Chapter Fifteen

Ryan sat outside the hangar, where he’d waited for Celia’s arrival however many days ago it was. He’d lost count, lost track—hell, lost track of his whole damn mind.

Filming had packed up for the day, and Nate and Vivvy had cozied away to Nate’s, and Ryan was alone in the shadow of the place he’d come to…

To what? He hadn’t saved Harrington, because it hadn’t needed saving. To help Nate? Based on the ring on Vivvy’s finger, Nate would have found a way to get himself what he wanted.

What had he left his big paycheck and nice apartment and social life to come back here for?

He looked out over the runway, the stupid cluster of trees in the distance, this world he’d been so bound and determined to escape ten years ago. And he had escaped. He’d gone to college and law school and achieved all his dreams.

And having it meant nothing, because ending other people’s marriages hadn’t been as fulfilling or satisfying as he’d been so convinced it would be.

But what would it matter if he’d come here to do this show, to do something for Harrington and Gramps and this family legacy, only to have it fail? The fact that he couldn’t control that failure, had been dismissed from his own house, from having any say in the matter, made him want to…

He didn’t know. The anger built, but the minute he thought about Celia he’d think about waking up with her, making breakfast with her, being sure they could figure things out, and then he was left baffled and hurt.

Eighteen again, his wife gone. “Fuck.”

“You sound like a man in need of a beer.”

Ryan glanced up at his brother, who stood at the entrance of the hangar, two beer cans in hand. “What are you doing here?”

Nate took a seat next to him. “Offering you a beer.”

“I don’t need your pity beer.”

“Oh, don’t you?” Nate placed the beer on the ground next to Ryan. “Celia’s walking?”

“Yup. It’s over. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“And by over do you mean her finishing the show, or do you mean whatever weird thing you two had going on?”

“Oh, hey, thanks for the beer. Now fuck off.” He wasn’t going to do this with Nate. Or with anybody. He was going to hurt on his own just as he always did.

Nate snorted, not at all deterred by Ryan’s foul mood. “You can’t snarl around us all afternoon and expect we’ll just leave you alone.”

Ryan glanced suspiciously at his brother. “Who’s ‘we’?”

Nate popped open his beer and took a drink, which was all Ryan needed to see to know what really was happening.

“Ah, Vivvy sent you. Recon mission.” He figured this wasn’t brotherly support. Nate was spying for his fiancée, who actually wanted to be here. In Demo.

Christ, he needed to get a grip. So he picked up the beer, popped it open, and took a long swig.

“Vivvy and I are worried about you because you’re our family. Vivvy even told me not to talk about the show with you.”

“Why are you guys worried about me?”

Nate rolled his eyes. “Tell me you two didn’t start something.”

“She’s only been here a few days.” So anything he was feeling would likely disappear just as fast. This would all go away and things would go back to normal and be fine. No reason to be upset at all.

Nate elbowed him in the shoulder. “Talking to the wrong guy if you think I don’t know that can happen. Besides, you have history, so no matter what, it was more than a few days.”

“Look, it’s…” Oh, who the hell was he kidding? It was screwed up and complicated and keeping it to himself didn’t do a damn thing for him. “She’s going to leave. Again. And, really, it doesn’t matter. Nothing changes.” Okay, so much for a confession.

“Maybe nothing changes on the surface, but if…well, if there was something going on between you two, it wouldn’t be unheard of for her leaving to suck.”

“If you’re trying to make a parallel, you’re forgetting something.” Ryan pointed the beer can at Nate. “Vivvy came back, sure. Celia already did the leaving, and she didn’t come back until I made her.”

“Made her, huh?” Nate studied the sky above them.

“Yup. Blackmail and everything.” Ryan cleared his throat. Might as well get it all off his chest. “We’re still married.”

Nate’s head jerked back to Ryan. “What?”

“I found out a few months ago. Some mix-up. We’re still legally married, and that’s how I got her to come back here. And then Dad stuck his nose in there. So, no parallel. Celia’s going to leave and she’s not coming back. She’s not going to visit. We’re not…whatever.” All those tentative possibilities from this morning evaporated.

Nate was silent for a while and that was fine with Ryan. What was there to talk about? Everything was black and white. He’d brought her here with a threat. They’d found some sort of…connection between them, but reality made that impossible to maintain.

She was in the middle of a crisis, and he had no say in it. She would leave and the show would be screwed without enough footage to make sense of. Celia, and a life with her, were not something he had any say in or could be a part of. No matter what delusions of happy endings he’d been working for himself, it was fiction.

