by Emily Bishop
Off camera, a journalist asked him, “What do you have to say to the Smith family right now who are left devastated by the jury’s ruling in favor of News Out There?”
James didn’t flinch. He barely blinked as he stared directly into the camera. He looked worlds away from the man I had come to know.
“It was a decisive win for us. The facts spoke for themselves. There was no evidence to suggest that News Out There hacked into Ellie’s Smith’s phone, and the jury recognized that.”
“I would say the Smith family would think differently. Talk to us about your strategy, how you brought to light some uncomfortable truths about the family, in particular Ellie’s mother’s history with mental illness.”
What the fuck?
I frowned at the clip, shocked into silence, drinking in James’s expression. It remained completely and utterly unchanged, without a hint of emotion. He almost looked like a statue.
The man beside James shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
“That’s quite enough.” He snapped, speaking up for James and shutting down the reporter interrogating him.
James shrugged and said listlessly. “No comment.”
The clip ended. A never-ending dam of questions exploded within me, and I went into full journalistic mode.
I brought up a couple more newspapers and then compared them against the reputable papers like the New York Times.
A particularly critical opinion piece caught my attention, about James’s ruthless strategy in News Out There v Smith.
The article discussed how James discredited the Smith family, brought up their sealed medical records in court, and then slaughtered the mother with the infamous mental health attack often used in court to discredit witnesses. The public trial captured it all and shattered through the family’s privacy who were already grieving for their missing daughter. James spun up a case of the mother being a paranoid woman who couldn’t be trusted. News Out There came out scott-free, and the Smith family remained worse off than before. They were left empty-handed without their daughter, their reputation and self-worth were destroyed by James, and their privacy was forever shattered.
I gulped as I completed the article. The sinking feeling widened in my stomach, making me feel impossibly nauseous.
And then another article caught my attention. “Karma comes back for James Owen as childhood sweetheart fiancée abandons the Iron Fist at their televised wedding and runs into the arms of troubled actor Jeremy Jackson.” Another clip was attached to the article, and I halted for a second.
It was a clip from their wedding.
Dread knotted up my gut, and my heart pounded in my chest.
Did I want to see this?
An inner part of me knew this was wrong. I had no right to witness such an intimate private part of James’s past without his knowledge or permission. Yet my curiosity won out, as my journalistic nature to seek out the truth, no matter how painful or glaringly uncomfortable, took hold.
I clicked the link and was pulled into James’s past. He stood at the altar, his whole face etched in unreserved pain and grief as Bruna stood before him in a beautiful lacy white wedding dress and uttered, ‘I can’t do this James. I’m sorry.’ Her tear-stained eyes connected with James’s crumbling dark eyes, and a gasp from the crowd engulfed the church. Sickened, I watched as James’s entire face fell apart. Those stormy blue eyes took on such an expression of pure agony that it stabbed into my heart, slicing me open.
I found my eyes watering as I watched the man I loved struggle with his pain on television.
Wrecked to my core, I couldn’t continue watching. I stopped the video and slammed shut my laptop. The sobs burst out of me without warning, a wretched wave of sadness that I struggled to ride out.
No one, fucking no one, deserved what James had gone through.
I had a sudden urge to see him, to wrap my arms around him and breathe into him, all of him, but something stopped me in my tracks.
I needed time to digest these turning events.
James had been a damn good lawyer. He brought up dirt in court to win. He had been ruthlessly calculating and unfeeling in trials. The case with the Smith family proved as much. But that was just it. This was all in the past. What mattered was now, the present.
I settled the laptop down on my bedside table and lay down on the bed, spread eagled.
Keeping my eyes fixed to the ceiling, I let myself unwind and drift. I was brought back to James’s destruction, his beautiful face etched in anguish over and over again. It played like a broken record in my mind. As I slipped into a mid-afternoon nap, James followed me into unconsciousness.
*
“Where did your mind go?” James’s dark sea-blue eyes fixed themselves upon me, and for a moment I swore he could see into my soul.
“Sorry I’m just distracted, that’s all.” I replied quickly and offered him a small smile to ease his curiosity.
We were sitting on his ranch porch, facing his garden, with nothing but the endless stars around us. Even the wind had taken a break. The silence between us was palpable, and I shuffled in my seat a little.
James was silent for a long time before he spoke. A frown broke out across his handsome features, and he ran a hand through his messy locks, a sign of frustration.
“You’ve been acting weird all day, Summer. What’s up?”
Damn you and your lawyer intuition.
“I’m fine,” I said, but my voice wavered, betraying me.
James turned from his chair and leaned in with his elbows resting against his thighs. His face rested millimeters from mine, and I couldn’t stop my gaze from dropping to his lips, to the way his mouth parted slightly.
Hot intense heat shot up from my toes, and I suppressed the gasp building up inside me.
His physical presence alone incited a deep ache within me to touch him, to feel him against my body.
