Page 124 of All the Bright Lights

And God does he look even more gorgeous than I remembered, though I hate to even think it, given everything he’s done.

But I can’t help it. Him hurting me doesn’t suddenly make me blind.

“When have you ever asked for permission?” I snip, my voice lacking the anger I so badly want it to possess.

“I’m asking now.” He doesn’t move.

“Well, since you and my mother have started a coup, I don’t think I have much of a choice.”

“Don’t be angry with her. I begged. She felt sorry for me.” He blows out a breath. “But you do have a choice. In fact, you’re the only one of us that has any choice at all.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because you can choose to forgive me or not. I, however, can’t choose whether or not to love you. I already do. I always will, no matter what you decide.”

“You lied to me.” My voice breaks.

“I know.”

“You humiliated me.”

“I know.”

“Even if I believed any of what you said in that interview, or to my parents, how could I ever trust you again?”

“Can I please come in?” he asks again. “I really don’t want to have this conversation from your hallway.”

“Fine,” I cave, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “But stay over there,” I tack on when he closes the door behind him.

“Okay.” He turns back toward me. “I know I messed up.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” I roll my eyes, mainly because I’m trying really hard not to cry. Though it does very little to dull the sting of tears.

“My actions, there’s no excuse for them. I wish I could say I wasn’t the kind of man willing to sacrifice someone else’s heart for my own gain, but that simply wouldn’t be true. I was that man. Key word beingwas.” He moves further into the room.

“And you expect me to believe you’re not that man anymore, after you lied to me this whole time?”

“I didn’t lie…”

“Omission of the truth is still lying!” I cut him off.

“You’re right. I lied. I lied because I knew if I told you the truth, you’d doubt every moment we had spent together.”

“Ding. Ding. Ding.” I cling to my anger like a shield, afraid that if I let it go, I’ll have nothing left to protect me.

“When I came to the house that night, I did so with the intention of starting up a fake relationship with you in order to clean up my image. It’s the very reason I purchased the Malibu house to begin with. I had to sell the story I was telling. Months prior, you had, unknowingly, sold a house to my PR agent, Helen, who, after working with you, thought you were exactly the kind of woman the world needed to see me with. Respectable. Beautiful. Hard working.”

“Average,” I can’t help but interject.

“Someone who lived a normal life away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood,” he continues. “And while, yes, it is true that the first couple of times we spent time together, I did so for the sole purpose of being photographed out with you in order to sell that same story to the public.”

“Did you even like me?”

“In truth, I thought you were incredibly beautiful, but infuriating as hell. But that’s because you fought me every step of the way. Any other woman would have run with it, but you, you were suspicious from the word go. And that was particularly frustrating for me. But it also forced me to try harder, and in doing so, I got to know you better. I got to see you, and not as just some pawn in my game. You became real to me, and in turn, what we had, became real.”

“You can’t build a truth from lies. None of what we had was actually real.”

“But it was. And I know you felt it, too.”

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