Page 43 of Unspoken Confessions
He stopped his pacing and shook his head. He still hadn’t looked at me and I somewhat wondered that if I had left with everyone else, would he be in here talking to himself?
“My father wasn’t around much. I don’t know if you know who he is, but he’s a big deal. Owns one of the largest film production companies in America. He doesn’t produce so much, well, not in the way that he has his hands in the actual work of the projects anymore. It’s like his name is enough. I hate it, you know?”
I didn’t know, but I was trying to follow along.
Even if it was clear that acting wasn’t Nick’s first choice of career, he went into every project with love and care. He gave it his all just because that was the type of person he was.
And I was beginning to realize that I’d come in at the crash. He might have been in between work or whatever, but he wasn’t hardcore searching for that next project to keep him busy. I couldn’t figure out why, but I might have had a few ideas.
“After she died, it was like he didn’t want to be around me,” he said after a long moment of silence. “He came home even less. Stopped calling to check in. He hired a nanny to look after me, which was something my mom had been very against. God! She was… I couldn’t have asked for a better mother. We had this big house and all this money, we could have had everything we wanted, but she was always so… grounded. And she raised me to be that way.”
He walked over to the couch and sat again, his thigh pressing against mine, and for a moment, that was all I could focus on.
I wondered if he felt it. The heat that was between us. The invisible pull that was there. The slight tingle from being so close. I knew it wasn’t just me, and it seemed that both of us were trying our hardest to ignore it and play it off like it wasn’t there.
“But then she was gone and in her place was this stranger, and I didn’t have my dad around at all. So of course, I did the only thing a fucking kid would think of to do to get their parent’s attention, I became something my father would want to notice. Except, I fucked up. I was mad at him and determined to do it on my own. I wanted to show him that I could be this great thing and I wanted to rub it in his face. Boy, did that blow up in my face?”
I didn’t know why I smiled, but I did.
He was half-amused by it too, so I figured that was alright.
I could just see him, this little kid that was sad and angry and desperate. Fighting his own battles because there was no one else to do it for him.
It broke my heart but it also made me see that there were even more sides to Mr. Movie Star than I’d already seen. More sides I wanted to get to know. More sides I wanted to protect.
“I really showed him, didn’t I?” he asked, voice cracking halfway through and tears shining in his eyes as he looked up at me. “I’m fucking miserable, and now I have a scandal and a stalker.”
Fucking hell.
I was so gone for him.
Because all I wanted to do was make sure that look never filled his eyes again.
