Page 104 of Stuck with the Billionaire Celebrity

I tilt her chin up, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead.

“Everything about this place is so lovely, I could really see us living here forever. What if…what if he finds out that we’re staying by the village.”

“The people in town take privacy very seriously. They won’t tell him anything, especially when Ernest lets them all know that there’s danger.”

“It just feels like we might be running away from everything.”

I pull back slightly, enough to look at her face. There’s worry there, but it’s more than just surface-level concern.

It’s something more profound, a fear that I can see in the way she clenches her jaw, in the small crease between her brows.

I want to ask her what’s really going on in her head, but instead, I squeeze her hand, a silent gesture to let her know I’m here.

“I don’t understand,” I say gently. “We’re here because we want to be. This is our choice, Grace. We don’t have to explain it to anyone.”

She nods slowly, but I can see she’s still not convinced. “I just... I don’t want him to be able to change us. To change you. To change everything we’ve worked for, everything we’ve built.”

I let out a quiet breath. “It doesn’t have to change us. Not if we don’t let it.”

“But staying here... in this tiny village, in this little bubble...

It’s easy to lose sight of what’s real, you know? What’s important.

I don’t want us to wake up one day and realize we’ve drifted too far away from everything we used to be.”

I think about that for a second. There’s truth in her words. It’s easy to get lost in the simplicity of it all—the quiet, the slow pace, the way time seems to move differently here.

And maybe that’s part of what I love about it.

But I get where she’s coming from. She’s always been the practical one, the grounded one. I respect that about her, even if it doesn’t always make sense to me in the moment.

I run a hand through my hair and turn to face her completely.

“Grace, I get it. I do. You’re worried about the future. You’re worried that this is just a moment, a blip, and that we’re running away from something.

But... I don’t feel like we’re running away from anything. I feel like we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”

She opens her mouth to speak but hesitates, her gaze flicking to the floor. I know she wants to believe that, she really does.

But there’s a part of her that’s afraid, and I can see it in the way her fingers twitch, like she’s trying to hold herself together.

“You don’t get it,” she says quietly. “This is so different from anything I’ve known. And it’s so easy to get lost here. To just... settle in and forget about everything else. I don’t want us to lose ourselves.”

I place my hand gently on her cheek, lifting her face so she’s looking directly at me.

“Grace, the only thing I’m losing is the weight of all the bullshit that comes with living in the city.

The constant rush. The noise. The... distractions.”

I pause, letting the words sink in.

“But I’mnotlosing you. I’mnotlosing us.

We’re building something here.

Somethingreal.

Something forus.”

---