Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(55)

He reached for me, touching my cheek. I couldn’t breathe when his finger moved to my chin and stroked my lower lip. My mouth went dry.

“Did you always play it so safe?” he asked.

“Yes.” I answered too quickly. “No, actually.” He smiled when I changed my mind, pulling my bottom lip a little. It would take the slightest movement to take his finger in my mouth. I wanted to taste it.

“Tell me.” His whisper was a seduction. “Tell me everything.”

The night was so dark, and I felt so safe in our little cocoon that I decided to tell him.

“My parents were in the military so we moved around all the time, but we moved to Austin when I was fourteen. Just another school where I was the new girl. I had no friends. I never had time to keep them. I never fit in because by the time I figured out what I had to do to fit in, we moved again. But this time I talked my parents into sending me to the regular school instead of the Lycée. I just wanted to be a regular kid, and the difference between the French school and a regular public school in Texas? Planetary. I’d traveled all over the world at that point, and that Texas school was like nothing I’d ever seen.”

“How?”

“Everything was football. It was like a religion. Except for the religion, which was second.”

“My mother would argue with that.”

“Well, she’d be right, I’m sure. But from the outside, where I was? The high school players were treated like kings. The girls whispered their names. And there was one. Tyler Stokes.” I said it with the same fascination I heard it.

“Let me guess. The quarterback.”

“Yes. A senior. With a girlfriend who was the biggest bee-eye-tee-see-aytch in the school. I could tell it the minute I saw her. So I steered totally clear of her and hung out with the kids in the French club.”

“You had a French club?”

“Four of us, actually, including Tyler.”

He chuckled.

“His mother made him join because he’d failed before. She wanted him to go to Texas Tech, and he needed a language.”

“And he hit on you,” he said as if it was a fact he already knew damn well.

“Yeah.” I didn’t continue right off, remembering that moment in the hall after school. We were outside the library. The other girls in the club had practically done his French homework for him, and he cornered me. I’d felt short and vulnerable, yet emotionally aroused. “I felt like I had this big opportunity. I could really fit in. I could live where I was as if I was from there. You know? Like he could validate me or something. I played coy for a week, but when he broke up with his girlfriend and came for me an hour later, I couldn’t even pretend I’d say no. So, yeah. It went on for about a month. And I didn’t play it safe because he didn’t want to. I wanted to fit in so badly. I dreamed of a big stupid wedding and a big dress. A party. All of it. So stupid.”

I wasn’t crying outright, but enough moisture had gathered under my eyes for him to wipe away with his thumb.

“I got pregnant. Naturally, right? And he wasn’t so nice. He asked me how many guys I’d been with, only he didn’t even say it that nice because I wasn’t a virgin at all. And he told me to take care of it, but it wasn’t his problem. I didn’t know what to do. If I told my parents, they’d take me out of the school, and it was the only chance I had to be normal. And I had no friends to talk to or ask what to do. In Texas they have all these rules about getting an abortion. The clinics are so far away, and there’re waiting periods. So I begged Tyler for help. He got an address from one of his friends and took me. He didn’t wait because he had football practice. It wouldn’t have changed anything if he had anyway. It was some lady’s house. I sat alone, waiting, thinking that’s what I get for dreaming about a big wedding. As if I could be normal and have all the things everyone with a real home had.”

“You can have—”

I cut him off. I wasn’t done and the next part was critical.

“The lady was nice. She was a nurse I think, and she meant well. I’m sure she did. But it was a mess. A real mess.”

A bloody mess. A mess of tears and tubes and needles. My parents surprised me with their understanding and love, but none of that could heal what had been broken inside me.

“Anyway,” I said, swallowing a bunch of gunk. “It all went wrong. I can’t have my own children.”

Brad leaned back and snapped a tissue out of the box on the night table. I reached for it, but he held it away and only when I put my arm down did he hold it over my nose to wipe the sobs away.

“That’s a crime,” he said tenderly.

“I guess. Tyler surprised me by not being a dick about it. We stayed together until the end of the year, but he cheated on me a week before he left for Tech.”

I’d surprised myself by not caring.

“Yeah, well,” I continued after clearing my throat, “now you know why I play it safe all the time. You shouldn’t need the universe to tell you twice.”

He pulled me to him and put his forehead to mine.

“That’s quite a story, Cara-bean. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Before I could answer, he kissed me gently, tenderly. I breathed it in. So good. Everything about it was a comfort. A temporary, facile, convenient comfort I couldn’t get used to, because it didn’t change anything.