T
he office is quiet as a church as I hit send on an email to Brooks, locking in the screenwriter for our first feature, and sit back. I wait, but I don’t feel the stir of excitement I’d always imagined this moment would bring.
Blackwood Films is happening.
I just took another huge step forward in realizing my dream.
Of owning forty-nine percent of a film studio.
I shake my head at myself and glance at the empty hallway outside my office. I let everyone go at noon today, the Friday before New Year’s Eve, but now I wish someone were here. Maybe this would feel better.
As I shut down my computer and pack up to leave, I can’t help but think about the past month. I spent December trying to find a way to keep my company
mine,
but Graham was right. There was
no way. He had me cornered. If I refused his offer, he’d have broken the Chloe news to the press. And even if I’d stepped up and told the truth, admitted it wasn’t me who drove that night, I know how the media works.
Tabloids. Newspapers. Investors and business analysts. They see scandals from ten thousand feet up. The details don’t matter. If you’re anywhere close, there’s stink on you.
A young, reckless CEO who killed his wife in a drunk-driving accident is just the kind of scandal that can sink a company—even a healthy one. I couldn’t get rid of Graham without exposing myself and my company to a huge amount of bad press so I had to accept his offer.
As soon as the lawyers organize the contracts, Graham and I will be business partners.
It’ll feel like signing a deal with the devil, I’m sure, but I’m trying to keep Grey’s words in my mind.
You’ve got to let the bad shit happen sometimes.
No matter how I look at it, though, locking into a relationship with the guy who’s blackmailing me seems like the kind of bad shit I
shouldn’t
let happen.
Grey’s advice has helped in other arenas, though. I’ve talked to both Chloe’s parents and mine and told them the truth about that night, and while it wasn’t easy, it was easier than I thought it would be.
Christmas, too. The four-year anniversary of the night I lost her.
Grey cooked lasagna and Brooks came over. It was a decent night. The best Christmas I’ve had in four years. Granted, the look on Grey’s face when he unwrapped the karaoke machine I bought him played a big part in that.
I’ve let go of the lie I’d been keeping for Chloe—which should’ve made me feel incredible—but Graham nailed me to a wall at pretty much the same time. With everything with Alison, it’s been a better-but-worse kind of feeling.
As I lock my office, I stop and stare at the keys in my hand, fighting off the feeling for this place. There’s nothing I can do.
Another week or so and it’ll be Graham’s too.
Rhett catches me as I’m getting in the elevator.
“Hey,” he says, darting inside as the doors close.
“I didn’t realize you were still here, Rhett.”
“Just wrapping up some last-minute stuff. I saw that you were here and had a question—about the party tomorrow at the Quicks?”
Graham decided to throw the company’s holiday office party at his home.
As a gesture of goodwill
was how he put it on the phone.
The night’s on me.
But it feels more like he’s making a statement. That statement being
your kingdom is now in my full control.
“What about it?” I say.
Rhett’s smile is lopsided. “We were all just wondering if you want us to meet at your house first, so we could go over together? You’re right down the street, right? We won’t cause you any work. We just thought it’d be cool if we met at your place and went together.”
“Who’s we?”
“Well . . . everyone.”
“The whole company.”
Rhett lifts one shoulder, to match his crooked smile. “Yeah.”
The elevator opens and we step out of the elevator into the garage. “Sure, Rhett,” I say, smiling. “I’ll see you then.”
The drive home to Malibu is all Alison, just like it’s been for the past month.
It’s Ali as Catwoman. Ali in her scuba gear, puffing her cheeks out like a grouper. Ali in snow gear. Ali in the stables, looking crushed as I yelled at her.
I’m totally zoned out on the drive. I don’t even realize I’m pulling
up to her house until I’m there, idling in front of the Quicks’ wrought-iron gate.
I think about punching in the code, driving in, but Graham lives here and this isn’t about him. What I have to say is only for her, so I text her instead.
Adam:
I’m out front. Can we talk?
I stare at the phone, not sure what happens next. Maybe she tells me to fuck off?
I know I’m going to see her tomorrow at the party—and maybe that’s why I’m here now—because seeing her and not being able to talk to her . . . that’s going to kill me. I need to talk to her, and I don’t want to do it tomorrow in front of other people.
A full minute passes. I’m just accepting the fact that she’s not going to respond to my text when the gate opens and she comes running out, a flash of wavy blond hair and a flowing red dress.
She jumps into the passenger seat, pulling the hem of her dress up so she can shut the door, and then she’s right next to me and there’s not a single thought in my head anymore, only relief. Only a massive dose of relief that knocks the wind out of me like I’ve just been punched in the solar plexus.
