind. “We’re all delighted about your secret romance, Paisley. All we’ve ever wanted at Jilted is to help people find love, and we’re glad we could do that for you, albeit not exactly as we planned.”
I swear I see Paisley give just the tiniest of eye rolls, making me love her all the more, but then she thanks Adam graciously and turns to Gage. “You’re sure you don’t mind me hijacking your wedding?”
Gage’s smile merely grows wider, and he lifts his hand to gesture someone forward.
Paisley’s eyes go wide as a gray-haired man steps into view. “Daddy?”
Gage bends down to kiss her cheek. “Be happy, Paisley.” He says it quietly, more for her than for the cameras.
She lifts a hand to his cheek. “You too.”
Gage leans down and whispers something in her ear that makes them both smile.
“What’d he say?” I demand. “What’d he say?”
I don’t get any answers. My mom and Marjorie still look stunned at the twist, and the camera shifts its focus from Gage to Paisley and her father.
A moment later the processional begins, and we watch as Paisley proceeds to marry Ed the surfing instructor.
I mean, what the what?
I’m happy for her. So happy for her. And now, more than ever, I regret that I turned down the invitation to be there for the finale and the wedding. The rest of the women are there, even Brittany B. and Eden, looking pissy as ever. As far as I can tell, Brooklyn and I are the only ones missing.
In what feels like both the fastest and longest wedding of all time, Paisley and Ed say their vows, seal the deal with a slightly PG-13 kiss, and are promptly surrounded by the rest of the Jilted gang.
Except Gage.
Where’s Gage?
A moment later, we pan to Adam again, blabbering on about the surprising nature of true love, and some other crap.
He inserts another of his dramatic pauses, and the camera zooms in. “And for those of you wondering about Gage…the Runaway Groom has done it again. In true movie star fashion, he’s currently on his way to Dubai to film the next Killboy movie.”
“Wait, that’s it?” I say as Adam quits babbling and the camera pans to Paisley and Ed walking along the beach. “That can’t be it. There has to be more.”
Marjorie lifts the remote, turns off the TV. “I think that’s it, babe.”
“But—but…my closure. That’s not closure! That’s an opening!”
My mom strokes my ponytail soothingly, but I’m in no mood to be soothed. I want answers, damn it. I want—
All three of us go still at a knock on the door.
“You expecting anyone?” Mom asks.
I shake my head. “No. But one of my neighbors gave me a spare key, because she’s forever locking herself out. Probably her.”
I open the front door. It’s not my neighbor.
My breath catches, my heart stops.
Gage.
Gage Barrett is standing in my doorway, wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, holding an obscene number of flowers.
He flashes a cocky-as-hell grin as he lifts his free arm and rests it on the doorjamb. “Miss me?”
Gage
I’ve been to a lot of auditions in my day, all accompanied by varying degrees of terror of rejection.
But it’s safe to say that standing in Ellie Wright’s apartment building, holding fucking roses in one hand, my heart in the other…
This is the most terrifying audition of my life.
“Can I come in?” I ask when she doesn’t do much more than stare at me.
“Um—”
She’s nudged aside by a short, curvy blonde who grins, then blinks. “Hi! I’m Marjorie, best friend and huge fan. I mean, best friend to Ellie, huge fan of you. I’m a fan of Ellie’s too. Wow. Wow. You’re better in person. Can I touch you?”
Ellie rolls her eyes and pushes her friend aside before I can reply, but Marjorie bounces back. “Here. I’ll take those and get them water. Pretend I’m not here, except talk super loud so I don’t miss anything,” she says, tugging the bouquet out of my arms.
A moment later an older woman appears, and it’s instantly obvious that she’s Ellie’s mother. They have the same hazel eyes, same slight build. But whereas Ellie’s eyes have always seemed wary and guarded, her mom’s are open and friendly.
Ellie swallows and speaks for the first time. “Mom, this is Gage. Gage, my mother, Bethany Wright.”
Her mom looks a little starstruck. “We just…” She points at the TV. “But we just saw you.”
“That was filmed weeks ago, Mom,” Ellie says softly.
“Oh!” Her mom gives an embarrassed laugh. “That’s right. Sorry.”
“The ‘reality’ part of reality TV shows is a bit of a misnomer these days,” I say with a smile to put her at ease.
Ellie’s mom nudges her aside. “Won’t you come in? Can I get you some wine? Popcorn? My daughter?”
Ellie groans. “Mother.”
I glance over at Ellie and search her face, trying to read her. Nothing.
Like I said, toughest audition of my life.
And the most important.
