Page 67 of Kiss Me Tonight

Dominic

“It’s fucking bullshit.”

“You know what’s bullshit?” my good friend Nick Stamos retorts from my iPad, which I’ve got propped up on a tier of cardboard boxes for our video chat session. “That carpet. Jesus, my soul just withered and died on sight.”

The glare I send his way—or the iPad’s way, rather—goes unnoticed as he looks at something off camera. “Not the carpet.” Although the carpet is hideous in every way possible, too. “ThatCelebrity Tea Presentsasshole. He’s bullshit.”

Nick winces. “Mina and I saw the article this morning. It was . . .”

Usually, the mention of Nick’s fiancée, Mina, would have me asking where she is and why she hasn’t popped in to say hi yet. But I’m so tightly wound up that pleasantries have sailed right out the window. “Shit,” I growl, my shoulders flexing as I rip out another section of awful shag carpeting, “that’s what it is. A pathetic excuse for journalism.”

“I was going to say it was a little harsh.”

“That too.”

“You gotta let it go, man. You know how many times they wrote about me and Mina before I popped the question and asked her to marry me? Look at it this way—it’s your turn to shoulder the limelight now.”

With a satisfyingshrippppppthe carpet comes free. “I’m done with the limelight. Why the hell do you think I moved to bumfuck-middle-of-nowhere Maine?”

“Because you like the ocean.”

Truth.

“And because you enjoyed Maine when we went up to Bethel for that weekend away, even though you had to stand guard and watch your door all night,” Nick adds with a chuckle.

Also the truth.

Mina’s not-quite friend Sophia is a female menace with tentacles for limbs, sucking in all single men who make the mistake of entering her orbit. Nice girl, I guess, but not my type.

Even so, I enjoyed that weekend trip.

For the first time in years, I’d breathed a sigh of relief. There wasn’t any paparazzi waiting to pop out of a bush or a laundromat or a dumpster and charge at me with their cameras. They didn’t tail me from the grocery store to where I parked my car in the lot. They sure as hell didn’t sneak around and grab pictures of me naked.

Maine is paradise.

The mountains. The winding rivers. The solitude.

And thanks to one reporter who’s looking to do a little social climbing by ensuring his article goes viral, that paradise is now laid to waste.

It’s only a matter of time before the paps find their way to quaint London.

My lungs clamp tight as I adjust my grasp on the carpet from another angle and give it a hardy pull. “How long do you think the school is going to allow me around underage kids when the media flocks here like rabid vultures?” It’s a rhetorical question. Even if it wasn’t, I don’t give Nick long enough to come up with a satisfying answer. “Not long, Stamos. I’m gonna get my ass handed to me the first time a pap crosses school lines and pisses off a parent.”

“Would it matter? You haven’t said anything about London that gives me the impression that you’re in it for the long haul.” When I cut a glance his way, Nick holds up his hands. In one, he’s gripping a hammer. Probably doing work on one of his many restoration projects, I’m sure. “I’m not going to pretend to know what it’s like to be bad boy Dominic DaSilva—”

I roll my eyes at his overt sarcasm.

“But you’ve got the money, man. If the town isn’t working out for you anymore, you can just . . . leave.”

Two weeks ago I may have agreed with him.

Before Levi face-planted on my dick in front of an entire pub.

Before I had her ass grinding down on me in a deserted classroom like we were preteens instead of rapidly-hurtling-toward-middle-aged adults.

Before she looked me in the eye and dared me to acknowledge that unless I’m flipping the world a middle finger, I’m not satisfied with my life.

“Leaving isn’t gonna work for me,” I mutter, dropping to my haunches to grab my water bottle from the floor. The heat hasn’t cooled off in the last few days, and I’m already envisioning stripping down to a pair of swim trunks later and making use of the private access down to the water.

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