Page 83 of Hello Darling
He runs his hands through his hair and looks up at the ceiling. “Oh my God! It’s felt like such a struggle, getting you to open up to me, when you somehow opened up something in me almost immediately. Don’t you see? Because of you, I want something I’ve never wanted before—I want a partner. In life.”
“You can’t honestly believe that it’s not going to get in the way at some point.”
“What is?”
“Our totally different backgrounds. Our completely different lives.”
“What exactly are they supposed to get in the way of?”
“Us. Staying together.”
His eyes cloud over in a way that they never have before with me. His jaw is clenched. This is it. I’ve been testing his limits and this is it.
“What’s getting in the way of us staying together, Stella, is you…Christ. I’m not going to beg you to be with me.”
“I’m not asking you to!”
“I have to admit…I’ve grown weary of this.”
“Of me?”
“Of wrestling with you.” He stays where he is, but he fixes me with a gaze that is so full of anger and vulnerability, drawing me so close to him I can’t breathe. “Fuck it. I love you, Stella, but I can’t take much more of this…As I’ve said, I’m about to get very busy again. I ’d prefer it if you were with me, I’d understand if you aren’t for the most part, but I need to know if you’re coming to visit me at any point and I need to know if you’re coming to the weddingin February. The wedding most of all. I don’t want to be constantly wondering and worrying about whether or not you’re my girlfriend. God I can’t believe I had to say that out loud, but there you have it. I love you, but you’re really pissing me off.”
I propel myself from the bed, run to him and leap, wrapping my legs around his waist. He holds me up by my ass in this way that he’s held me so many times now. “I love you Evan.”
I kiss him all over his face, sadly and furiously.
“I’m so in love with you. But I can’t be your girlfriend. You know it wouldn’t last. I don’t know how to live that kind of life. I don’t want to leave the life I have. I’m sorry. It’s just too much. I don’t want to hold you back. I’m not going to be able to go to all those big events with you, and you’d have to deal with all the questions and tabloid crap, or worse, you’d start turning down jobs and events to be with me instead and you’d resent me, all of your people would hate me, and it will just…you deserve better. You deserve the best of everything.”
He drops me back onto the bed, like he’s had it with me. I stand up and shove his chest. He grabs me, falls down to the bed with me and kisses me so hard it’s like he’s trying to smother the life out of all those words I just said. I wrestle with his jeans to get them off and he tears my lacey lingerie apart down the middle like it’s tissue paper.
“I love you, Evan,” I say, my voice cracking.
“I love you, Stella,” he growls, full of hate. I’m not imagining that. I know he doesn’t hate me, he hates the situation, just as I love him and hate these circumstances.
“Fuck me like there’s no tomorrow,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Thereisno tomorrow, you twit.” His voice is hard as his tense body and his unforgiving touch.
He is so deep inside of me, so relentless in the way that he penetrates me, but the orgasm that is generated by this storm of emotion is so slow and warm and sweeping, it seems to last forever as if to prove to me that some things can. Even when this moment has passed, hehaschanged my molecules, and the all-encompassing orgasm that is Evan Hunter will live in my cells for as long as I live.
I may not be his Juliet, but at least I’ll get to live with these memories of him and the sounds he makes while he tells me over and over again that he loves me as he comes inside of me, because we both know it will probably be the last time he does.
It’s been so long since I’ve cared enough to have a fight with the person I’m having sex with that I’d forgotten how fights can bring you closer together. I’d forgotten how great sex can be when you’re fighting. I’d almost forgotten that this was a fling between a small town girl and the world famous movie star who forgot who he was for a while when he was with her.
Which is why it’s even harder for me to leave him, to do what I need to do.
It will hurt, but I’ve hurt before and I got through it. The only difference is that I’m choosing this. I’m hurting someone else in the process, even though I know it will only be temporary for him.
Beautiful dreams only last when they’re captured on film, and now it’s time for both of us to wake up.
