I hold on to his arm, perhaps more than I strictly need to. “I really appreciate that, actually.”
“My sister is paralyzed from the waist down. Car accident when I was twelve, and she was seventeen. So I kinda grew up around that mentality—that understanding, I think is the better way to put it. She resents being offered help when she doesn’t need it or want it. She’s strong, she’s independent. She lives alone and has for years. She’s an athlete, an artist, and an absolutely amazing person, and I’m constantly in awe of her. She also happens to be in a wheelchair. So with you, I guess I’m sort of assuming something similar—you may have limitations. But I’m not going to assume you want me to sweep in and do everything for you. Even if my desire to help and to be there for you conflicts with that.”
I stop with him at the bottom of the stairs and look up at him. “Thank you.”
He frowns. “For?”
“Sharing that with me.”
He sniffs a laugh. “Oh. Well…” He shrugs. “Actually, that isn’t something I’d normally share with someone I just met. I’m pretty protective of her privacy.”
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Dinah,” he answers.
“Are you close with your family?” I still have my hand tucked around his bicep. “I was talking to Mom before I came down and realized that other than what’s, you know, publicly available knowledge about you, I don’t really…knowyou.”
He nods. “I am, actually. With Dinah, at least.”
“What about your parents?”
A shrug. “They live back East. Vermont. I moved to LA when I was eighteen, the day I graduated high school. They didn’t agree with the decision. They thought I should stay home and go to college and ease into show business. All I wanted to do was be a musician, and here was my chance, right? It just fell into my lap like a freaking grenade and blew up my life. I was nobody, and then literally overnight I was famous. It was bonkers. But I was like, I’m doing it. They thought it was a mistake, it’d be this fleeting thing. They believed inme, it was just the system they didn’t believe in.” A laugh. “Turns out, they were right. When I quit the band and the label like I did, there was a minute where I was like, shit, maybe they were right. But I loved LA and I loved performing, so I decided to stick around a while longer and try to make another go of it. And that just so happened to coincide with my agent getting a call from a director looking for a guy with a certain look for a part—and I just so happened to fit that look. And bam, just like that, I was an actor.” Another laugh. “Theyreallydidn’t like that.”
“Do they support you now?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah, but it’s still a bit strained. They were always telling me I should just come home, let things cool off a bit.” A sigh. “It made me feel like maybe they didn’t support me or believe in me as much as I wanted them to. I dunno. It’s complicated.” A pause. “Then Dinah moved out to LA and that sort of chafed them a bit, too.”
I grinned at him. “And what do they think about this whole thing with you and me?”
A blinking, blank look. “Well…?”
I laughed and patted him on the chest. “I’m teasing.”
He sighs. “It will be a heck of a shock for them when I call them and tell them, ‘hey, Mom and Dad, so, um, I’m getting married next week, so you need to come out to LA.’”
“What does Dinah do?”
“She’s a personal trainer and a graphic artist. I want to call it painting, but it’s more than that. Multimedia art, she calls it. One piece will have oil paint, watercolors, pieces from newspapers or magazines, feathers, beads, whatever. She has her own gallery and studio.”
“Wow. I feel like I need to meet her.”
“Oh, you will.” He smiles. “I actually haven’t seen her in a few days myself. She tends to sort of…go through these intense phases. She takes, like two and a half weeks off of work at the gym and locks herself in the studio and has her meals delivered and just works all day and all night for days and days. She’ll produce like half a dozen huge pieces in two weeks, in this crazy frenzy of manic creativity. Then she puts them up for sale at the gallery and goes back to work. So, when your TikTok went up, she was in the middle of one of those phases where no one sees her for days at a time.”
“So she doesn’t know either.”
“No one does but Jen and Marty.”
“Your assistant and your agent?”
“Calling Jen merely my assistant isn’t quite accurate. She does assistant-type things, like scheduling and screening emails and phone calls and making reservations and such. But really, she’s as much a manager as anything. She does what anyone else would hire like four other people for. And Marty is my agent, yes.”
This whole conversation has occurred at the bottom of my stairs, him a stair down from me.
I’m looking at him straight on, and suddenly all I can think about is that kiss outside. How soft his lips were. How his mouth tasted. How his tongue felt.
His eyes flick to my lips—does that mean he’s thinking the same thing?
It feels like I’m falling forward—my hands go flat to his chest, which is strong and firm and broad, and my nose slants against his.
