“That’s not my middle name. Let go of that heart pendant.”
I let go of it. I’ve been unconsciously rubbing it so much for the past few days, I’m surprised it hasn’t melted. The other one, the one that Shane gave me, just makes me sad, so I try to ignore it. But I’m not ready to stop wearing it yet.
“That’s what I was wrong about,” she continues. “You and Shane. I shouldn’t have worried about you.” She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. “I loved your grandpa so much. Losing him was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I never wanted anyone I love to go through that. I saw how meeting Shane sparked something in you. Something big and beautiful, and it all happened without him even being around. I was afraid that when you moved in with him, you’d hang on to that fantasy of him, even though it wasn’t real for Shane.”
“Well. I wouldn’t say you were wrong to think that.”
“No, I was. It just took Shane about twelve years longer to realize what you knew when you met him.”
I bark out a laugh while wiping a tear from my eye. “I think perhaps you’re the one who’s prone to flights of fancy, Grams.”
She smiles at me. She’s so pretty when she isn’t being a bossy know-it-all. “I wouldn’t trade the pain of losing the love of my life for anything if it meant not having all that time with him. It took me so long to grasp that. Fortunately, you and Shane are more clever than I am. So forget what I said before. Don’t listen to me. About this one topic, I mean. You’re a wonderful girl. Of course you can live without him. But you don’t have to.”
I’m about to get up to hug her when the doorbell rings.
“Finally,” she says on an exhale. “I’ve been expecting a delivery. Go get that for me, will you? I have to check on something.” She disappears out of the room without any hug or explanation.
Thanks, Grammie. She never was much of a hugger.
I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and go to the front door. I suddenly get this ridiculous idea that maybe Shane had a big flower arrangement delivered here and Grammie knows about it. I run my fingers through my hair as I peer through the peephole. But I don’t see anyone there.
I open the door, and the reason I didn’t see anyone through the peephole is that the two people who are standing on the porch are under four feet tall. Shane is getting out of the passenger side of a parked car at the curb. His tired blue eyes are still magnetic, even from this far away. Even when they aren’t illuminated on screen.
“Knock knock!” Summer says, laughing.
I am so happy to see them I can barely speak. “Who’s there?”
“It’s us! Trick or treat!” Summer and Lucky say in unison.
I drop to my knees to hug them. The scent of their baby shampoo and the feel of their little hands and arms on my back is confirmation of something I haven’t been able to admit to myself, even though I’ve known it for two months—that I want my home to be wherever these three people are. I want it, and I’m going to let myself have it.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say to the twins, in between kissing their cheeks.
“We took the red eyes plane!” Lucky exclaims. “It’s called that because everyone on the plane is tired, not just Daddy.”
“And we got to miss school today because Daddy’s sick!”
“Oh no.” I look up at Shane, who is walking up the steps. “You’re sick?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sick of missing you.”
The kids go inside the house while I melt into Shane’s arms. “You could have just sent me a text begging me to come home, you know? It didn’t even have to be dirty.”
“Ahh, but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of leaving the red carpet to get home and get two five-year-olds out the door in time for the red eyes flight to Detroit.”
“You rushed to the airport for me? That’s so romantic.”
“Didn’t feel very romantic, with two tired kids and a grouchy nanny in tow, to be honest.”
I pull him inside the house and glance out at the car parked outside. “Where’s the grouchy nanny?”
“At the hotel in Detroit, sleeping. I hired a driver to bring us here. Didn’t want to risk driving in my state.”
“Which state is that?” I shut the front door and wrap my arms around his waist.
“Michigan, I think.”
Summer and Lucky are in the living room, talking to Grammie, who has that elfish glint in her eye. “Welcome to Michigan, Shane Miller. You’re a little late.” While Shane hugs her, she looks over her shoulder and winks at me.
Summer and Lucky run over to me, pulling little boxes out of their jacket pockets and holding them up to me.
“This is a present for you!” Summer says, opening the box herself. “It’s a pretty necklace!” She takes the gold necklace out of the box and holds it out for me. “It has a heart on it like the ones you have, ’cept this one’s mine. For you.”
Lucky holds his little box out to me. “And mine too. You can open it yourself.”
“Thank you. It’s so pretty.” I take the necklace and box from them. “Thank you. I’m going to wear them all the time.”
“Why don’t we give these two kids some privacy, Mr. Lucky and Miss Summer. Come to the kitchen with me.”
“I’m hungry,” Summer says. “What kind of snacks do you have?”
“Prunes.”
“What are prunes?” Lucky asks.
“They’re dried plums that relieve constipation. You’ll love them.”
Summer looks back at us, pouting.
“I also baked some chocolate chip cookies last night. Would you like those instead?”
The twins cheer as they follow Grammie out of the room.
Shane helps me put my new necklaces on. I lift my hair up, and the touch of his fingertips on the skin of my neck almost makes my knees give out.
“If you’re going to do something disgusting to me to make up for how sweet this is, we should at least go into the guest room.”
“Oh, I’ve got big plans for you, believe me. But they’ll have to wait.”
