Page 96 of Second Act
“Can you enlist Carla’s help with that? She tells it like it is.” Hugh knew that was a cop-out, but he was grasping at straws.
Jess tilted her head to look up at him. “Carla would be happy to run interference, but I have to handle this myself. It won’t be the last time gossip will circulate about us. I need to learn not to care.”
“No!” Her words ripped into him like bullets, making him face the truth. “Caring makes you the person you are. It’s why I love you.” He somehow forced his arms to fall away from her. He took a long step back so that she had to release him, too. “You were right back then, Jess. You don’t belong in my world.” His world of isolation and pretense, of meaningless air-kisses and backbiting gossip. “It was wrong of me to try to draw you back into it.”
She stood with her arms still slightly curved as though ready to wind them back around his waist. “What are you talking about?” she said. “You didn’t draw me into it. I came willingly.”
He curled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t reach for her again. “You don’t understand the price you would pay. Even I didn’t understand it until now.” He made himself tell her the unpleasant realities he had been withholding. “You know my limo driver? He’s also a bodyguard, specifically trained to deal with the possibility of armed kidnapping. You’d need someone like him.”
Her expression went from baffled to stunned, but he didn’t stop.
“When I’m making a Julian Best movie—and I will make one every two years now that Gavin’s overcome his writer’s block—I spend a solid six months traveling with virtually no breaks. We would have a hard time seeing each other, given that you have an important job to do.”
She started to speak, but he lifted his hand. “And no matter how many interviews we give, the paparazzi will never go away. Something like Meryl’s stupidity will happen, and they’ll stake out your clinic, interfere with your clients, and make themselves a pain in your ass until you’ll give up and stop working there.” He shook his head. “I can’t do this to you, Jess.”
She went silent, and he could see her absorbing the truth of what he’d said. But then anger flashed in her eyes. “Don’t make decisions for me. I love you. That makes it worth dealing with all those other issues.”
He wished that were true. “Eight years ago, you hated all the trappings that went with my job, and it’s a thousand times worse now.” He scraped his fingers through his hair, trying to explain his nightmare. She would hate it, and she would want out. Again. “I was tough already—I needed to be—so I didn’t have to change. You would have to alter the most fundamental qualities about yourself. You would come to resent, if not me, then our life together.” As pain joined the anger on her face and clawed at his gut, he realized why he’d welcomed the anger. He deserved it.
“Why do you think I can’t be strong enough to ignore gossip and still care about what’s important?” Jess waved her hands in frustration. “I’m not that same naive girl I was when we met, you know. I live in New York City, for God’s sake. Doesn’t that tell you something about my toughness?”
“That’s exactly the issue. You live in the real world. I can’t anymore.” He would never be able to make her understand how artificial his life was, how few people he trusted. Hell, that was why he’d fallen in love with her again...or maybe had never stopped loving her. She counterbalanced all of that. “I can’t do this, Jess. It would kill me to seeyou come to hate me.” And walk away. Into the arms of someone like Pete Larson, a normal, hardworking fellow Iowan who would give her a happy life with two kids, four dogs, and a white picket fence. Hugh wanted to rip down that picket fence with his bare hands.
Jessica closed the distance between them and poked a finger at his chest, her hair rippling with every movement. “You can’t predict what I will feel. You can’t decide this is wrong without my agreement.”
He couldn’t stop himself. He curled his hands around her shoulders, savoring the feel of her vitality under his palms. “I love you too much to destroy you.”
His desire to kiss her one more time nearly overwhelmed his certainty that he’d be lost if he did. He clenched his jaw and simply tried to memorize all the beloved features of her face to carry with him when the darkness started to close in.
Then he bolted out the door.
Jessica stood in the hallway, staring at the oak panels of her front door. Surely Hugh would stride back through it at any moment, saying he had temporarily lost his mind. He’d come all the way to New York just to apologize. How had that metamorphosed into breaking up with her? Her mind refused to accept it, even as her heart began to crack into fragments of loss and anguish.
Her knees started to tremble, so she tottered over to the stairway and sat down on the hard wooden step.
She’d been so careful not to make a big deal out of Meryl’s interview. He was the one who’d decided the incident was so awful that he needed to fly up here in a helicopter. She braced her elbows on her knees and dropped her face into her hands. What had she said to drive him away? Only that she needed to learn not to care about stupid gossip. How had that set him off?
He had spoken as though he was listening to some strange voice in his head, reeling off a list of reasons she would come to hate him, when she had thought he was there to make sure she still loved him.
Baffled, she closed her eyes and let the tears leak down her cheeks. Maybe he’d decided Meryl really would make a better girlfriend. The actress already lived in his world, as he kept referring to it. She understood the rules. It would be easier for Hugh. Maybe he’d realized that on the trip up to New York.
No, Jessica didn’t—couldn’t—believe that. Hugh wouldn’t lie to her about his relationship with his costar.
She thought back eight years and saw that the pattern was the same. He didn’t love her enough to allow her to adjust to the pitfalls of his fame. He needed her to fit in right away or he became frustrated.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to love a movie star, except in a brief, bright flare of passion. Maybe the price of loving him was higher than she could afford.
Desolation flooded through her, wrenching a sob from her throat.
The price of losing him seemed even higher.