“Actually,” I say, turning back to her mom, “would it be terribly rude—”
“No, it would not, because we were just leaving,” Marjorie says, emerging from the kitchen, coats and purses slung over her arm. “Come on, Bethany. I need to get home to the baby.”
“But—”
Marjorie ushers Ellie’s mother out the door. “Later. She’s going to fill us in later.”
Marjorie turns back at the last minute and points a finger in my face. “I’m giving you your privacy, but if you hurt her more than you already have, I’ll be back. With a kn
ife.”
A second later the door slams in my face.
I turn back to Ellie, who’s rubbing tiredly at her forehead. “Well. That was intense,” I say.
She gives me a faint smile. “I feel like I should warn you, she probably means it about the knife.”
“Huh.” I keep my voice gentle. “Did she also mean what she said about me hurting you?”
Ellie takes a deep breath and avoids my eyes. Then she looks back. “I watched the finale.”
I try to stifle the surge of panic at her carefully modulated tone. This is hardly the scenario that I’d imagined, the one where the girl launches herself into my arms.
The scenario that I’d hoped for.
I give her a small smile. “Gotta love a twist ending.”
She doesn’t smile back. “You could have told me.”
I risk a step closer. “I told you. The contract—”
“That’s crap!” she cries. “You could have saved me weeks of pain, and instead you let me think…you let me think…”
She lets out a small sob, and I reach for her, wrapping an arm around her back as my other hand tilts her face to mine. “Don’t cry.”
“You let me think you were in love with one of them.”
My thumb catches a tear on her cheek, brushes it away. “I wasn’t. Never. Not for a single second, Ellie.”
“Then why,” she says on a broken sob, “did you let me go? Why’d you stay there with them and go through with all of that? I mean, I know I told you to let me go, but I didn’t…I didn’t realize until it was too late…”
I feel a little thrill of hope, and it makes me bolder. I move closer. “What did you realize, Ellie?”
She swipes at her runny nose and glares at me. “Nothing.”
Okay, then. Me first.
I rub my thumb gently over her cheek. “The night before you left Hawaii, you told me you wanted someone you could count on—someone whose word you could trust, someone who did what they said they’d do. Remember?”
A sniffle. “Yeah.”
I lift my other hand, cupping her face gently. “So. Had I left the show, had I broken my contract, what would you have thought of me?”
“Um…”
“Ellie, the last thing I wanted you to see was the guy who changes course the second a pretty girl caught his eye. There’s nothing I wanted more than to tell the Jilted crew to shove it so I could go chase after you, but here’s the thing: I know you Ellie, and I know that after the romance of that grand gesture faded, you’d have realized that it merely proved everything you ever worried about with someone from Hollywood—that we’re self-indulgent divas who dance from one sparkly thing to another.”
“A sparkly diva, huh?”
I refuse to be sidetracked. “Same goes for the movie. You think I wanted to be in Dubai when I wanted nothing more than to come to San Diego and make you mine? Hell no. I want you to want me, Ellie. I want a hell of a lot more than that. But I need you to trust me first.”
She studies my face. “You dated more than two dozen women on national television and then spent weeks on the other side of the world…so that you could show me that you keep your commitments?”
I wince. “Not gonna lie—this whole thing played out a lot more romantic in my head.”
Ellie smiles and moves closer. “At the end of the show, you told both Brooklyn and Paisley that you were in love with someone else.”
I brush my lips over hers. “Yup.”
“Me?”
I open my mouth to tell her, but my heart stutters, and I realize rather abruptly that I haven’t spoken these words to anyone since I said them to Layla close to a decade ago.
But what the hell. She’s worth it.
“Yeah, you,” I say, kissing her again and then holding her gaze with mine. “I love you. The all-the-way, forever kind of love, Ellie. And look, I know I’m not the boring nine-to-five guy you want. I’ll be gone on set a lot, there’ll be the occasional red-carpet crap, and the tabloids will always speculate whether you’re pregnant or I’m cheating, and that’ll suck. I can’t offer you the white picket fence, but you’ll have my love, my loyalty—”
Ellie flings her arms around my neck, and I catch her reflexively. Now this is more like it.
“I don’t need the white picket fence,” she whispers.
I run my hands over her back. “No?”
She shakes her head.
My fingers tangle in her hair, tugging her head back so I can look in her eyes. “Why’s that?”
I hear the desperation in my voice, but I don’t care. I need to hear it. Need her to say that she’s mine.
“I love you,” she says, pressing her mouth to mine. “I love you so much, and I thought I was going to die if you married one of those other girls.”
“Never even thought about it, although if we’re going to talk about marriage…”
I pull back and, before she can freak out, drop to one knee, pulling the jeweler’s box out of my pocket as I do.
