Page 120 of Now That It's You
He gave another tight nod. “It was my fault.”
Meg ran her finger around the edge of the bowl and shook her head. “Matt made his own choices, Kyle. You didn’t force him to cheat. You weren’t some great puppet master dictating his every move.”
“I know that.” He cleared his throat. “But I suppose I should tell you I might have pulled a few strings to get you this audition. While we’re talking about manipulating people and situations and—well, I thought you should know that.”
“I already did.”
He blinked. “You knew?”
“Yes.” God, the look on his face. Meg wasn’t sure what to make of it. “The producer let it slip this morning when we were getting ready to start taping.”
“And you’re not mad?”
“Mad? Why would I be mad? You tried to make my dream come true.”
“But I did it behind your back.”
“Yes, but you did it with the best intentions.”
Something that looked like relief passed over his face. He nodded and reached for her hands. “Even when I made the wrong choices, I always had the best intentions.”
“I know.” Meg bit her lip and glanced toward the edge of the stage. No one had reappeared, so either they were giving her some space, or they really were done with her.
“Look, Meg—I love you,” he said. “I’ve always loved you. Even when it was the dumbest thing in the world for me to do. Even when I had no hope of having you love me back.”
Meg felt tears pooling in her eyes, and she wondered how pissed the makeup crew would be if she melted off all their perfectly good cosmetics. “I love you, too,” she murmured.
It was the first time she’d spoken the words aloud to him, and it seemed to take them both by surprise.
She swallowed, seizing the chance to say what she needed to say while he was still too dumbstruck to interrupt. “I don’t have this long, drawn out story about a lifetime of loving you in secret. This is all new to me. Loving you, forgiving Matt, forgiving myself—I’m figuring it out as I go along.”
Relief filled his eyes. “I like your story just the way it is. Knowing you loved Matt—that’s how it should be. I’d feel awful if I thought you hadn’t.”
She swallowed hard, determined to force the words out before tears clogged her throat completely. “And maybe that’s part of what gives me the capacity to love you now. To love you better than I could have if I’d fallen for you years ago.”
Kyle smiled. “So where to we go from here?”
“Forward,” she said. “Lugging all our baggage and our skeletons and all the things that make it possible for us to love each other better than we could have before.”
“I like that plan,” he said, reaching out to take her hands. “I promise to make you happy, Meg. Or at least to spend every damn day trying my best to do it.”
“Okay,” she breathed, conscious of the flutter just beneath her breastbone. “So here’s to learning from past mistakes.”
“And future mistakes.”
“And mistakes we haven’t even considered making yet.”
He grinned. “I love you, Meg.”
“I love you, too.”
He kissed her then, softly at first, then with an urgency that left her swaying a little on her feet. He held her upright, steadying her, supporting her, kissing her silly. It seemed to go on for years maybe, for more than a decade. Maybe that’s the way it had always been, even when she hadn’t known it.
The sound of applause broke through her consciousness, and Meg turned to see the production crew standing in front of the stage, their headphones looped around their necks and goofy grins on their faces.
“That’s perfect,” Kate said. “A little more passion like that and you’ll have this baby nailed.”
Meg laughed and pressed her hands to her face, trying to cool the flames. “How much of that did you hear?”
