Page 81 of Fresh Start
“Are you sure?” Leo asked me when he saw me upload the picture on Instagram and wrote the words “This is love #NoFilter."
I pressed post before I turned to him with the biggest breath of relief I’d ever exhaled.
“Never been more sure.”
Before I even got to lock my phone, the hearts and comments filled my screen.
Epilogue
Leo
A Year Later
Ididn’t even know why I was carrying the stupid thing when we were paying the team of five men to do it for us. But since I was stubborn and not willing to quit now, I lugged the box as far as I could from the truck toward the porch.
If I saw another James Sky book after this move, I would find and kill the man that wouldn’t stop writing book after book, which meant my boyfriend had a room full of his paperbacks. I seriously needed to introduce him to the magic of e-books.
The house never failed to astound me no matter how many times I saw it, and I hoped the feeling lasted. It had taken us so long to find the right location for us to move. We’d needed a house that was close enough to the main hubbub of the town center, but still distant enough to allow for some privacy from those paparazzi that couldn’t take the hint.
Not that we needed that much protection. The townspeople had embraced both of us when we decided to move and had led many photographers astray when they stumbled into town. For the most part, we were undisturbed.
The stonework around the house was beautiful. It almost reminded me of the red-bricked Victorian houses in London. If London had houses as big as Cedarwood Beach estates.
The driveway was both wide and long enough for all the family cars to park, even with our own cars parked in the garage on the right. The lawn on either side was trimmed, and only a few small trees were scattered around the house perimeter. I couldn’t wait to plant more flowers and trees to make the front as welcoming as the back was. I’m sure a day with Summer would get rid of the task before it clogged up my to-do list.
The porch was wide enough that I could already picture the two chairs I’d put on the side, in front of the window, where Dawson and I could sit when we were older, waiting for our children and our grandchildren to visit us. If we were lucky enough to have either.
“Baby, why are you carrying that on your own?” Dawson asked coming out of the house and rushing to my help.
“I can do it, thank you very much. I didn’t train for four months for nothing,” I told him, but let him take the box from me. It was his books anyway.
“Yeah, and you haven’t done any since the movie wrapped. So, how long is that? Five months or something?” Dawson said and walked into the house.
I followed him inside, and when he put the box down in the living room, he turned around and wrapped his arms around my waist.
“Can you believe this? This is our home,” he said.
“It’s finally looking like one,” I said, taking a look around.
The moving guys had already set up most of the living room, and I could hear them in the kitchen, putting our dishes and other tableware away. It had been a stressful few months. Finding a house was one thing, but making our relationship work between filming and traveling back and forth to Virginia was another.
Shortly after Dawson shared our picture online, the media took us by storm. It hadn’t always been easy, but it was definitely easier than hiding our relationship. Articles were written about us, and our pictures were plastered on every newspaper and magazine in the world, touting us as the gay power couple Hollywood didn’t know it needed.
And with that sort of power, a certain responsibility came over us.
One night, after a party when we were both in LA, he woke me up to tell me he had to come out with his secret. I hadn’t known then, but his old agent had been at the party with a new victim, and it made Dawson sick.
So, two months after we were officially together, he filmed himself and posted the video online, detailing his life under the rule of his old agent and the amount of abuse he and others had gone through because of him. The agent came under fire, especially as more actors came forward after Dawson’s video and admitted to being harassed and manipulated by him.
Needless to say, his career was deader than the Dead Sea. As for his legal punishment, that was still under investigation.
Three months later, and only shortly after I started filming Death Knight, Dawson quit acting, deciding to put his skills to use differently. With the help of charities, social media influencing, and the small productions he produced, he helped raise money for underprivileged groups. He’d finally found his calling. His last film became a cameo on the last Detective Strong film where he passed the reins to a new generation of actors and their "super" characters.
It had been a long year, and we’d been through everything already. Court rulings, harassment, threats, interviews. But now, finally, life was settling down somewhat. We had found a balance between being Hollywood phenomena and our normal selves. It took extra work, but it was worth it. Both our films were done, and our schedules were clear for the foreseeable future.
“Do you think it will be ready in time for the barbecue?” I asked.
I wish we hadn’t invited all our friends and family to come over on our first night in the house. Now that we were almost finished, I just wanted to be alone with Dawson in our home. Our own little haven in this wild, wild world.