I back out of her driveway and head to my house.
The drive is short. The only sound is the rev of the Bugatti’s engine as I accelerate onto the freeway, but I’m hyper aware of her. Of the way she smells and the way her fingers drum nervously on her leg. Her ankle seems fine, and it’s one thing. Just one of the millions of things I want to ask her about, and say to her, but I don’t want to rush. I was such an asshole to her the last two times we were together. I want to treat her right. If there’s any chance at all, I have to treat her the way she deserves to be treated—and she deserves the best. She deserves everything.
We get to my house, both of us still quiet, careful.
Alison steps into my living room like her father did a month ago, except different. She’s calm and steady, nothing like Graham’s aggressive presence, and she doesn’t observe the
things
in my house either. She moves to the glass doors and stares at the ocean. She stands there and drinks in the view like I would. Like I do.
It takes me ten seconds to realize I could watch her this way forever. Every second with her is a rush and it feels right to have her here. With me.
“I’ve wondered what your view was,” she says, breaking our silence. “I’ve been trying to picture what it is you see from your house.”
“I look exactly where you’re looking, Ali. But I see you.”
Ali glances at me and I see a flash of surprise, then pain, before she looks away. She walks over to the kitchen and picks up the basketball Grey left on the counter. Naturally. Because that’s where basketballs go.
“Is this your brother’s?” she says.
I nod. “Grey.”
“Is he here?” she asks.
I hear the slightest tremble in her voice.
“He’s in San Diego for the weekend.”
Grey’s there for a New Year’s Eve gig. His second time singing on stage. I hate that I can’t be there, but I can’t miss my company party.
Ali’s not looking at me. Now she’s the one, I think. She’s the one who won’t look at my eyes. But I can’t go there again. I’m done hiding. Done with lies and silence and distance. Done with everything that keeps me away from her.
I walk over and take the basketball from her, setting it back on the counter. Then I take her face in my hands and look into her blue eyes.
They’re teary, and the pain I see in them slays me. I put it there by leaving her in Jackson. By yelling at her. I will never do that again.
“I’m sorry, Alison. Forgive me.”
Her words come fast. “It was my fault too. I didn’t know, Adam. I had no idea what my father was doing. I thought he was trying to protect the company. My family. And I told him—”
I bend and catch her words with my mouth, kissing her. “I know,” I say. “It’s okay.” I kiss away the tear on her cheek, and come back to her lips, tasting them over and over. She’s so sweet and soft. I can’t get enough of her. “We’re okay now. It’s over.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Mad?” I lean back. “No way. I’m so happy. I’m so fucking happy right now, Ali. You have no idea.”
She smiles and her arms circle around my waist. “I think I do.”
“God, Alison. I’ve missed you.” The words tumble out easily. I bury my fingers into her long silky waves and let them go. “It killed me when I thought I lost you. I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Not for a minute. Not for a goddamned second.”
Ali lifts up onto her toes so our eyes are even as she listens. She looks into my soul, and I let her. I know that right now, she’s giving herself to me. That I’m doing the same. She’s mine and I’m hers, and I trail off because nothing else matters anymore. Nothing except her.
She feels it, too. She smiles, and then we’re just smiling at each other, a pair of fools, until she laughs.
“Hi, lovely,” she says, and then she kisses me.
I turn into raw need. I pull her into my arms and kiss her back. Her mouth opens to mine, so willing and hungry. She presses her breasts against me and my hands are all over her.
“Yes,” she breathes.
My desire shifts into high gear and I’m blinded to everything that’s not her. The need to be buried deep between her legs is the only thing. I’ve wanted this so long. “Alison, I want to do this slowly, but—”
“Let’s do slowly later,” she says.
A
dam smiles, and every last bit of me melts. He firms his hands under me and pulls me even tighter against him. He’s so hard it makes me gasp, my body instantly reduced to one pulse point, a sharp ache where our bodies join.
“I don’t know if I can make it to the bedroom,” he says.
“I’m not picky.”
He laughs, but still he carries me through the living room, down a short hallway to a master suite with glossy cocoa-colored walls, slate-blue accents, and a modern leather chair by a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the ocean. The space is sleek and luxurious—so perfectly Adam that it’s like I’ve been here already. Like it’s home.
His tongue teases my mouth, and I squeeze his waist with my thighs, grip his hair to pull him closer, as close as I can get him. We
tumble onto the bed together, still kissing but laughing too, trying to find our way up the bed without breaking our kiss, without our hands having to do anything but touch each other’s bodies.
