Page 23 of Game Changer

“Come here,” he pulls me in beside him, our bodies moulding together. “I love you Zara.” He kisses the top of my head and breathes in long and slow.

“I love you too Buckie.”

The feeling of contentment between us makes me regretful that we never did this years ago. We belong together. Simple as that. I’ve finally found that last thing that was missing in my life.

* * *

Buckie’s bedroom turns a faded orange colour in the sunset as night creeps up on us. I lie in his arms thinking about how much has changed now. We have always had great sex, but that’s all it ever was. This time it was different. He was different. I don’t know if the years we’ve been apart have made the difference. I’ve had lovers since we stopped sleeping together and I know he has too. There’s no way he’s spent five years around all those beautiful people and not got himself a piece of action. I would never have expected him to stay celibate. It doesn’t stop the tiny pang of jealousy at the thought of all those women who have had the pleasure of his company.

“You okay Zar?” Buckie’s voice rumbles through his chest against my ear.

“Uh huh,” I reply, and I know I’m not fooling anyone, least of all Buckie.

“Hey, look at me,” he says nudging me to raise my eyes to meet his. “What’s up? Did we fuck up doing this?”

“Do you think we did? I don’t know what to think. Do you think we fit together now? Our lives are very different, and I can’t follow you all over the world. I have too much here. My whole life is in the UK.”

“I’d never ask you to leave. I know what you have here. You’re an amazing person. You’re talented, headstrong and most of all a beautiful human being, inside and out. If anything, this time with you has cemented a decision I’ve been toying with for a while now. I want to move back to Scotland for good.”

“How long have you been mulling over that? Have you talked to your parents about it?” I sit upright and turn to face him. I pull the covers up over my bare chest, not even trying to hide my excitement at the prospect.

He mirrors me. “I spoke to my parents last year about it. I never wanted to live in L.A. It’s not as fun a place to live as you might imagine, and I’ve realised I’ve been homesick ever since I got there. I’ve made a name for myself now and most of the time when I’m filming it’s on location, so I travel around the world anyway. A few weeks at the studios in L.A. won’t kill me and at least I’ll have something to look forward to when it’s all done.”

I take his hands in mine and rub his knuckles. He has movie star hands. They’re perfect and pampered and look as though they’ve never done a day’s hard work in their life.

“This is so new Buckie. Can you uproot your life right now before we know where this is going? God, five hours ago we were still only friends.”

“Why did you never tell me how you felt Zara? I know it wasn’t because you thought I wouldn’t have gone. We both know I would have.”

“I didn’t want to lose you. Even though you were thousands of miles away you were still my friend. And that’s what scares me about this now. We can’t ever go back to being friends again if this doesn’t work out. I’m worried I’ll lose you all over again. And next time it’ll be forever.” I look down at his hands in mine.

“Look at me Zara,” he says, taking his hand from mine and tilting my chin up with his finger. “I felt exactly the same. I’ve hated myself every day since I left and even more in recent years for not staying in touch with you as I should have. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve thought about you. How jealous I got of any guy that dared to touch you even though I never knew who you were dating or even if you did at all.”

“Huh. Is that so. How do you think I coped?”

“With what?”

“Jealousy. You’ve no idea. I had to watch you in some quite explicit sex scenes in the cinema. Now I’m not daft, I know they aren’t real, but you do get up close and personal with a lot of beautiful women on that big screen. I watched you with the memories of what we used to do, knowing every inch of that beautiful body. It was pure torture. And it was even worse knowing that I could never do that with you again. Don’t even get me started on the Google images.”

He lets out a hearty laugh and my cheeks redden.

“Please don’t laugh at me. That’s very unfair.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you.” He furrows his brow, contemplating what to say. “We’ve wasted far too much time Zara. Let’s lay the cards on the table. In the past five years I’ve had around seven girlfriends. You can find details of them all on the internet. They never lasted long. You know why? They weren’t you.”

I nod my head at him. “Thank you for telling me that. I’ve had four boyfriends and one fiancé since you left. The boyfriends lasted between one and four months. I was with Stuart for around two years.”

Buckie sits back and tilts his head. “You never told me you got engaged.”

“By the time that happened I was lucky if I got a happy birthday from you. And to be quite honest, by the time he asked me to marry him I kind of already knew deep down that he wasn’t the one. I don’t even know why I accepted. I guess I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. We broke up about three months later. The constant bickering that started happening wore me down and was affecting my work. Then I caught him cheating, in my own pub. The dickhead tried to put the blame on me. Said I drove him to it. I was glad I had an excuse to end it. But I should have done it before he even got the chance to propose, instead of allowing him to humiliate me in public. I put all his stuff in black bags in the street, then sold my flat and bought a new house. Fresh start, new me.”

“Wow. You see, you telling me things like that makes me feel like a total tosser.”

“Why? What could you have done? You weren’t here. You didn’t make him cheat on me.”

“Exactly I wasn’t here. I want to make this work Zara. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to lose you. If we do this, we do it right. I want to date you, for real this time. But you need to go into this with your eyes open. You know what my life is like. I don’t get recognised as much here which is nice, but you have to prepare yourself for the paparazzi. They are brutal. They’ve been trying to dig up dirt on me since I started acting. It’s got more intrusive as I’ve become more well known. Now I’ve learned to ignore much of what they say. It doesn’t matter if you even talk to them and tell them the truth, they spin it to suit themselves anyway. Boring people don’t sell papers. I’d never want to put you or your career in jeopardy. I need to know that you can handle that side of my life before we take this further.”

“I’m in,” I answer without missing a beat.

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