Counting at the top of his fingers, James listed all the reasons I wasn’t fine, while his eyes never left mine. “You were supposed to come over for dinner last night but canceled. This morning, you didn’t finish your coffee, you’ve barely spoken a word all day, you’re distracted as hell out on the fields, you didn’t even smile today when Ronaldo farted. And that was pretty funny.”
I sighed. He had me.
I struggled to form my words. How to start the conversation?
So your crazy ex ambushed me in front of the motel and told me your deepest darkest secrets. Then I broke my promise to you and googled you. I pretty much spent hours piecing together your past. Oh and I watched you get abandoned at the altar. And—
James interrupted my chain of thoughts by clasping his large warm hands around mine. His heat passed over to me, the kind of warmth I’d never known existed, a calmness against the chaos of our lives. His eyes were heat and passion and longing, all in one and I surrendered into his gaze.
“Summer?” He waited for an answer I wasn’t sure I could give him.
I pulled away from his hold, and a flicker of hurt washed over his eyes.
It was cold almost instantly. How was he going to react to my news?
I guess there was only one way of finding out.
“Bruna.” I said her name with part venom, part exhaustion. That woman sure knew how to spoil the fun.
James shook his head. “Bruna, what?”
I went for it. “Bruna paid me a pleasant little visit yesterday afternoon. She wants you back and is playing dirty to do it. She revealed some things about your career before the ranch…” I stopped in my tracks, observing his reaction.
His eyes were unreadable. In fact, his whole face was a blank slate. Just like in that video I watched yesterday. Nerves prickled at me.
When he next spoke, the tension rolled off his tongue. “That’s fucked up. She told me the other day she was leaving for New York.”
“She lied.” I pointed out the obvious.
“What exactly did she tell you?” James asked quietly, so quietly in fact
that I had to lean in to catch his question.
I looked at him long and hard in the vain hope that he would be able to figure it out just by my expression.
“I’m not a mind reader, in case you were wondering, Summer.”
Damn. Of course not.
“How come they do that thing then in the movies where the actor doesn’t have to say anything, everything is sussed out just by looking at the actor’s face?”
A small chuckle escaped James. His eyes lit up in humor.
“Stop stalling and answer the question,” he ordered.
He was back at it with his no-nonsense, get-to-the-point voice.
I huffed. “I did what I said I wasn’t going to do. I googled you. I know everything about the Smith family case. About the way you worked as a lawyer. The way you won your cases.” My words tripped over clumsily in my haste to air everything out.
Utter stillness gripped James. His entire body stilled, his face a frustrating unreadable mask. A storm gathered as his blue eyes clouded over in darkness and danger.
Abruptly he rose up from his chair and walked over to the front of the porch until he rested his elbows against the porch’s rails. His back turned away from mine.
I decided against joining him by his side. He needed time to digest what I had just told him.
“I should have known you would have figured it out eventually one way or another. But you should have come to me instead. You should have given me a chance to better explain myself, instead of forming a judgement based on the media’s version of truth.”
Guilt settled in my stomach. I fixed my gaze on the ground. “You’re right about that. But I didn’t want to be pushy and demand you to open up a part of yourself that you weren’t ready for.”
“So you thought it was better to snoop around on the internet?” James cut in.
“Call it what you want. I did what any normal human being would do. After Bruna said those things about you, I couldn’t stop myself.” I admitted.
The film of silence separated us until I couldn’t bear it any longer.
I jumped from my seat and took my position next to James. Tilting my head to the side, I gazed up at his dark expression. Still, he refused to look at me.
“Hey, look at me,” I demanded gently.
James clenched his jaw in reply and his shoulders visibly tightened.
“I can’t.” His voice came out in one long exasperated sigh.
“None of it matters to me James. What you did to have the career you did…that doesn’t define who you are as a person.”
Still he didn’t look at me. His eyes remained fixed straight ahead. “I fucking destroyed the Smith family. I tore the mother to shreds when she took the stand. I used the family’s history of mental illness to disqualify her as a witness. They lost the case because of me. News Out There hacked into their missing daughter’s phone and made them believe she was alive and well for so long. And I fucking represented them. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about that family. And Ellie. She’s still missing, probably dead.” James’s voice wavered with emotion, and instinctively I rested my hand against his on the railing.
“It was the nature of your job, James. Sure, the methods might have been ethically questionable, but you did what you had to do to win that case.”
James finally looked at me. His tormented eyes cut into my heart, and I longed to take some of his pain away and place it on my shoulders instead.
“The worst thing about it all was that I was proud of my work. I ruined families, and I was proud.”
“Hey.” I reached up and brushed my thumb against his jaw. James observed me for a long second, tightening under my grip.
“Why are you still here?” he asked quietly, his voice pained.
His question threw me off.
Why was I here?
The story. Him. My love for him. The fact that our past mistakes don’t define who we are today. Only the present matters.
“Only the present matters.” I echoed my internal thoughts, drawing my eyes toward his.
James snorted in reply.
