Accidental Forever: Fake Romance Box Set

by Hazel Parker

  Jace hesitated, trying to figure out exactly what she was trying to say, but Nora beat him to the punch.

  “So you’ve always been dumped one-sidedly?” she asked bluntly, turning the tops of Jessica’s ears pink.

  “No!” she denied vehemently. “I’ve dumped boyfriends, too. It’s just never been mutual. Or respectful. Every breakup I’ve ever initiated has been because the guy cheated on me.” Before the wide-eyes could ask their questions, she put a hand up. “It’s only happened twice,” she dismissed, “and both times, I already kind of suspected it. But it still wasn’t pretty, and I definitely wasn’t saying very nice things about them during the breakup or afterward.”

  Jace whistled long and low. “Those guys are assholes,” he noted in a tone that was harsh enough to startle her. There was a sort of fire in his eyes at the idea that someone had been unfaithful to her, but she didn’t want to talk about it, so she shrugged.

  “A lot of them are,” she said noncommittally. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. I still don’t know what I’m supposed to say about Jace that’s not dragging him through the mud.”

  “I’ll type up a few stock phrases for you to stick to,” Nora offered helpfully, “but likely most of it will be things like ‘it just wasn’t the right time,’ or ‘we learned that we wanted different things.’ You know, very generic phrases that get the point across that you don’t want to talk about it very much. We’ll try to minimize the number of interviewers even asking you that question in the first place, when the time comes, but we both know it’s going to happen.”

  Jace nodded. “For now, I think it might be best to keep it honest. I mean, it’s not like I’m the easiest guy in the world to get along with or work with, and most people know that. Just tell anecdotes about all the ways I’m inevitably going to test your patience, and I’ll do the same.” Jace could and did, she thought, test her patience. He could be rude and cocky, and when he was upset, he clammed up instead of talking to her about it. She imagined that the reasons that she might get on his nerves could be the other sides of those same coins. Her insecurities and indirectness slowed down her pursuit of all the things he’d already been able to obtain so easily in life, and she knew that he didn’t like it when she forced him to talk through what was bothering him.

  “Yeah,” Jessica forced herself to joke, “I’m sure I can come up with a thing or two.” In reality, some of those things that had bothered her so much about Jace when she’d first met him didn’t infuriate her as they once had. Because she’d gotten to know him, really know him in the ways that he’d said so few people took the time to, she felt almost like some of his personality traits made sense with how he felt about the world and how he chose to look at his life and career. However, he wasn’t the uncaring asshole that he liked to pretend that he was. When she called him crying, instead of hanging up and telling her to get herself together, he talked to her gently and didn’t even ask for an apology the next day. He’d thought so hard about the places that he wanted to take her in his attempt to keep her here, too, rather than just shoving their contract in her face and threatening to sue if she quit. There was someone behind the meanness: someone who made her feel special when he told her he thought she was talented or didn’t want to even climb under the covers of their shared bed for fear of making her awkward. She felt about him things that she’d never felt about anyone before. They were intense and confusing and, above all things, addictive.

  As Jace and Nora chatted over her, she couldn’t help but think that Nora did seem much more like Jace. She hadn’t wasted any time on pleasantries this morning, nor had she minced words with Nani. Nora was able to do the things she wanted to do without caring about the opinions or feelings of others. Really, it made sense that she might see a viable partner in someone like Jace and, by that logic, she had to admit that she could even imagine Jace having the same feelings toward her. Was Jessica messing something up between the two of them? Were they putting a relationship on hold to give him an easy way into his career goals? If she had feelings for Jace, was she inserting herself somewhere she didn’t belong?

  “Uh oh,” Jace said suddenly, and Jessica’s gaze flicked toward him curiously.

  “What?” she asked, frowning.

  “You’re quiet,” he drawled, “and a quiet Jessica is never a good thing. So, what has got you nervous or upset?”

  Nora was unflappable. Nora wasn’t the kind of woman that Jace would be able to take one look at and see exactly what she was thinking. It made her feel fragile, somehow, like she was made of glass and that if he handled her improperly, that she might shatter.

  “Nothing,” she replied as stoically as she could, immediately able to tell that Jace was not buying it. For some reason, that made her angry, so she hardened her expression a bit. “What?” she demanded.

  “I know how you look when something’s wrong,” he argued. She let out an irritated, maybe even slightly childish, huff of air through her nose.

  “You actually don’t know anything about me,” she accused, “so stop pretending that you do. If I say that everything is fine, then it’s fine. Don’t act like we’re close when we’re not.” That was enough to confuse Jace into stunned silence, blinking in surprise at the outburst. She felt a little guilty for snapping when she knew that he had meant well, but that didn’t ease the anger she had toward him for acting like he knew her so well when she felt that she knew almost nothing about him and never would. How could she possibly be so easy to read? Maybe that was why she never got cast in any big roles, she thought. She was just not believable as anything but Jessica Owens, feeling whatever way she felt at the time. Maybe she could never be anything else.

