CHAPTER 12
An hour later I find myself in the lobby of our hotel waiting for a new room key when Rainer comes down. They had to switch me to another floor, something about a broken radiator; I didn’t really understand.
He sees me and stops. We both just stand there, not sure what to do.
“Hey,” I say. “Where’s Jessica?”
Rainer shrugs. “Late.”
I nod. Okay.
I notice he’s wearing my favorite button-down—a purple-and-white-striped shirt that he bought to wear on one of our first proper dates in L.A. I wonder if he put it on with intention. If he remembers how I threaded my fingers through the space between the sleeve and his wrist and told him how handsome he looked. He does tonight, too.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He looks at me, and I think he’s going to say something. Something mean or cruel or heartbreakingly true, but instead he says, “I just want you to know I’m aware you’re paying Jessica to hang out with me.”
I look up at him. I see just the slightest glint in his eye.
“What?”
“If there is one thing this whole experience has taught us, PG, it’s that you are the world’s worst liar.”
I fumble for words. The sound of my nickname on his lips like that feels like a balm. This is the most he’s spoken to me since we broke up. “I’m not,” I say. “Paying her, I mean.”
Rainer raises his eyebrows at me.
“Turns out some girls will hang out with you without receiving a dime.”
Rainer sweeps his lips to the side. “Some girls.”
Jessica comes into the lobby wearing a black dress, black ballet flats, and a jean jacket. Her hair is up in a ponytail, and you can clearly see the blue emerald drop earrings she has on. She looks stunning.
“You look great,” I tell her. “I have to borrow those earrings sometime.”
She blushes. “You sure you won’t come?”
I glance at Rainer. He’s putting some cash from his back pocket into his wallet. I know sooner or later we’re going to have to decide how to move forward.
But not tonight. Not here. Not yet.
“I’m sure,” I say. “Have fun.”
They leave and I get my new key. “We’ll have your things packed and transferred,” the bellman tells me.
I take the opposite elevators up to the fifteenth floor. The lights in Tokyo are amazing, and our hotel is all glass. You can get a 360-degree view of the city.
I take off my leather pants and red top and slide into a hotel bathrobe. Heaven. I flip through the room service menu and am just about to order everything on it when the doorbell rings. My suitcases. Filled with all kinds of crazy clothes I won’t even have a chance to wear.
I open the door expecting to see a towering cart of luggage, but instead it’s Jordan. Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt.
My heart starts hammering straight through the terry cloth. “Hi,” I say.
He nods. “Can I come in?”
I stand with my back pressed against the door as he enters. I feel the air leave my body in a solid rush when he brushes past me. The door swings closed behind us. Click.
“Nice view,” he says, keeping moving toward the window. I follow him. I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror and wish I hadn’t taken my clothes off. But Jordan has seen me in just a bathing suit many times before.
“What’s up?” I ask him.
He doesn’t turn around, just keeps looking out the window. “I don’t know,” he says. “I had them switch your room so you could be on the other side of the hotel. And now I’m here and… I don’t know.”
It feels like someone set off sparklers inside my chest. “You switched my room?”
He turns around. His black eyes find mine. “You didn’t go out,” he says.
I hold his gaze. “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”
Suddenly everything I’ve held in for the last few weeks starts bubbling up to the surface. Our talk in my bed and those photos and the breakup with Rainer and the tabloid story and Alexis—the truth that she hid from me. And Jordan—always, Jordan. Jordan there, buzzing in the background like white noise. Jordan filling my head. Jordan in my dreams. Jordan here, now.
But I don’t have time to say any of it because in the next moment he’s closing the space between us.
He takes my face gently in his hands and touches his lips to mine. But almost before they meet he’s drawing me in tighter. His hands work down my back. His lips are urgent on mine—fierce, pressing, like he’s trying to tell me something with their movement. I reach up and feel his neck, his jaw. I let my hands explore his face. The curve of his neck, the smooth skin below his ear, where his silver scar still sits. He pulls me in closer so we’re chest to chest. I can feel his heart, wild and free, against my own.
We keep kissing as he angles me toward the bed. We crash onto it, my lips never leaving his.
I can’t breathe. I swear I will be swallowed up in darkness soon, but I don’t care. Jordan’s mouth on mine is hot and wet and desperate. I have no idea how I could have gone so long without him. How I could possibly not have suffocated without him near me. It feels insane that we’ve somehow been able to stay away from each other.
His fingers find my sides, sliding me up to the pillows. My hands dig into his shoulders. I feel the creases of his muscles, the knots down his back. He moans into my mouth, and I arch up against him.
His lips leave mine and find my collarbone. He pulls impatiently at the top of my robe and edges it down around my shoulders. He kisses my neck, my cheek, right below my ear. I gasp and dig my fingers into his back and then down, toward the hem of his T-shirt. They slide up underneath, like they’re working on their own. I feel his skin—hot and soft. He inhales sharply as my fingers graze over his abs.
“Paige,” he whispers.
My hands trail down and find the edge of his T-shirt. For one brief moment his eyes meet mine. Whatever you want, they seem to say.
I pull his shirt up and then he’s lifting it over his head and letting it fall to the floor.
