Page 74 of Rule 2: Never Join a Christmas Dating Show
My organs tighten and twist because I know I need to tell him. I should have told him long ago.
“I’m not who you think I am,” I say finally.
His eyes soften further, the tenderness so sweet it makes my heart leap. “Baby, I know exactly who you are.”
I shake my head frantically, ignoring the pet name, because this will all make it worse. “No, I’m...”
My fingers tremble, and he narrows the distance between us at once.
He clasps hold of my shaking fingers, then presses a kiss to them. He keeps his gaze on me. “You’re Seth Archer from Ashcove.”
I stiffen. “You know.”
“I’ve always known.”
I blink.
“You mean, when I came to speak to your agent? You knew me then? That’s why you changed your mind about going on the show?” My voice wobbles, but I get it. I really get it.
He shakes his head.
“In the coffee shop?” My voice squeaks, and I remember him leaving, and chasing after him in the snow and the ice, of him turning and catching me...
“I’ve always known,” he repeats his voice firm.
He frowns, then sits on the bed, then pulls me into his arms. I’ve never been held like this before. I’ve always gone for skinny guys like me who don’t remind me of jocks. Who don’t scare me.
But I realize there’s nothing scary about Sebastian, and all I feel is safety and warmth.
“I’ve watched every episode ofSeeking Mr. Right,”Luke says.
Whatever I expected him to say, I didn’t expect him to say that. “What?”
He nods and wraps his arms more tightly around me. “Multiple times, most of them. I, um, heard you tell Ella you didn’t want me to be Mr. Right.”
I close my eyes. “You heard that? I’m so sorry.”
He kisses the skin beside my eyes, the move tender, and my heart aches from the sweetness.
Luke isn’t a guy I met at a Hollywood party who marches me out while explaining all the wonderful things about him, who either slithers out before breakfast, or who clings to my arm at events with passion, as I wonder why there are more photographers than before, and I see our names splattered together on newspapers and his job description going from “aspiring actor” to “actor of” until he no longer calls me and answers my texts and I next see him on social media holding the arm of someone more successful than myself.
I never minded the coldness of my relationships. Never allowed myself to care. But then none of those people were Luke.
He has the ability to break me as surely as if he personally flings me from the window, hauling me into his strong, muscular arms, and dropping me four stories down.
I sink against his skin, his torso hot, and he wraps his arms around me, tangling his hands with mine and pressing them against my heart.
I want to tell him he is amazing, but shame moves through me too. He’s Bryce’s brother. He heard what Bryce said to me in hallways, and though Bryce never laid a hand on me, because I guess I didn’t grow up in the 1970s, his words pierced me.
It was fine.
I’m fine.
But I hate that Bryce was right. I like my life, but I hate that he knew back then, before even I knew, what I wanted. I hate that the sex acts he described me having, craving, using vulgar language to make people laugh, are sex acts I have, sex acts I crave.
I’m all the things Bryce said I was.
And Luke heard it. Did Bryce talk about me at home? What did he say about me when I was not around? Was he quiet then, or was my name still mentioned, a substitute for everything ridiculous and crude and wrong and ugly? A substitute for everything he despised.