He pushes my skirt up my thighs, presses himself against me, coarse twill against silk. I arch up to him, and we rock there, mouths crashing together, and already I feel that dizzying, cresting feeling. My body wants to climb toward that place, toward that bright undoing, and I want it but I also want to ride this, to make it last forever.
Easing off me, he slides off the end of the bed and stands there, facing me.
“Come here.” His eyes shine. His mouth looks moist and bruised from our kissing. Leaning forward, he slips his hands beneath me and tugs me toward the edge of the bed, until I’m at the very end, legs dangling off so my toes scrape the wood floor.
“I’m glad you’re not in your Catwoman costume,” he says, grinning. “Or in scuba gear. Or a snow suit.” Reaching beneath my skirt, he pulls down my panties, his fingers skimming over me, heat against heat.
“I’m . . . glad . . . too.”
He parts my thighs, looking at me with so much desire, such intense focus that my body starts to tremble.
“I thought you didn’t want to go slow,” I protest.
His hands brush over my breasts, squeezing them, tempting the nipples with his firm agile fingers, then trail over my belly, down along my legs. And then he moves to kneel at the edge of the bed.
“Adam—”
“I have to taste you.”
Just the words make me moan. I don’t know if I can take more than that. Take his mouth on me, his fingers. I want him against me. In me. Waiting, even for this, feels like torture.
I start to protest, but I feel the heat of his breath against me, feel him move my legs up to cross against his back. His head dips down,
and I miss his face, miss looking into his beautiful raincloud-gray eyes. I haven’t had my fill of that yet. I know I never will.
He presses his mouth against me, his hands moving over me, fingers and darting tongue and heat like I’ve never felt, like I’m burning from the inside, my entire body a scalding fever. I give myself to it, arching up to him, body rocking like a wave, like the ocean flowing and receding. It’s never been like this. I’ve never felt like this, pulled to this aching, yearning center. Never felt like a prism, sparking light in all directions.
I’m close . . . so close, but I want more. I want him. I breathe his name, and somehow he knows. Or he wants it for himself. He rises and strips off his shirt, and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than the sight of him, standing there. I start to rise, hungry to touch him, to feel the amazing strength of his muscles, to trail my hands, my tongue over the channels of his tapered abs.
But he pushes me gently back onto the bed and unbuckles his belt, eyes fixed on mine, pinning me in place. He sheds his pants and briefs, and stands there with that smile that undoes me—with his incredible body on display.
“You’re amazing,” I tell him, and he is. He’s more than I could have imagined, and I’ve imagined him many times.
“That’s you,” he says. He gets a condom from the nightstand and hands it to me to slip onto him. I do, looking up into his eyes, and then he slides over me, pressing against me, warm and hard and so perfect. All of me opens to him. Every part of me wants to enfold every part of him.
Adam slips himself into me slowly and then with a final motion that makes us both gasp. I close my eyes, giving myself over to the feeling of it, to the ebb and flow of our bodies, his hands brushing my hair back from my face, the feeling of his mouth closing over my nipples, sucking one then the other between his teeth.
Fierce darts of pleasure shoot through me. My breath comes in
shallow gasps, and I cross my legs around his back again, pulling him to me, needing him to be closer than my own skin. He moves up, intensifying his movements, looking down at me, at the place where our bodies intersect.
I slip my hand there, to the place where we join, and the feeling breaks me. It’s not a climb this time, but a sudden, shocking pulse that ripples through me, growing deeper and deeper, consuming me until it’s everything, until I’m crying out from the pleasure of it, wave after wave pouring through me, deeper than anything I’ve ever felt. It takes me, sweeping me along, and I hear myself say Adam’s name over and over, hear Adam’s panting breathing until it’s everything, until his voice is the air I breathe.
His strong hands brace my hips, holding on, moving intensely now, with a purpose that drives me, that makes me shudder. We rock together, on and on, until his breaths become groans, until his body trembles wildly against mine, fierce and insistent, until he shudders hard against me.
We still, and I lie there, letting my heart rate slow, letting myself come fully back to my body.
I rise up to kiss him, to run my lips over the sheen of perspiration on his chest, to breathe him in, feel the life of him still pulsing within me. He kisses me back hard, and then we move up to stretch out on the bed.
He lies there, a wide grin on his face. And then he laughs.
I nip his shoulder. “What’s so funny?” I ask.
“When you take over Boomerang,” he says. “You’re definitely going to have to kill that no-dating policy.”
“That’s not going to happen, Adam. I promise.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says and pulls me into his arms. “Only this does. Only you.”