“Not too long, I hope.” When I have four pretty gold necklaces and four pretty gold hearts around my neck, I let my hair down.
“You could also just put all of these pendants on one necklace, I guess. Right?”
“Yes.” I kiss him on the right cheek. “I can.” I kiss him on the left cheek. “So, you told Grammie you were coming?”
He nods. “She good at keeping a secret?”
“A little too good. It’s disturbing.”
Shane takes a deep breath. “It still smells like cherry vanilla in here,” he says.
“Have you been here before?”
“No. You told me about it. When we met.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
He looks at me so seriously all of a sudden. “I know I got your name wrong at first, but I was really tired. I remember everything about that first time I met you. I remember everything about every second I’ve spent with you. I want to spend all the seconds with you. Don’t take that job. I want you to live with us, and I want you to make your own perfume, and I want you to feel good about being with us. I want you to live with us as my future wife.” He pulls another small box out of his blazer pocket.
Oh my God. I was so excited to see everyone, I didn’t even notice that he’s wearing a blazer, button-down shirt, and a skinny tie! I look down at his feet. And the high-tops!
I’m so excited that he’s dressed up like Greyson again for me that when he opens the box and I stare at a beautiful diamond ring, it takes me a few seconds to understand that it’s an engagement ring. For me.
“I am so in love with you, Willa Todd. I want you to know that you’re the first. I asked Margo to marry me because I got her pregnant and I cared about her and it was the right thing to do. I’m asking you to marry me because you’re the only woman I’ve ever been in love with, and my kids love you, and one day when you’re ready, I want to get you pregnant. A
nd you’re the only woman I want to go to sleep with and wake up next to for the rest of my life.”
Shane Miller is looking at me like I’m the most beautiful woman in the world, but I feel like a twelve-year-old dork. My mouth is dry. My hands are trembling. My right eye might be twitching.
“Yes,” I blurt out, at the same time that he asks, “Will you marry me?”
He laughs, and as he takes my hand to slide the ring onto my finger, his index finger touches the pulse point on the inside of my wrist, and once again I don’t see our future life together, but I feel it. Comforting and exciting and romantic and light and important and there’s a home and kids, and…I feel it all in this moment, and this time I know that he feels it too.
28
Shane
Most days, I think it’s ridiculous that I get paid so much to be a good-looking funny guy. Today, I am incredibly grateful for everyone responsible for overpaying me, because I’m able to afford a chauffeured SUV, two suites in the nicest hotel in Detroit, and a nanny to look after my kids in one of them. In the other one—that is not next door but across the hall—I get to undress the love of my life.
Willa called to turn down the New York job before we left Grammie’s house. For the past forty minutes, I’ve been doing a half-decent job of pretending to be an attentive father who enjoys listening to his kids sing along to Singin’ in the Rain and who definitely isn’t thinking about sticking his head under his fiancée’s dress. But as soon as I pull Willa inside our suite, I lift that dress up over her head.
This dress. I will always think of this as the dress she wore the first time I saw her naked and the one that she wore on the day I asked her to marry me. And underneath the dress—four necklaces, a beige full-coverage bra, and granny panties.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you today,” she explains, covering her face. “And I definitely didn’t expect you to propose to me. or I would have worn something a little less geriatric.”
“You are making this ensemble work, I promise you.”
She groans. “I’m humiliated.”
“I can fix this.” I swiftly remove her bra and panties, taking in her beautiful naked body. “Better?”
“You tell me,” she mutters.
“It’s better than anything.” Honestly, I’ll never get tired of looking at and touching and kissing this woman. “We need to plan on another little vacation when Margo is back and the kids are with her.”
“Maybe don’t talk about the kids when I’m completely naked and you’re squeezing my ass.”
“Mmm, you’re gonna have to get used to talking about all kinds of things when you’re completely naked and I’m squeezing your ass. I told the twins that you’ll be sleeping with me from now on and that they aren’t supposed to bother us if the door is closed. I plan to spend a lot of time in the bedroom with my naked fiancée.”
“That’s a lot of talk about your naked fiancée for a guy who’s fully dressed as Greyson Manning of TV’s That’s So Wizard.”
“I’ll stop talking now.”
“I’ll start undressing you now.”
We’re a fucking awesome team.
My mom called me yesterday, from Florida, to tell me that she and Hank are going to see my movie this weekend. When I told her that I had fallen in love with Nico’s little sister and was in the middle of shopping for an engagement ring for her, she was not at all surprised. She reminded me that the day I met Willa on the Wizard set, I said to her, “Something weird happened. I met Nico’s sister, and when I held her hand to pull her up, I think I had a vision. Not something I could see, exactly, but a feeling. Like a flash of what it would be like to be married with kids one day. And I liked it.”
I had completely forgotten about that. Blocked it out, probably, as soon as I asked Margo to marry me, because I knew on some level that it would never feel like that with her. But as soon as my mom said it, I remembered the feeling. It was the feeling I had as soon as I introduced Willa to my kids. I’ll tell Willa about that, one of these days, because if anyone would understand that kind of thing, it’s her. But I’m way over my cheese quota for today.