  “I’m going to go for a walk,” she decided aloud. Jace didn’t move to follow her and Nora didn’t force him to since there was no one around to have seen the fight. It didn’t matter how Jessica appeared so long as the cameras weren’t turned on her, so she could at least have this moment privately.

  Or so she thought. The only place that she knew of on the whole island was the hiking trail that Jace had shown her. She didn’t want to go far enough into the wilderness that she’d risk getting lost, but she found that the further away she got from the main thoroughfare of the town, the more that the storm inside her began to calm. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, of her just quietly putting one foot in front of the other and listening to the wind whistling through the trees and the crashing of the waves below her. She could definitely see how something like this might be relaxing to Jace, and how, when hiked alone, it made her feel in touch with her inner self more than she ever had before. When there was nothing to do but take a silent breath, that was all she did, and it was the only time that she ever really gave herself to do it. Realizing that fifteen minutes of walking at the pace that she’d been keeping up might put her over a mile up the hill, Jessica decided that she should probably go no further. However, she still wasn’t ready to go back down to the hotel and face them just yet, so she sat down on the ground with her back against a large rock and closed her eyes.

  Because Jace hadn’t made a move to follow her, she had taken for granted that no one would, and therefore assumed that the footsteps she heard approaching her belonged to another hiker and didn’t move from her perch.

  “Jessica,” a surprising voice called out to her, filling her with dread. How long had she been gone?

  “Nora?” she replied, looking up to see Jace’s agent standing in front of her wearing an outfit that definitely was not appropriate for hiking and shoes that had to be killing her feet by now.

  “Jace said you might be up here,” she sighed, taking a seat next to Jessica. “Any particular reason you ran off like that?”

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  Nora gave her a scrutinizing look under which she felt herself crumble. “I just felt like maybe I was bothering you two.”

  At that, Nora looked confused. “Bothering us?” she echoed. “We weren’t doing an
ything private.” Jessica had no words to explain that every moment between the two of them felt like they would rather have it be private than not, that their teasing and laughing and general rapport felt like knives in her stomach.

  “I just wasn’t sure,” she settled for instead. “I wanted to take another walk, anyway.”

  “Jace would’ve loved to come with you.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m sure he’d much rather have been with you,” she reassured. Nora’s eyes widened.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. There was a lighter note to her voice now, an optimism that undercut the stoicism and harsh, metal coldness.

  “Don’t act like you don’t know,” Jessica said, but when she looked at Nora’s face, it was clear that she really mustn’t know what Jessica was referring to. Not only was she confused, but seemed to have a theory in her mind that was filling her with tentative hope, almost like a schoolgirl who’d been told by her friend that the cutest boy in school had asked if she was single. Jessica got the distinct feeling that she might be screwing a lot of things up by treading into this territory.

  “You don’t know,” she said, taking a deep, meditative breath when Nora shook her head. “I just—and I could be totally wrong—I kind of got the feeling that you and Jace might have a… you know, a thing going.” Nora laughed out loud, but it wasn’t pleasant.

  “Jace doesn’t have things for anyone,” Nora replied, “nor does he notice the feelings of others.” Jessica’s jaw dropped just a little, and she forced it shut.

  “So Jace doesn’t have feelings for you,” she extrapolated, “but you like him?”

  Nora took a long sigh, one in which she exhaled a lot of pent-up feelings that she’d likely never told anyone about before. “I used to,” she dodged, “back when we met. I was actually just a temp in the office of his first agent at the time. But when we got to talking, I knew that there was something more to him than just the spoiled Hollywood wannabe that, at the time, was barely even making enough to pay his rent. He loved acting more than he loved breathing, and I was drawn to that passion. I decided to make a full-time career of being an agent just so I could surround myself with it all the time.”

  Jessica could barely find the words to speak. “Does he know all that?”

  “I’d never tell him something like that,” she dissented. “Not only is it intensely humiliating, but he wouldn’t care, and that would almost make me wonder whether I made the right choice at all taking a chance on him like I did.”

  “I think you know you did,” Jessica blurted before she could stop herself. “And if you weren’t sure by now… well, that’d be your answer.” She pressed her lips together. “Jace is a good person, underneath all the layers of narcissism and pettiness.”

  Nora sighed, then nodded. “He is,” she admitted. “And the fact that you can even see that in him means that you’re exactly the kind of person he needs in his life right now. I’m glad you didn’t leave.”

  “Jace told you about that?”

