Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(82)

He grabbed the pages, ripping and pulling them apart. I took his hands in mine to calm him down.

“Let them go. Please,” I said, but he held them firm and I held his hands just as tightly.

“I’m not stupid,” he said. “He said . . . my father’s boss said he’d do me a favor. He’d take me on full time after junior year. It was his way of giving back. Paying it forward. Hiring the retard.”

“You know you’re not,” I said, avoiding the word that had hurt him. “You finished high school. Went to college for acting.”

“With a special dispensation for talented idiots.”

“You know you’ve proven them all wrong.”

“But what did I prove to you?”

He loosened his grip on the paper, and I took it.

“You’ve proven you’re a little crazy,” I said, opening the dumpster. I threw the crumpled tabloid in it and slammed it down. A page escaped. I snapped it up. “You’re a passionate guy, and you care what people think.”

I went to put the loose page in the garbage, but he took it from me.

“This isn’t what you wanted.”

“It’s not. I hate it. It makes me uncomfortable in my own skin. My parents taught me to protect my security clearance, can you believe that? They drilled it from the minute I could speak. Protect yourself. So this? This hurts me in places I forgot about because they don’t matter anymore.”

“You can’t be with me and have security clearance.”

I laughed. My clearance hadn’t mattered for so long, and here I was talking about it.

“We’re always children,” I said. “Everything we do, everything we love, hate, fear, it’s all the child in us reacting to our adult problems. No, it doesn’t make a difference if people see me in the paper. Not really. But it scares me because it made my parents mad. It scares me because I’m afraid I’ll lose someone close to me the way I lost them. When do we get to decide what matters to us? Not our parents?”

“When you find out, let me know.”

“As long as I have you, it’s all right.” I put my hand on his chest. “Do I have you?”

He took my wrist and brought it to his lips, kissing the tender inside. “How could you want such a f*ckup?”

“I don’t,” I said. He looked at me with surprise, and I let it hang there. “I don’t want a f*ckup. I want you.”

He snapped open the tabloid and held it up.

“This is what you want?”

“What is that, even? I don’t know those people.”

I reached for it to take it away, but he held the paper out of my range and took me by the waist with the other hand, pulling me close.

“You’re going to make me crazy about you,” he said.

“I have that effect on people.”

He kissed me long and hard. He tasted like cold water and chips. While we were still locked, I reached for the paper, and he held it away. We laughed, kissed, and fought for the paper at the same time.

Finally, he took his lips off mine and held me at his side. We looked at the picture together. He inspected it closely. I didn’t know what he was seeing.

“It’s all little dots,” he said.

“Yeah. You’re not that handsome in dots.”

I put my hand on it and pushed it down. He crunched it up.

“You’re a sexpot in dots,” he said. “But in real life?” He tossed the last of the paper away. “You’re still a sexpot. But more. You turned this bombshell from six years ago into a family. You’re a magician. Do you know? I wasn’t ready for that little girl, and now I am. I can still be me and have a family. I’m never going to read this article, but I bet there’s nothing in here about what you mean to me.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. I took the paper and threw it away, letting the lid of the dumpster land with a slap.

“This town, those kids, my f*cking family,” Brad said. “That house I grew up in. I feel right when I’m here. All that stuff I was doing, the parties, the . . . the women . . . was because I didn’t feel right. And you make me feel right, and I know that means you and I are going to be on the cover of magazines, but I want you to tell me you can live with it. Tell me you don’t care. Say you’ll deal with everything they say.”

“I only care about you.”

He pulled me to him.

“Well, Cara DuMont, people are going to think you don’t have a heart of ice.”

“I don’t care what people think.”

“I do.” His palm cupped my face. “I want everyone to know what kind of person you are.” I thought he was going to kiss me, but he stopped himself an inch away. “Except in bed. That dirty little mouth is my private business.”

“Then kiss it,” I said. “Just kiss it.”

His kiss was defined by what he didn’t do. He didn’t crash into me or devour me. He appreciated me with that kiss. He brushed his lips against mine as if he valued every place they met. The entirety of what he wanted to say was in that kiss.

His tongue flicked against mine, and I drew it in, opening my mouth for it. He pushed me against the car, and in a burst, my body burned for him. He breathed through his teeth, pinning my arms to the passenger window.