His phone chimed. With dread pooling in his stomach, Ryan read. Can you come back?

“That her?”

“Yeah. She wants me to come back.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

Ryan just stared at the phone. “I…don’t know.”

Nate clapped him on the shoulder. “One piece of advice. Just one. Don’t…fly off the handle if it doesn’t all go exactly the way you want it to. And the show? Let it go. Vivvy will figure it out.”

“What will she figure out, Nate?”

He shrugged. “We’ll get someone else. We’ll use what we’ve got. We’ll figure it out.”

Nate was a shitty liar, but Ryan didn’t press him. He knew what this was. His failure. Instead of making something big out of Gramps’s legacy, instead of helping Nate and Vivvy find a way to be together more, he’d screwed it all up.

Failure.

“Trust me…” Ryan pushed to his feet. “There’s no way I’m getting what I want.” Or giving anyone else what they wanted. If that was his lesson to be learned, consider this the test he was going to ace.

…

Celia’s heart felt as though it jumped to her throat when Ryan walked through the door, but she didn’t move. If her idiot brain was going to allow herself to hope, it was going to do it firmly seated.

“She’s still here?”

Aubrey flashed the most insincerest of smiles. “Aren’t you Kansanites just charming?”

“I’m a Kansan, lady. And I’ve got more charm in my pinkie than you’ve got in your—”

“Ryan, have a seat,” Celia said mechanically. Celia Grant fell into place without any trouble at all, because she wasn’t just a mask, she was armor. The only chink had ever been him, but with Aubrey sitting next to her she felt renewed.

He didn’t sit. He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, glaring. Hope fizzled a little.

“Aubrey has a proposal, if you’ll consider it.”

“I’ll consider a proposal from you. From her? Hell no.”

His eyes met hers, and she looked for some softness, some care. Some kind of smoothed line or relaxed fist that would allow her to believe he cared.

“Aubrey is part of my team. A proposal from her is a proposal from me.”

Nothing.

“It’s simple, really,” Aubrey began. “You come to LA with us. We’re going to do an interview with a big talk show host, not sure which one yet, and you’ll be a part of it. The ex-husband still desperately in love. You brought Celia here, not with blackmail, but something softer. We build up the image we’ve already got of Celia with you to counter whatever Cathy says. We’ll say you wanted to reconcile and you used your show to do it. We’ll give you that publicity no problem.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Consider it our gift to you.” She smiled, not at all pleasantly, and Celia wanted to turn away, but Aubrey pressed on. “In return, you play up the role of high school sweetheart. Midwestern hunk. Throw in a lot of gosh and golly gee. We’ll do flannel, maybe a little scruff. Cowboy boots, yeah?” Aubrey typed something into her tablet; all the while, Ryan’s knuckles grew whiter and whiter.

“You’ll corroborate our counter-story to Celia’s mother’s version. That way it’s not just her word against ours and we can gain some sympathy points if you talk about everything you witnessed as Celia’s boyfriend when she was being abused. We can really show that the kidney thing wasn’t nasty. It was fair and maybe, just maybe, we avoid the fallout and win mostly sympathy.”

“By lying.” Celia couldn’t name all the emotions she saw in his face. Frustration. Anger. She’d known he would react that way, and yet…

She’d hoped he might do this thing for her, even if it wasn’t something he’d wanted. Hell, she didn’t want it. Sometimes a person had to do what they didn’t want to get what they did, though.

“We’re embellishing the truth a bit. I’d hardly call it lying, especially considering whatever crap Cathy spews. You get a free trip to LA out of the deal, and the chance for you and Celia to do…whatever. That’s your business.”

“Is it?”

Celia couldn’t remember a time she’d ever seen him so…cold, his tone, his delivery, all so mild and emotionless.

He took a deep breath. “As wonderful as it sounds to walk around LA pretending to be some Podunk, lovesick asshole, I’m going to have to pass.”

Celia looked at her clasped hands. She’d known that was going to be his answer. Known it completely, and yet disappointment and hurt swelled up in her chest, an unhappy tide of pain.

Then he moved to stand directly in front of her so she was forced to look up into those determined green depths. He took her hand and the disappointment stilled, held its breath. Please. Please change your mind. Right here. Right now.

“What is the point in going back to LA?” He asked, searching her face. “Your mother is here. Fight her here. With me. Not with lies and pretending to be people we’re not. You and me. It’s all that matters. We can work something out if we’re ourselves, but pretending is never going to get us anything.”