  She winked, allowing a slightly softer side of herself to show through. “I figured it’d happen at some point,” she said. “Look, I might have been into him at one point, but I’m… well, I can’t say ‘over it,’ but I know that it’d never work between the two of us. If you want him, go for him. At your own risk, of course.”

  A cold wind that started to blow through the island made Jessica even more aware that the risk of allowing herself to “go for” Jace Oliver would be great indeed, possibly so risky that it wasn’t worth it. Before she could contemplate to herself whether it’d be worth it to try to find out, Nora had extended her hand to help her to her feet.

  “I’ve got a plane to catch,” she explained, her voice taking on the stoic, steely quality to which Jessica had become accustomed. “I do have other clients, after all, who want my attention.” Feeling reassured that she wouldn’t be hurting Nora’s feelings, Jessica walked back to the hotel, the whole time feeling dejected that the only heart on the line was her own and deciding to try to figure out what she should choose to do with it.

  Chapter Twelve: Jace

  The first week of filming went by faster than any job Jace had ever done before. That, perhaps, was because he’d never had anything to do after wrap each day except to either head to the gym of his apartment to work out or to go home and watch television, but now, that wasn’t the case. Jessica became his everything—whether they liked it or not. Even back home in California, since Code Blue had ended, they’d only needed to be seen together a few times a week, and talk shows and interviews usually covered that enough that they really didn’t have to see much of one another in their downtime. Now, however, they were effectively living together. Every moment was spent together. They had lunch together on set, having found a few new favorite places that delivered and falling into a routine with them. They walked to and from the studio together, often being stopped and asked to pose for pictures despite it being such a short trip. Then, at the end of the day, they wound down from the excitement of filming and being in a tropical paradise and climbed into the same bed to go to sleep together.

  No matter how much time they spent together, Jace found himself holding a little bit of himself back from every moment. He’d keep his phone on and out when they ate or talked; he declined to go out to tourist traps with her no matter how much she wanted to; and he still slept on top of the blankets. Of course, it wasn’t surprising when other people took interest in Jessica. She was, after all, a beautiful woman, but since Jace was usually standing right next to her, the attraction usually never advanced past a few longing stares or maybe a cat-call or wolf-whistle.

  Adam, however, turned out to be a little different. He was one of the camera operators for the film, and he definitely had a crush on Jessica. At first, it had been subtle, nearly identical to mere politeness. He’d tell her how nice she looked when she came back from hair and makeup, or he’d recommend a movie he’d seen or a restaurant nearby that she should check out. Because she was Jessica, she was both completely personable and infuriatingly oblivious to his advances. In fact, it was likely only due to her rigorous filming schedule that she’d been too busy to accept one of his offers to show her around the island on which he’d grown up. Rumors were going to start up soon, and Jace feared that they were going to put the whole fake relationship in jeopardy if she wasn’t careful.

  What made it worse was that Jace himself was driving her into his arms and was too proud to stop. By ignoring her at lunch in favor of playing on his phone or taking a private walk, he ensured that she needed someone to sit next to, and conveniently, Adam was always right there waiting. Each time he refused to come up with something exciting for them to do over the weekend, he allowed Adam to come up with an interesting suggestion instead, which made her interested in him so that even when Jace did think it was about time they spent some time together for the cameras, Adam was the first person Jessica asked for recommendations. He wasn’t sure why it was bothering him so much, but he tried not to pay it any mind, reassuring himself more and more aggressively that he wasn’t upset about it, just overtired and concerned about the contract.

  However, unable to convince himself completely, he reluctantly found himself drawn to Jessica when he thought that the alternative might be that she’d spend the hour with Adam. Nani had been right when she’d showed them around on the first day: they did very rarely leave the studio set. Most of their scenes had been doctored so that they could add them to an already-near-finished film, and it was somewhat rare that the stars of the film even had to show up to work with them. While convenient, that meant that Adam was around quite a lot, which meant that Jace had to watch him flirt with Jessica nearly every day and she didn’t even realize it was happening.

  Eventually, Jace began to get fed up with it. He snapped at Adam more frequently than he had been and more intensely than he had ever demanded things from a set worker before. Though he’d intended to drive Adam away from Jessica b
y scaring him away, Jessica caught on before he had much of an opportunity to. On a Friday morning during their second week of filming, he apparently pushed it too far with a question about whether Adam was single and a snarky remark when he revealed that, shockingly, he was.

  “Jace,” Jessica warned icily, “can I speak with you outside for a moment?”

  “We’re about to start filming.”

  Adam’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I’m still setting up the camera angles—you two have got time.” With a grimace, barely managing to restrain himself from flipping Adam the bird, he followed Jessica to the doors of the set and into the empty parking lot.