Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(47)

“When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.”

~Albert Einstein





PRESENT


I thought Dante would head back to the reception, but instead he headed the opposite way, casually grabbing my arm as he walked by, tugging me with him.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Scotch,” he answered.

It was a good answer.

He poured us both a full glass and we toasted to Gram.

“How do you like the flight attendant gig?” he asked me.

I f*cking hated it. For so many years I’d been so determined to devote my life to being an actress, waiting tables and tending bars to pay the bills. Making a career move that monopolized a huge chunk of my potential auditioning time had felt so much like giving up on my dreams. It still did.

“I f*cking hate it. It’s not where I saw myself at this stage of my life. I was so sure I’d have gotten my big break by now.”

“You’re only twenty-seven. You still have all the time in the world.”

I rolled my eyes. He didn’t get Hollywood. Every year that I slipped closer to the Botox phase of my life, the less likely it was that I could be the next ‘fresh’ face. And I wanted to be that. I wanted to be the beautiful young ingénue that all the guys wanted, and all of the girls wanted to be. I craved it more than anything. What better way to shove my success in the face of all of the people that’d ever wronged me?

“I do get a lot of lucrative offers to do porn,” I said lightly.

It was supposed to be a joke (though I had gotten some offers), but he definitely didn’t laugh. In fact, his expression became so black and he turned so quiet that I had to change the subject.

“You know what my biggest fantasy was when I was a kid?” I asked him.

“What?

“That Gram would adopt me. That she’d take care of me and let me live with her.”

“She tried to, you know.”

I was shocked. Deep down in my bones shocked. “What?”

“She wanted to. She tried to. Your grandma fought her tooth and nail. The only thing they could settle on was letting Gram buy you school clothes and a few other essentials, but if it’d been up to her she’d have taken you in.”

“I had no idea.”

“Yes. It’s still a hard pill to swallow, that your grandma wouldn’t let you go to Gram, but then she treated you like that. What the hell was that about?”

“I could tell you.” I understood how my grandma’s twisted mind worked, understood it too well.

“Please do.”

“It was pride. Pride is a terrible thing. She couldn’t let someone else take on one of her burdens. My grandma has a lot of awful qualities, but she can’t stand the thought that she’s not earning her keep.”

He let out a disgruntled breath. “How senseless. Making you miserable for all those years just for her pride?”

I didn’t comment. I couldn’t, really, without being a hypocrite. I’d done some terrible things myself for the sake of pride.

We’d been silently sipping our drinks for a stretch when he leaned in close to me, whispering conspiratorially, “Let’s ditch this thing and go check out our old swimming hole? Can you think of a more Gram thing to do?”

I was more distracted by the way he was leaning into me with that old, familiar twinkle in his eyes than his words. I was looking up at him, eyes devouring his face, some part of me so stuck in the past that I couldn’t even remember why I was supposed to hate him so wholeheartedly.

But then I remembered.

There was a great pit of despair inside of me, and I felt it flare open, given life by his nearness, fed by his proximity, growing every second I let him close enough to breathe my air.

Just then it felt big enough to lose myself in.

“Excuse me,” I told him tersely, and fled into the reception.

The place was packed. The good news about that was I didn’t even see a familiar face at first so I was free to move about, ignoring the strangers to my little anti-social heart’s content.

I heard noises coming from one of the large parlors and I knew instantly what it was.

The house was old, but they’d still done a halfway decent job converting one of the larger parlors into a makeshift theatre.

On the screen they were playing one of Gram’s old movies.

I’d been afraid to watch any of them since I’d heard the news, even though I loved them all. I’d thought it would make me too sad.

But as I saw her beautiful face on screen, so young then, I felt only comfort.

She was immortalized.

And this role in particular suited her. She was playing what she would have called a wicked, wicked woman, and she threw out one sassy line after another in grand Gram style.

It was everything. I took an empty seat toward the back of the room and ate it up.

I don’t know how long I sat there before a man sat down in the chair beside me.

I shot him a glance and found him studying me.

“Have we met before?” he asked me.

I gave him a second look. He was an older man with a kindly face. “I don’t think so. Were you a friend of Gram’s, I mean Vivian’s?”