Our eyes lock and they don’t let go. I watch as he presses his teeth against his lower lip for a second, then breathes my name. “Kennedy.”
“Lane,” I say, but I don’t know if it’s a stop sign or a stark recognition of how my life could have gone. Lane, and his umbrella gifts and friendship and beautiful heart, is precisely the type of guy who’d be perfect for me – he’s the same age. There would be no questions, no second glances, no need to hide. He is another choice I could have made, and if I had, I wouldn’t live a life weighed down by so many secrets. As that choice plays out before my eyes I don’t move. I don’t do anything. Nor does he. We are frozen in time. We stay like that, inches away, stoic, solid statues, so close we could kiss. Perhaps, in some other choose-your-adventure version of my life, we would kiss. Maybe in some parallel universe he’s the person I’m meant to be with – the guy my age. But I fell in love out of time. I fell in love with someone else. And the one thing I know about myself, the one thing that is still true, even as everything else shifts and wobbles, is this—I am not my mother.
I raise a hand and place a palm against his chest. “I’m seeing Noah again.”
He draws a sharp breath, then drops his head. He presses his fist against his mouth, as if he’s holding in all the things he wants to say.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, because I’m not sure what to say. I feel like I’ve done something wrong.
He snaps up his head. “What are you sorry for?”
“What do you mean?”
Lane’s jaw is set hard. His eyes are narrowed. This is a side of him I haven’t seen before. “You were talking to him before, right? When you said ‘No one will have to know’?”
I sigh, admitting the truth of my life. “Yes.”
He shakes his head. “Why’d you lie to me?”
I gesture at him, at his angry reaction. “Because of this. Because of how pissed off you are.”
“I’m not mad that you’re seeing him. I’m mad that you lied about it,” he says, pushing back his chair, the legs scraping loudly on the floor. He fishes into his wallet and tosses some bills on the table.
“What’s that for?”
“For the pizza. I’m not hungry anymore.”
I stand up and stare at him like he’s an oddity in a curio shop. “Why are you leaving?”
“Because I’m pissed for real now,” he says through gritted teeth, speaking in a low hiss. “We’ve always been abundantly honest and you just point-blank lied to me, Kennedy. It pisses me off, and I don’t want to talk about it. I want to leave. So I’m going to go. Good-bye.”
He turns on his heels and walks out as the waitress brings the cheese pie to the table. My stomach rumbles, and I’m embarrassed that my body has the audacity to be hungry at a moment like this.
I drop my forehead to the table, alone and empty in a pizza shop in Manhattan.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Noah
Tremaine twirls a pencil between his thumb and forefinger. Up. Over. Around. He hasn’t missed a beat. He twirls and talks, stretched out on the leather couch in my office.
“Here’s the thing,” the gray-haired man posits, his brow scrunched up in thought. “I wonder if a TV show is truly the best venue for this storyline.”
I nod several times from my post in a comfy chair across from him. “You think it’s too much will-they-won’t-they drama to sustain over many years and many seasons?”
He stops twirling, sits up straight, and taps his finger to his nose. “Exactly,” he says, enunciating each syllable in emphasis. “Because what’s the heart of the story? Is the heart the back and forth, or is the heart the path to being together?”
“Or to not being together,” I toss out. “Because that’s an option too.”
“Exactly. I haven’t decided if the hero deserves The One That Got Away.”
“The heroes don’t always deserve the girl,” I say, musing on the topic, wondering how the viewers would see a guy like me. If I’d be worthy of the girl. I suspect the jury might be out on that one.
“You see,” he begins, leaning forward, his hands on his knees, excitement flashing across his eyes, “I’m not convinced I want to put the characters through the kind of hell that a TV show would require of a romance.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re thinking the kind of a hell of a movie is better?”
He nods. “Can we sell it as a movie?”
We haven’t even agreed to work together yet. But this is the process. This is how a guy like Tremaine decides who to trust with his creative gift. Besides, I don’t need a contract to want to be in this room with him bandying about ideas.
“The hero has been in love with the girl for years, but she won’t let herself be with him for some reason. Maybe she’s hung up on the past, or there’s something in herself that she needs to deal with first. And the hero, well, he can’t bear the thought of her being the one that got away,” Tremaine offers, raising an eyebrow as he waits for my response.
“But why is he so in love with her? That’s what will make this fly or not.”
“That’s always the key,” he says, and I’m about to respond when Jonathan pops in, looking all smooth and polished in his pin-striped suit, ready to play the part of the closer.
Only, I don’t need him to. Tremaine doesn’t want a car salesman.