Then disappointment washed over her again, because even if they could work things out, so much more mattered than just them. To him, this place and his family, they were everything, and she admired him for it.

But he did not feel the same way about the things that mattered to her. Whether it was right or not, she needed to pretend to live her life. She was nothing without her pretending, and she’d never get him to see that this wasn’t enough.

“She—and you—need to be on our own turf where I can control what goes down and what people see,” Aubrey interceded. “Being here doesn’t do a damn thing for Celia’s image.”

“Lying for her image doesn’t do anything for her. Not her. This isn’t guerrilla warfare. Who gives a shit about turf?”

“Obviously, you don’t know a thing about publicity,” Aubrey returned.

“I want her gone.” Ryan pointed at the door, but his gaze never left her. “I want to talk to you. You.”

The emphasis on the second you was so deliberate Celia had to look away. Because it cut to the heart of what she was struggling with. Which piece of herself did she choose? The dream who was only a facade? Or the nightmare who was real and loved? She had thought she could combine them, but what a fool she had been.

The nightmare didn’t stand a chance, even against love. “Aubrey, give us a few. Maybe head to the hotel?”

“If you’re going to brush me off, change your mind—”

“I won’t. I’ll be there by nine. Just let me finish this in private.”

“Fine.” Aubrey collected her things and Celia had to give her credit for leaving quickly, as quickly as she’d breezed in, upending all the things Celia was just starting to get a handle on.

“Finish it, huh?”

“Finish this conversation, yes.” Finish them…well, she couldn’t think about that or she’d get teary. She had to focus. To tell him what she needed, the way she hadn’t when she’d left before. To give them a chance to make it right.

And if he didn’t take that, it’d be a good-bye. Please don’t.

“I need you to compromise.” She stood, and this time she took his hand, looked him right in the eye, and put every last piece of her heart into the plea. “I need you to give a little. I know it’s not your first impulse. It isn’t mine either, to bring you into this. But I don’t have a lot of choices.”

He squeezed her hand, eyes blazing with certainty. “You have so many choices. Pretending is not a choice. It’s hiding. If there’s some chance in hell this could work, I need you to be you. I need you to not ask me to lie or pretend. The only chance we have is if we’re us. Not fake us.”

“It wouldn’t have to be fake all the time. And what would you lose lying a little? Playing a part a little? It’d mean a chance for us, isn’t that something worth sacrificing just a little for?” She needed it to be. Needed him to show her she was worth that.

“I’m not pretending to be something I’m not so you can get a few more fluffy roles. If you want an us, do this my way. I need to be more important than your image.”

He didn’t understand. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe pretending, acting, lying, it was just out of the realm of what he could do. Maybe there just wasn’t a way to make this work.

Ryan stood in front of her, hands still grasping hers, eyes never leaving her face. “Stay. Let’s figure this out together.”

She swallowed down the despair and the nagging feeling they couldn’t find middle ground. One last shot. “I’m asking you to come to LA and figure it out with me there.”

“So your handlers can tell me what to do and who to be? So I can watch them do the same to you? I’m not going to be a part of your circus. I’m not going to pretend at a shot for you when I want it to be real. Do what you didn’t do then. Stay.”

“Do what you didn’t do then. Compromise. Don’t make the same mistake twice.”

“I didn’t make a mistake in the first place!” He dropped her hands and flung his own into the air. “I wanted to be your husband. I did everything I could to give us a better life. I wasn’t going to compromise that.”

“That tells me everything I need to know. I thought we’d realized we both made mistakes. But you still think of yourself as the hero, and that’s not what I need or want. So good-bye, Ryan. Give my regrets to Vivvy and Nate, and I hope you’ll forget the blackmail. You can contact my people about the annulment. I’m…done.”

He sneered at the already packed bags she pulled onto her shoulder. “Just like before. You don’t trust me. You don’t believe in me. You want this to be about compromise, but it’s not. I was willing to compromise. To visit you. For you to visit me. This isn’t about compromise. It’s about your inability to put your faith in me. It’s you.”

“You know what, maybe you’re right. Maybe I am the problem, because I want someone who will bend at least a little bit for me, who will stand beside me even if it means pretending a little. I should have known all along that was never going to be you.” She marched past him, too devastated to cry. In the wake of her devastation, she was nobody. And that felt pretty damn perfect at the moment.