Unforgettable: Book Three (A Hollywood Love Story #3)(25)

Rage rips through my bloodstream. Fucking Katrina. Fucking Scott. How dare they shoo away the two most important people in my life—my beloved Zoey and my mentor Bella?

My chest tightening, I remove the melting ice pack from my head and set it back on the tray. I suck in a sharp breath. “It’s f*cked up. I’m not in love with her. I want to call it off.”

“So, Brandon, why don’t you?”

I inhale deeply again. “She’s threatened to expose my kinks. Actually worse… portray me as a life-threatening sex molester even though there’s never been any sex between us. I supposedly fell in love with her and proposed just before my hit and run accident, but I have no recollection.”

Bella’s inquisitive eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“I suffered amnesia. Lost ten years of my life. Just about everything’s come back to me except my time with her and the actual day of the accident.” Over another sip of the hot tea, I pause. “I’m sick about the whole thing. I don’t want to marry her.”

Looking up at the ceiling, Bella dreamily lowers her eyelids. “For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things…”

Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I remember the lines as if I recited them yesterday. I played Lysander, the foolish young man who deceives his true love, Hermia.

“…the deepest loathing to the stomach brings. Or as the heresies that men do leave are hated most of those they did deceive. So thou, my surfeit and my heresy, of all be hated, but the most of me!”

Nodding, Bella meets my gaze. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

I blink twice. “How do you know?”

“My beloved Brandon, people are an open book. I’m trained to read sensory, physical, and psychological cues. Your emotions are written all over you. They read like a man madly in love.”

“I am.” I swallow the two little words.

“Who might this person be?”

“My assistant. Or should I say former assistant. I love all of her. Everything about her.”

“She loves you?”

“I thought she did. But now I’m not sure. I screwed up big time. She’s shut me out and wants nothing to do with me.”


“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines and oh so fitting. I feel like I’ve been dragged through a raging river, encountering every jagged rock along the way.

“Brandon, would you please wheel me around so I’m facing you.”

Standing, I do as asked. Once again, I feel like her student in the classroom of life.

“Please sit back down.”

I do as bid, and so close to me, she holds my face between her frail, shaking hands. They’re icy cold and feel good on my fiery skin. Her warm breath heats my chilled bones. Our eyes lock.

“Mr. Taylor, you’re not here just for tea and sympathy.”

“Bella, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.”

“What did I always tell you to do in my classes?”

The words whirl around my head. “Act with your heart.”

“Yes. And what else did I insist on you doing?”

The unforgettable, very first words of my mentor pour out of my mouth. “Don’t follow your dreams. Lead them and land them.”

“Yes. Do it, Brandon. Do it.”

A rush of love for this incredible woman surges inside me. Not like a gush of hot lava the way it used to, but more like a sprinkle of refreshing water wanting to give life to a withering rose. She’s still irresistible. My lips are about to touch down on hers when her caretaker reappears. The chinoiserie grandfather’s clock in the corner starts chiming.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Taylor, you must leave now. It’s Miss Stadler’s bedtime.”

I nod. Bella, still cupping my jaw, submits to my lips, and we both lose ourselves in a soft, tender kiss. Not the kiss of two lovers but rather of two souls connected forever. I know in my heart it’ll be our last. On the final, ninth chime of the clock, we break away. Her soulful eyes hold mine.

“I don’t have much time, Brandon. Make yourself happy. Make me proud.”





Zoey


I was only half-lying to Brandon. I do have a boyfriend. Well, sort of. He’s someone from my acting class who’s been crushing on me. After we performed a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he played Puck, the bumbling love fairy, to my lead of jilted heroine Hermia, he built up the courage to ask me to lunch at the Greek deli next door. And I said yes.

His name is Albert Schwimmer. Maybe because he’s on the chubby side, I can’t help thinking of Fat Albert. That cartoon series.

“Why did your parents name you Albert?” I asked right after our order was delivered to the table.

After biting into his overstuffed, greasy gyro sandwich, he responded, “They thought it would make me smart. Like Albert Einstein.”

I almost choked on my low-cal veggie burger. “That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”

He laughed back and then asked me out on a real date…

Tonight of all nights, right after my emotionally devastating encounter with Brandon. Sick to my stomach, I’ve thought about canceling it. Saying I have Ebola. Which, with the way I feel, is almost true. But after much deliberation, I decide not to. A new person in my life might be the best medicine to cure me of my real, potentially fatal disease. The disease that’s ravaging both my body and my heart. Brandonitis.