Page 97 of Perfect Praise

“No,” I reply. I needed out of the bed. I needed stimulation. I needed chaos. Something to make me not want to pull out my hair by the roots. I don’t want to be able to feel anything, because I don’t understand what I am feeling.

She stands on her tiptoes to kiss me before she steps back and holds her arms out by her side. With her head thrown back, she smiles at the sky. The wet fabric of her shirt clings to her breasts, just see-through enough, and her nipples peak in the cold.

“How do I look?” she screams over the wind, hair whipping around her face.

“Perfect,” I whisper.

Maren looks back at me before she starts to twirl. Her cute little ass peeks out from beneath the hem of my T-shirt as it rises up her legs. “I can’t hearrrrr youuuuu!” Her laugh carries across the water on a gust.

I wish I could be every single raindrop caressing her skin, carry her laugh around in a jar to hear it whenever I wanted—but maybe that’s not obsession, maybe it’s just the way I feel. Maybe it’s love.

“I know,” I continue. “You look like a force. Like you’re happy. You look like a dream, one I never want to wake up from. You look like you’re mine. I want to keep you all to myself because I’m selfish, but I want to show you off to the world at the same time becauseI’m lucky. You look like someone who deserves everything, someone I don’t deserve. And you look like the woman I think I’m falling in love with.”

Abruptly, she stops twisting and cocks her head to the side, like somehow she heard me, even though I know she didn’t. Maybe she sensed it—my shift or the mood or my intensity.

What?she mouths, unsuccessfully pursing her lips to hide her smile.

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. Droplets fall from the ends of my bangs, so I run my hand through my hair to push it back. The urge to tell her a secret I never thought I’d say out loud gnaws at my brain, but it’s not a question of if anymore but when. Because I can’t not tell her, even if it means she pulls away. All of my secrets are her secrets now.

I drag her into me flush against my body, wrapping my arms around her lower back. I tip my face down to hers and speak against the shell of her ear. “I want—need—to tell you something.”

She peers up at me, eyebrows knitting together from her smile. “I like secrets.”

“It was me,” I let out. “I interfered with your reality show.” Confusion replaces her smile. My body is on fire despite the rain, but the only way to put it out is to keep going. “I got them to agree to never show what happened.”

Her jaw drops, and she blinks through the raindrops weighing down her eyelashes. “How?”

“Maybe threatened, maybe bribed. I’m a persuasive motherfucker when I want to be, but that’s beside the point.”

“Why?” she asks.

The same question I’ve asked myself a million times in the last few months.

I would never have done it if I hadn’t been walking down the hallway that day and heard Russell’s grating laugh coming out of the private lounge in the country club. They must have been the only onesin there, because it was so early in the morning, but I’d been up before dawn to practice.

“You want them to air that?” I’d heard his caddie say. I paused and lingered in the hallway outside the door.

“Why not?” Russ replied, still amused. “All publicity is good publicity.”

His caddie laughed while pointing out the obvious. “That’s fucked up.”

I could almost feel Russ’ indifference shatter out of the room, like his shrug caused a fissure across Florida. “Maren will get over it.”

I’d known. We’dallknown what he’d done. This is a small world—golf world. I stay out of people’s shit, but this particular thing, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I could stand up for her.

It took me all of three seconds before I made a rash decision and turned around. No one would ever know it was me, I’d make sure of it, but I also knew that over my dead body was that fucking saga going to air.

As soon as I made it outside, I had Graham on the phone to demand he give me the producer’s personal phone number within the hour. Sometimes it’s very useful to pay someone so much.

“I don’t know,” I tell Maren. “Because I saw me in you. I know what it feels like to be manipulated and used, and trust me, I feel insane now. I haven’t been stalking you or obsessed with you, and this wasn’t some elaborate plan to mess with you. I watched you for years bouncing around like light. I knew what Russell was doing, but I had no clue if you knew, and I wasn’t about to get involved. And then he just stole it all from you. I wasn’t about to let him make it worse.”

She pauses, taking that in. Her face is coated with rain, but she doesn’t bother to wipe it away. “And you cared?”

“Yes, Maren, Icared,but you never would’ve known if you hadn’t asked me for help and came bounding into my life. I felt like I’d donemy part, and I wouldn’t even agree to help you until I realized I could get something out of it because I’m an asshole more often than I care.”

Her wide, stunned eyes blink again rapidly. “Did you get Craig to stop filming me?”

I shrug. “All that took was a look. I suspect because he thought we were dating, which I hadzerointention of doing. I would have died with this secret, and now—now, I’d die for you. I don’t even know how I’ve gotten from point A to point B.”

---