Now is the time for me to make my bride-to-be forget how fucking adorable I am. I’m gonna make her forget so hard. But it seems I’m still fully dressed as Greyson Manning, aside from being unzipped.
My bride-to-be is gripping my cock and looking up at me pensively. “Actually, I think I’d like to engage in sexual activity with Greyson Manning today.”
“What?” I slam my hands flat against the wall behind her, on either side of her head. “You would rather engage in sexual activity with a fictional teenage wizard who doesn’t have full control over his wand yet than with me—the world-famous star of motion pictures who asked you to marry him?”
She purses her lips and shrugs. “Just this once?”
“Well, you’re in trouble, because Greyson Manning is secretly a dirty horndog who will bewitch your tits and enchant your pussy.”
“Sounds charming.” She slowly removes her hand from my jeans. “Get that wand out. Let’s see what you can do with it.”
I lick my lips, lowering myself to my knees. “I may still be a student, but I know how important it is to work some magic with my mouth first.” This woman. Her eyes and voice are unflinching, but her thighs are quivering. She gasps and tenses up when my thumb gently brushes against her clit, still sensitive to my touch as if it were the first time. I will be worshipping at this temple for the rest of my life. “You’re so wizard.”
She tilts her head back against the wall, threading her fingers through my hair. “You are.”
I get a quick taste of forever and the shuddering pleasure I’ll be giving her. “You.”
EPILOGUE 1 – Willa
Willa Todd-Miller Scent Diary, Tuesday afternoon
Provence in early July smells of lavender, rosemary, basil, sage, fennel, fresh air, true love, and dirty sex. Lots and lots of sleep and sex. It’s so beautiful here—fragrant and scenic. The sunflowers are blooming too, so it’s just like sunflowers—pow! Lavender—bam! Tah dahhhh—evergreen trees everywhere! I basically came in my pants for the entire drive from Nice. Or something more ladylike, since I am a blushing bride.
But if I’m being honest, I really have been in a constant state of orgasm. We’ve been here for two nights already, on our honeymoon. Shane chose a spa hotel in the hills above the Luberon, in the south of France. An elegant chateau, surrounded by a vineyard and lavender fields. The view from our suite is spectacular. We have our own terrace, pool, jacuzzi, and garden. It’s all very private and low-key, but it feels so extravagant. One more week here, a few days on the coast, and then it’s back to the Palisades to get ready for Summer’s and Lucky’s seventh birthdays.
It feels like we’re celebrating all the time now.
We had a small wedding in Santa Monica—mostly a family affair. The twins were the cutest flower girl and ring bearer ever, Nico was Shane’s best man for the second time, and Grammie made for a surprisingly helpful and dazzling matron of honor. Margo even gave a moving and not at all nauseating speech. I do not hate her.
One thing I will say about Margo Quincey—the woman knows how to market herself. Her “Margo” perfume oil launched half a year ago to great success. At first it was sold exclusively on her online store, but now it’s being carried at posh department stores in New York, LA, and Chicago. I get a cut of the profits. I own a piece of Margo. We are connected in many ways, as mothers and entrepreneurs. Ever since she posted an interview with me on her website, sales of my own line have skyrocketed. I pay Margarita to help me with shipping orders when she isn’t busy with the kids. Turns out people really want to smell like me and Shane. The Sleeper fragrance is now available as a roll-on perfume oil, eau de toilette spray, soap, body lotion, and candle. A girl could make her whole house smell like the beginning of our relationship if they wanted to.
But only I have the pleasure of basking in the glory of Shane Miller’s phe
romones. He’s all mine for two weeks, mine and the kids’ for a couple of weeks, and then he starts work on his next movie. After the Toronto film festival, Hard Shell got a limited release in December and Shane was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. He wasn’t even annoyed that Zac Efron ended up winning because Hard Shell went on to become a surprise sleeper hit, and as I had predicted, he’s getting offered all kinds of parts.
Fortunately, the only parts he’s interested in right now are mine. My skin is pink and raw all over and thoroughly loved. Shane is slowly waking up from a long nap, naked and blissed out under soft white sheets, caressed by the gentle lavender-scented breeze that blows in through the open windows. His hair is perfect. Eyes closed, he’s reaching for my leg.
I don’t know that it would even be possible for me to capture the way I feel right now in a perfume. It’s a remarkable thing, to know that a person is yours but to still long for him. To be married to your first celebrity crush. To choose to love someone with an unguarded heart because he has proven to you, time and again, that he will be the one to protect it.
We blend well together. I suppose I didn’t need a post-graduate degree to figure that out, but who knows. Maybe that’s why our chemistry is so spectacular. The performer and the perfumer.
I’m reaching behind myself with my free hand to hold his.
Shane Miller.
My brother’s best friend.
My brother’s former costar.
My first non-Disney prince crush.
My best friend.
The best dad of the best kids I know.
My husband.
EPILOGUE 2 – Shane
Oliver Sage Miller Sleep Journal – One month old - no idea what day of the week it is
Sleeper Page 22