He’s above me and I sit up, placing my hands gently on his shoulders and letting them wander down. I feel his biceps move, the hard muscles under his skin flex and release. He’s so beautiful. I want to tell him. I want to tell him a million things.
His hands are back on my neck. He’s touching whatever skin is exposed, which isn’t a lot, considering this bathrobe is, like, the size of Texas.
I pull at the tie at my waist and then Jordan covers my hands with his own. His eyes look into mine and I know what he’s asking but I just reach up and kiss him and as I do, the bathrobe loosens and Jordan gently opens it, sliding it down off my shoulders until it pools around me on the bed.
I’m completely naked, and as soon as the robe is by my sides I have the distinct, immediate urge to cover myself. But Jordan won’t let me. “Don’t,” he says. “Please let me see you.”
He takes my hands firmly in his and puts them on his face, and then he runs his own up and down my back. The feeling of his fingers on my bare skin makes me shiver against him. I press my lips to his temple and then the robe is forgotten, lost in the sheets, and we’re skin to skin.
Jordan runs a hand through my hair. He edges off me, just slightly. “You’re so incredibly beautiful,” he says. I feel his gaze on me, and it makes my whole body blush. I don’t know what to say, so instead I lean forward and kiss him.
It feels painfully good. Our veins are electric wires. I want to touch him everywhere, and I know he feels the same way because our hands can’t move fast enough. I run them over his skin, marveling at how his breath constricts and expands based on where I touch him. I love that I have this effect on him. It’s heady, weightless. It makes me feel powerful in a way I never have been before.
I let my fingers dip into the top of his jeans, and he grips my hips tightly and groans into my shoulder.
I can’t catch my breath.
I fumble with the clasp on his belt. I want to remove every remaining barrier between us.
He picks his head up and our eyes meet. My hands are still at his hips. “I want…,” I start. I feel his body tense above mine, and then he’s touching my cheek. He runs his thumb back and forth across the skin.
“Tell me,” he says. His voice is strained. “Tell me what you want.”
Everything. I want everything. I want to go somewhere with him I’ve never been with anyone before. I want to close my eyes and just feel him. Be with him. For one night I want us to be the only two people in the world.
But then it comes in—the dark cloud of reality. I see it cover my face and then his until it leaves us both in shadows. We’re not. We’re not the only two people in the world.
Photos of us barely touching sent everything into a tailspin. And I know no one is here now. I know it’s just us. But tomorrow it won’t be. Tomorrow it will be Rainer and Jessica and then L.A. and Sandy and Greg—this whole universe where we’re not alone. Where we can’t be.
“I want you,” I say. “So much. You have to know that.” I run my hand over his forehead. I don’t want to say what I have to next: “But we can’t.”
Jordan sits up. He pulls me with him. “No,” he says. He shakes his head. “Paige, I—that stuff I said before, about letting you go? I was wrong.”
I close my eyes. I feel the tears come, and I will them away. “You weren’t,” I say.
He picks my chin up and kisses me softly on the lips. My eyes flutter open. I see his—those deep, dark pools of intensity. I can’t look away when he says: “I just wanted one night.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But if you stay here and we do this, what is tomorrow going to be like?”
“I don’t care about tomorrow.” His black eyes look into mine, and they’re so beautiful, so pained, I want to weep.
I kiss his forehead. His cheek. The edge of his temple. “You do,” I whisper. “This would just make it worse.”
“How much worse can it get?” he says. His face flushes, and for a moment I’m afraid. I see his helpless anger flare and then retreat. “The world hates me. They think I broke up the Golden Couple—and maybe I did. I’ve been trying to prove something to Rainer, to get his friendship back, but I’m just tired. I’m tired of lying to him and you and mostly myself. Because the truth is we haven’t been friends in a really, really long time. What we had, back when we were brothers? That was lifetimes ago. We’re never going to get back there. Too much has happened.”
“It isn’t irreversible,” I protest. I know how much they once meant to each other. That kind of love doesn’t go away.
Jordan takes my hands in his. “It’s never going to be what you want it to be because we’re both always going to want you.”
I think about Rainer’s words. I don’t think that makes you confused, Paige. I think that makes you selfish.
“This is my fault,” I say. “I called you. I betrayed him. You tried to stay away and I just… You were right when you said we needed time. We should be taking time.”
“No,” Jordan says. His words are fierce, determined. “I moved your room. I came here tonight. No amount of time is going to fix this because I don’t want it fixed. I don’t want it to go away. Paige, can’t you see? I’m in love with you.”
Love. Four letters. One syllable. It’s the thing I have wanted to hear from him since that day on the beach. Possibly even since I met him. I have wanted it so badly that I didn’t even dare dream about it. I haven’t let myself think about what it would be like to hear it from him because it seemed like it would never happen. That it couldn’t.
I’m about to answer. To say, instinctively, what I feel, too, when the doorbell rings. My eyes go wide, and I scramble to put my robe back on. My first thought is: Rainer.
I don’t tell him to, but Jordan hangs back. I walk to the door, take a deep breath, and open it.
