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“I’m so excited.”

He chuckles. “Easy to please.”

“Well, I hope you’re patient. I have no rhythm.”

“I disagree,” he fires back. “You sure give one hell of a lap dance.”

I bite my lip and shake my head. Every day I read headlines that praise Easton’s genius—declaring him a revolutionary—and every night since Dallas, I talk to the man I met in Seattle. The man who took my hand and helped me make sense of the state I was in.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe he’s one and the same. As a journalist, I finally understand the distinction between the fantasy life most believe celebrities dwell in and the reality of their every day. Insight that not many people can truly understand, unless they live behind the scenes.

Not that the jet setting, yacht life isn’t possible, because it is. It’s just not practical for everyday living. Easton’s daily routine is exactly as he described, far from that luxurious life, but he’s anything but boring as he claimed to be. He’s insightful and brilliant, and I love hearing him talk about anything and everything.

We bicker—sometimes outright disagree—but at the end of every conversation, we just stare at each other with longing in our eyes and voices when we’re forced off the phone. He’s texted or called me every day without fail since Dallas. We’ve spent a few late nights on the phone, which has only made me more of a believer that I’m a priority for him.

“I never saw a picture of your mom,” he remarks as I exit the closet filled to the brim with years full of juvenile junk I left behind. Crap that my sentimental parents never threw out, despite turning my old room into a guest suite.

“Really? Well, I can remedy that.” I exit my bedroom and walk down a long hall. Framed photos line the wall between guest bedrooms, and I search them to find a recent picture before flipping the camera.

“This is my mom, Addison Warner Hearst Butler,” I laugh.

“That’s a lot of last names.”

“She mostly goes by Butler. This was taken two years ago, at Thanksgiving.” Dad grins behind Mom in the kitchen, his arm wrapped possessively around her chest as she grips it, smiling more at him than posing for the photo. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“She’s beautiful,” Easton says, “but you look so much more like your dad.”

“Which she unfairly holds against him.”

“They look happy,” he observes.

I sigh. “Yeah, they do. They are,” I agree, turning the camera back on me. “Is this weird?”

“Not for me. Not at all. I hate that it is for you.”

“It’s just guilt.”

“We aren’t doing anything wrong,” he insists.

“Says you.”

“Baby, can we not do this today?”

“Okay, sure. Sorry,” I turn the camera back to the wall of photos and accidentally scan one I’m not crazy about, just as protests come flying out of my cell speaker and my ears redden. “You weren’t meant to see that.”

“Fuck that, turn it back,” he commands.

I shake my head.

“Right now.”

Sighing, I flip the camera back to a picture of me in a bikini top and tiny shorts, standing in front of Percy and holding his reins at the pasture fence.

“A little to the left,” he commands again.

“Geesh, bossy.”

“Got it.”

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