“Really, James. I don’t believe our past actions define who we are today. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s about what we do with them in the present that matters. And you’ve escaped that toxic lifestyle, that career. You’ve left it behind and you’ve moved on. It’s what you’ve done now, to make amends for your mistakes that matters. Don’t you see that?”
James struggled to make sense of my words. He ran his hand through his hair again and bit his lips, frowning.
“What if that person is still inside me? That bitterly ambitious person who doesn’t care whose life he ruins to get what he wants.”
I shook my head. “These are all what-ifs. Don’t give power to those thoughts. Our minds are actually our greatest strength and weakness. Try turning your thoughts into positivity. You’ve left that life behind. You own a fantastic ranch, you run it ethically, you’ve got the privacy and peace you’ve always craved. You’re no longer with Bruna.” I stopped for a second, drinking him in. “Should I continue?” I added.
Something crumbled inside James. His shoulders softened, and his gaze dropped to my lips instead.
“Are you always this wise?” he murmured.
“Of course I am. I’m perfect,” I teased.
A beautiful broken smile spread across his face.
Holy moly that smile.
“I’ve got one last question for you,” James said, pausing. He studied me intensely, and my stomach danced with fireflies.
His gaze was like a siren, beckoning me forward toward the infinite sea.
I smiled and nodded, encouraging him along.
“Did you watch the video?”
His question pierced into my gut, rendering me speechless. He didn’t need to clarify. I knew exactly what he was talking about.
The memories rushed in, of his broken face, playing on in a taunting loop in my head. His emotional destruction, caught for everyone to see and mock.
“I knew it,” James responded quietly. He ripped his eyes away from mine.
The pain was instant. Once the first tear broke free, the rest followed like an onslaught.
I was crying for him, for his pain and everything he had lost in that church. His trust in people, his faith in love, his struggle to see the good in people.
A heavy bump lodged itself in my throat and my next words came out shaky. “I watched parts of it. It was horrible to see how she hurt you. I wish I had some magic power that could have taken it back.”
James must have heard my voice because he whipped his gaze back towards mine and his eyes widened, registering the flowing tears streaming down my face.
“Why are you crying?” he asked gently. His entire face mirrored my pain.
Before I could stop myself, I let the truth seep out of me. “Because I’ve accidently fallen in love with you. Your pain is my pain.”
James’s eyes grew a shade lighter as he digested my words. And then he closed the physical gap between us in one quick movement. His lips found mine. With ease, his tongue danced across my bottom lip and he sucked it gently between his own.
His forehead came to a complete standstill and rested against mine. I shuddered at our joint contact, skin on skin.
“I’ve accidently fallen for you too, Summer,” he murmured, his breath heavy.
I couldn’t believe it.
James loves me back. He loves me.
I hadn’t expected him to say it, not so soon, not after he had loved before and gotten destroyed by it.
My eyes snapped shut and my breath stilled as his words reached the deepest part of me, their warmth settling in my heart.
James found my lips again and he breathed against them. His exhale became my own, and I tore my eyes up towards his, catching the intensity of those stormy eyes, looking at me like nothing else mattered but me.
“You center me, Summer. You make me want to be better.” James’s confession consumed
me whole.
I fell in love with the idea of him as a man first, a man who could make me laugh, smile, snap, and cry, all in one. A man who drove me nuts yet calmed me at the same time. A man who heated up my heart and made my legs mushy. A man who made my body sing in all the ways I thought weren’t possible for me.
And then all at once, it wasn’t just an idea anymore, it was him. All of him, his brokenness, his infuriating stubbornness, the highs and the lows. He made me happy, he made me smile, he completed me. He had saved me, over and over again.
So instead of telling him how alive he made me feel, I showed him. I parted my lips and kissed him so softly, in the hopes he could feel what I felt. He must have.
His mouth immediately responded to mine, in perfect rhythm, and the familiar surge of heat flushed me, from my belly, straight up to my cheeks.
His lips moved to my neck and down to my collarbone, and I closed my eyes shut to steady my vision from spinning out of control.
That is how we spent the rest of the night together, wrapped up in unity, as our hands explored, roamed and discovered. Until sated, we collapsed into a deep slumber, our bodies tangled up together.
Chapter 14
James
Four days, three hours, and twenty-two minutes from now.
My stomach reversed on its head.
That was how long Summer had left here, in Dripping Springs.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Tikko neighed impatiently, he was ready to go back to the stables to his carrot sticks.
I didn’t argue with him. I had to find her.
As I kicked Tiko into a gallop, my body moved on its own while my mind was detached, floating away.
Summer.
It was always going to be her. I fucking loved her, and I had to do something about it. I had to address the big elephant in the room, her eventual departure.
An internal struggle gripped me. I loved her, but she belonged in New York, not here, not in this ranch. How was this ever going to work? The rational part of my brain knew the answer to that already.
Memories of earlier today wormed their way in, and my jaw tightened. The lines of stress formed on my face, and I gave in to the anxiety clamming me up.
