“Sure, talking,” Daisy says with a wicked grin before she herds the rest of my friends back to the dining room.
“Oh, young love,” Mrs. Maple says. “I remember all that talking I’d do with Mr. Maple when we were first dating.” She cackles wickedly.
“They’re not coming back, are they?” Mr. Jensen asks mournfully. He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d get the chance to meet Max Thunder.”
“It just means more dessert for me,” Audrey says, grabbing the tray of cupcakes from the counter.
I shake my head at my friends’ antics and usher Chase up the stairs to my room. We walk silently, hand in hand, me leading the way.
He closes my bedroom door with a firm thud. He looks around my room, missing nothing. His perusal unnerves me, and I’m suddenly aware of the evidence that I’m still in my childhood bedroom. There’s my favorite stuffed bear, Porridge, on the bookshelf, along with my collection of Winnie the Pooh books, which I have to admit I still reread occasionally. Porridge still smells a little smokey, but I couldn’t get rid of him.
Chase grins and picks up a book.
“Pooh is my philosophical guru. Nothing bothers him. He accepts life as it is. He’s very Zen,” I say with a blush.
I snatch the book from Chase’s hand and place it gently back on the shelf.
Chase picks up my bear next. “I’m not judging,” he says with a laugh. “Is this the bear you told me about? The one named Oatmeal?” Chase teases.
“You know very well he’s Porridge.” I glare at Chase.
And that’s when I realize I’ve confided to Remington about my ridiculously named favorite stuffie, and, when we texted into the night, told him about the four-poster bed with the romantic netting I put up when I was sixteen and went through my Out of Africa phase. He even knows I added the twinkly lights on my bed frame one Christmas, and I just never took them down.
He knows it all, even if he didn’t know my name.
My legs feel weak, and I sink onto the bed.
He stands in front of me, looking down. I crane my neck to see him better, and he kneels.
“Did you mean it?”
He doesn’t ask what I mean.
“Every word,” he vows.
“Even—”
“Especially the part when I said I love you.” He traces a line down my nose and ends at my lips. Everywhere he touches burns. All I want is to kiss him, but this is too important.
“You can’t turn down the movie role, Chase. This is your career. I can’t ruin it for you. What if you resent me?”
“I’m not turning it down because of you, Olivia. Or, if I am, it’s only because you’ve inspired me to take control and figure out what I want from my life, to risk the status quo that’s not working for me. If it’s a question between some movie role and you, I’ll choose you every time.”
My heart flips, but I still need to make him understand. “But that’s just it. You don’t have to choose. We can figure this out. I don’t want you to sacrifice your career or who you are. That’s not love. I want the man I’m with to be better because of me.”
“This is what I want. I love movies, but I want to be involved with stories that matter to me. The director I sent my screenplay to loved it. He wants to make it. It will be a long road, but it’s a start. Just like you predicted when you read it years ago.” He looks down, a tinge of red appearing on his cheeks, and I’m charmed by that tell of insecurity in such a strong, brilliant man.
“The Forgotten Ones,” I say on a breath. It was the screenplay Remington had sent to me. “Oh, Chase, I’m so happy for you. It’s so good. So raw and beautiful, and I know it’s going to be amazing on screen.” I throw myself at him, almost toppling him, and hug him, quick and fierce.
He pulls us both up to standing and hugs me back, and he feels like home.
I shift away just enough to look at him. “The main characters are runaways. It’s about you. Your experiences.”
“Loosely. But yes, I drew from my childhood. There are so many kids discarded by society. I was the lucky one, so I need to give back. I want to tell their stories because I want kids like I was to know they matter.”
He says it with passion, and I realize that he never spoke about his movie career like that before. He didn’t seem to mind his job, except for the fame part. But he never had a fire for it. Not like this.
“My agent and manager want me to keep racking up the big roles to line their pockets. My PR company wants me to keep the fame up, because that’s their job. I always just assumed that’s what you did. You got on this roller coaster, you felt grateful they wanted you, and you never left unless they kicked you off. I was just along for the ride, but you helped me realize that’s not what I want.” He leans back to look at me.