Ellie freaks out anyway. “Gage!”
I flick the box open. “Ellie.”
“Gage,” she says, trying to tug me up. “You can’t—we’ve only known each other a few weeks. We’ve been apart for most of that!”
“Well, here’s the thing, Ellie,” I say, capturing her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “My whole speech about not breaking commitments—”
“You mean your super-awkward speech?” she asks with a smile.
“Shut up. Shut up and marry me, because God, do I want to marry you, and I knew it the second you let me get to second base in a closet. Marry me because I honor my commitments and there’s no commitment more important to me than this one.”
“But—”
“You know what? Think about it. Take all the time that you need, but wear this while you do.” I slip the ring on her finger before she can protest. “Get used to it. Get used to me. Because I’m not going away. Not now that I know you love me back.”
“I really do,” she says lifting her hand to inspect the ring. “Almost as much as I love this diamond.”
I stand and haul her against me. “What do you say? Will you be Mrs. Barrett? Or be Mrs. Wright, I don’t care. Just be mine.”
Her hazel eyes flick to mine. “I’m so sorry, Gage.”
My stomach drops out, and for a horrible moment, I feel dangerously close to crying.
Then I see the teasing smile as she rests both hands on my shoulders and pulls me close. “I would marry you. It’s just…the thing is…I fell really hard and fast for this guy named Mr. Belvedere, and I had my heart set on being Mrs. Belvedere…”
I stop her adorable babbling with a kiss that starts out happy and teasing but turns hot and demanding in a manner of seconds.
“Care to show me your bedroom?” I manage in between kisses, before pulling back and scanning her apartment. I frown when I take in the moving boxes.
“Oh, that.” She kisses my chin. “I’m kinda sorta moving to L.A. I had high hopes that if this certain actor decided not to get married on national TV, maybe I could convince him that he wanted to marry me someday not on national TV.”
I bend my knees slightly to lift her, hoisting her over my shoulder and marching her in the direction of the bedroom.
I give her ass a gentle swat. “You’re perfect for me, Mrs. Belvedere. And I promise you this: we’re going to live very, very happily ever after.”
Epilogue
Ellie
“She can’t be serious,” I say as I take a bite of pepperoni pizza. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
Gage takes a bite of his own pizza, then reaches forward to refill both our wineglasses. “Oh, I’m guessing it’s happening. I heard somewhere that they had sort of a dud the first season. Wouldn’t be surprised if they adjusted the contract to make the marriage stipulation at the end a bit stricter.”
I pick up my glass of zinfandel and give him a look as I take a sip. “Yeah, but the first-season
guy…he was sort of meh, if I’m remembering correctly.”
“You’re not. Have more wine.”
I smile as he refills both our glasses, reaching down to pull the lever on the elaborate theater-style chair in our screening room.
Because, yes, those are the types of perks a girl gets when she marries a guy with a house in the Hollywood Hills. A private screening room that’s sometimes used to host movie nights with friends or Hollywood hotshots, but mostly has been used to watch the second season of Jilted.
I’m a little embarrassed how into the show I am. They’ve changed it up for the second season, first by moving the whole thing to sultry Louisiana rather than Maui, and then by going with a Runaway Bride contestant instead of a Runaway Groom.
I like Violet Simmons a hell of a lot more than I thought I would—for a Vegas showgirl, she’s got a lot more substance than I was expecting. The guys, though? I don’t know. She’s narrowed it down to two, and I’m just not feeling them. I want her to be happy, and it’s not going to be with either of these two overprompted clowns.
I catch Gage smirking and narrow my eyes. “What?”
“For someone who thinks this show is ‘pure trash,’ you’re certainly involved.”
I take another bite of pizza. “Who do you think she’s going to marry?”
He shrugs.
“Oh, come on.” I punch his arm. “Play my game. Surely you have a theory. Is there going to be a twist ending like we had?”
His eyebrows lift, avocado eyes smiling. “Is that what we’re calling ourselves? A twist ending?”
I lean over and haul his face down to mine. “Hell no. We’re a twist beginning.”
And it’s true—we’ve been married for nearly a year (a huge, lavish, over-the-top affair that I surprised myself by not only embracing, but initiating), and yet every day feels just like those earliest days, where I’d look forward to sneaking into that stupid closet with him.
Sure, his schedule’s tricky, and he’s gone a fair amount, but he calls every night when he’s away, and I don’t doubt him for a single second. And I go with him whenever I can.
He’s just gotten the script on yet another Killboy film, although he’s not sure if he can work it into his schedule since he’s just signed on as the lead in a psychological thriller that’s got a bunch of Oscar-winners at the helm.
