Page 47 of It Happened on a Sunday
“What?” Alarm turns his voice hoarse as he demands, “Are you telling me someone broke into your apartment and…”
“My apartment. My hotel room. Assholes are part of the game.” Though part of me wants to curl up on the floor at the memories, I keep my voice matter-of-fact but firm. If Sly intends to hang around long enough to make it to that date in L.A., he needs to know these things. And if the reality of my life is too much for him, if it scares him off, better now than at the restaurant, in front of the entire Hollywood press corps.
“Yeah, well, they shouldn’t be. Not like that.” His frustration is practically tangible. “How the hell do they get so close to you?”
The accusation in his voice pisses me right the fuck off. Neither I nor my security team deserves the shit ton of blame he seems ready to heap on us. He started this newest mess, but he’s got no freaking idea what it’s like to live the way I do.
“How come theydon’tget close to you?” I fire back, suddenly tired of the whole conversation. “Is it because your security is just that good, or is it because nobody tries?”
I brace myself for him to hit back with another ridiculous accusation, at which point I’ll feel more than justified in telling him to fuck all the fuck off. I have enough shit to wade through every day without adding his to the mix.
Except…Sly doesn’t hit back. In fact, for a long time, he doesn’t say anything at all. Just when I’m beginning to think he hung up on me, he whispers, “I didn’t know.”
It’s not actually an apology, but the regret in his voice has myown anger backing down enough for me to throw him a bone. “I’m not there when it happens. The alarms and cameras pick them up if they get too close to my homes. And, more times than not, the ones who are brazen enough to actually break in get caught. Occasionally they even get prosecuted.”
“Is that enough for you?” he asks, his earlier frustration replaced by something I can’t quite recognize. “Because it doesn’t feel like enough to me.”
“It has to be enough,” I say. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“I’m sorry,” he tells me solemnly. “I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through any of that. And I’m sorry if anything I’ve done has made it worse for you. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to happen.”
Normally, I’d brush off the words. People apologize for shit all the time—it doesn’t mean they mean it. But I finally figure out what I’m hearing in his voice: sorrow, with a dose of shame as a chaser. It calms me down faster than anything else would have.
“It’s not your fault,” I finally reply. Because it isn’t. This has been my life for longer than I want to think about.
“It feels like my fault.”
“Well, it’s not,” I tell him firmly. “Maybe you and Marquis are what kicked it up this week, but if it wasn’t the jumbotron, it would have been something else. It always is.”
“How do you live like that?”
“It’s been going on so long I barely notice it anymore,” I answer lightly, throwing in a forced laugh to really sell it. “Besides, what’s the alternative?”
“Don’t do that,” he tells me so sharply that I reel back in my seat.
What happened to the softness of just a few moments ago? “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t pretend it’s not a big deal. Stop downplaying what you’ve been through and what you’re still going through. Youdon’t have to pretend it doesn’t hurt. And you don’t have to hide from me. Not about this. Not about anything,” he clarifies. “But definitely not this.”
A long silence follows his words. Not because I’m angry, but because I have no idea how I’m supposed to respond to him. To what he’s telling me.
No one’s ever said anything like that to me before—no one’s ever told me I didn’t have to pretend before. Not even my mother, who was too busy trying to make money from me after my dad left to ever worry about how I felt. Or what I was having to keep hidden. The fact that Sly said it—and more, that he sounds like he means it—has something deep inside me turning dangerously soft. And even though I know it’s just a PR date, even though I know I’m the one who’s set all the rules, I can’t help wishing, just for a moment, that it could be more.
“This is going to get messy,” I whisper, so low I’m certain he won’t hear it.
But he must have ears like a bat, because he replies, “The things that matter always do.” There’s such warmth in his voice when he says it that I swear I could wrap his words around me like a blanket.
Which isn’t terrifying at all. “I need to go.”
“Okay.”
For some reason, I can’t hang up. “I like your voice.”
He chuckles. “I like your everything.”
And just like that, the walls I’ve built begin to melt. “This is going to getverymessy.” I feel the need to warn him a second time, as a whole bunch of emotions I’ve kept frozen in ice for years start thawing out.
But he just laughs, the sound low and rich and so warm that it sets off an avalanche inside me. Even before he says, “Then we’re already doing it right.”