But it’s just the bellman. My suitcases. Those goddamn suitcases. I hold the door open as he carries and deposits them into the walk-in closet off the hallway.
I find my wallet on the minibar counter and press a bill into his hand. “Thank you,” I say.
The door closes, and I hear Jordan move out from the darkness behind me. I exhale and turn around. The lights from the window are casting shadows on his face, so his eyes are hidden. I want to cross the room, take his hand, and pull him into the light. I want to pick up exactly where we left off. To tell him I love him, too. Of course I do.
But this last moment is like a bucket of cold water splashed straight to the face—wake up—and I realize something. I realize the way I feel about him. Love, yes, but something else, too. Responsibility. I want to help him—I always have. Just like Rainer has always wanted to help me.
When Jordan first got to set, I wanted to make things better. For Rainer, at first, but then for Jordan. I wanted to understand him. Then I wanted to protect him from the way I felt about Rainer. I wanted to make fame easier for him, his past less painful. I wanted to put my arms around him and make it better. But I can’t. Because I can’t see him in the light. I can’t be seen with him in the light. And he needs to be with someone who can.
“Jordan—” I start, but he just shakes his head.
“Don’t,” he says.
I steady my voice. I can feel my heartbeat in my ears. “Jordan, you have no idea what that means to me.”
“But you don’t feel the same way.”
I gawk at him. “Are you serious?”
He’s put his shirt back on, and I feel something tighten in my stomach, thinking of how close we were just minutes ago.
“Jordan, the problem isn’t not loving you. The problem is what to do with the very real fact that I do.”
We’re silent for a moment, and I feel the distance extend out between us like the horizon. Because that isn’t all I have to say. “From the moment we met I feel like we’ve just been torturing each other. And I don’t want that for either one of us anymore. Do you see what this has created? You and Rainer—”
“You have to get over that,” Jordan says. He sounds almost angry. His jaw is locked. “It’s not your problem what my relationship is like with Rainer.”
“Yes,” I say. “It is. I care about you, and I know you care about each other.”
“Paige,” Jordan says, his tone softening slightly. “Let me and Rainer worry about me and Rainer.”
“And what about me?” I say. “I’m sorry to sound selfish, Jordan, but the fact that I’m hurting both of you is not making me feel great. I feel terrible, all the time.”
“These last few weeks have been rough,” Jordan says. “Those tabloids are the devil. I told you they’ll make anything up.”
“But they didn’t make this up!” I’m practically yelling now, and Jordan stops and looks at me, surprised. “Sure, those pictures weren’t what they looked like, but Jordan, it was romantic. It wasn’t okay. They were right.”
Jordan shakes his head. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying it’s okay that we’re followed. But I’m trying to acknowledge the fact that we are. We don’t live in a world where we can just feel what we want to feel and act how we want to act and not have there be consequences.”
“I’ll take the consequences,” Jordan says.
“I won’t.”
I take a step toward him, and his face comes out of the shadows. I see how tired he is. There are dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.
“No one is winning,” I say, softly.
Jordan stands perfectly still. “So that’s it?”
I stuff my hands down into the terry cloth pockets. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s it.”
Jordan looks at me in disbelief. But then his face changes. I see the Jordan I met on Maui—the one who was hard and closed. It breaks my heart straight in half. “If that’s what you want,” he says.
I want to tell him it’s not what I want. How could it possibly be w
hat I want? What I want is to cross the room and let him take me back into his arms. What I want is to have met him first. What I want is for Rainer and Jordan not to be so important to me—to each other. But none of those things is a reality.
“I’m going to go home,” Jordan says. “I can’t stay here.”
“We have two days left. What am I going to tell people?”
Jordan runs a hand over his forehead. “Make something up,” he says. “You seem to be pretty good at excuses lately.” His words are cold, and I pull my robe tighter around me, feeling the chill.
He starts toward me. It’s taking all the self-control I can muster to stay stuck to the spot. If I feel him, again, I know I won’t be able to say no.
But he doesn’t stop. He walks right past me and out the door.
I hear it click behind him. Silence. I look at the ten suitcases in the closet. The crumpled bed. And then I let myself slide down to the floor. I put my head on my knees, and for not the first time in recent memory, I cry.
CHAPTER 13
The next two days are fine. That’s all I can say now: fine. Not bad, not great, not anything. Just, fine. Numb, maybe. Rainer seems in increasingly good spirits, probably due to Jordan’s absence. Jessica, per request, is spending a lot of time with him. He drags her on all kinds of tours and to shows. We do two other appearances and a series of interviews.
No one seems too concerned with Jordan’s absence, but none of our usual handlers is here. Something tells me Tawny and Sandy wouldn’t be as cool with him just bailing.
It’s not until the plane ride home that Rainer and I actually talk. I’m surprised when I see him come over and take the seat next to me.
“I need to ask you something,” he says, his hands on his knees. “Why did Jordan leave?”
I close my eyes. I don’t feel up for lying. Not after these last few days. “I told you, he had some family thing or something. I don’t really know.”
Rainer sighs. “Listen, I’m trying to figure out a diplomatic, non–douche bag way of asking you what’s going on with you two.”
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