by Paris Hansen
No one understood why she was continuing to avoid him. Even she didn’t really know why, although she had a feeling it was because he would be able to easily convince her that none of the outside stuff mattered as long as they were together. It was exactly what Savannah had been trying to tell her since Finley had snuck over to her house Tuesday morning.
“You just need to talk to him. I’m sure he’s worried about you,” Savannah said as she watched the screen of Finley’s phone light up again. Finley had long since turned off the ringer and the vibration setting. Now all it did was light up when someone called. It was less evasive that way and a hell of a lot easier to ignore.
“I know. I just can’t.”
Savannah sighed before taking a seat at her kitchen table where Finley had been most of the day.
“Look, I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through or what kind of memories this brings up for you. I know it’s hard and exactly what you didn’t want, but I want you to really think about this. Take out the shitty situation, forget that you’ve been exposed to the masses and tell me…how has it felt not to talk to Liam for nearly three days? Can you separate that feeling onto one side and then compare it to how being exposed has made you feel? Now which hurts worse? Which one makes you feel like a piece of you has been ripped out?”
Finley closed her eyes while she thought about what Savannah was saying. It really wasn’t difficult to realize what hurt worse. While she hated the attention and the memories it stirred up for her, missing Liam was worse. The thought of not speaking to him ever again over something so stupid was too much to bear. But admitting all of that was even more difficult. It was all too much, too soon. How could she explain what he meant to her after only a few days together?
“Okay, let’s approach this a different way. I know you Finley. I know that you decided a long time ago to spend your life alone. You convinced yourself years ago that it was the life you wanted, but it’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to realize that you’re falling for someone even if it’s the last thing you ever wanted to do in your life. And it is perfectly normal to start falling for someone after only a few days. It happened to me and now it’s happened to you. Embrace it my friend cause life is too short not to. Trust me on that.”
Once again before she could respond, Savannah left the room. Finley half expected to hear a mic drop from somewhere else in the house. In the last year, her friend had learned a lot about life and love and now she was spouting off about it like she was some fucking expert. Finley guessed that a near death experience could make someone feel like they knew what they were talking about. She couldn’t say that Savannah was wrong about any of the things she’d said to her.
She’d convinced herself that being alone was what she wanted. And she truly was falling for Liam after only a few days. She never expected that going to Elijah’s wedding would change her life, but it had and now she needed to take Savannah’s advice and embrace it. Grabbing her phone off the table, she used her missed call log to call Liam back. The phone rang a few times before his voicemail picked up. What she had to say couldn’t be left in a voicemail, so she hung up.
Why the hell wasn’t he answering now that she was finally willing to talk to him? She set the phone back down and watched it. She willed for the screen to light up, for the picture of the two of them happy and smiling to stare back at her. Drumming her fingers on the table, she tried to pretend to be patient. She had been ignoring his calls for nearly three days. It really was her own fault that now that she was ready to talk, he didn’t want to or couldn’t.
She tried calling him again, only to have voicemail pick up again. Of course, her brain started working overtime thinking of all the reasons he wasn’t answering. Did he get sick of waiting? Had he given up on her? She tried to stop herself, but she couldn’t help it. Her reaction was just further evidence of how Liam had rocked her world the minute he walked into it. Never once in her life had she acted like this, not even when she was a teenager and it was sort of acceptable behavior.
Knowing she needed a change of scenery, she left the kitchen hoping to find her friends in the living room. Realizing it probably wasn’t smart to try and look for them, since they were probably up to no good, she grabbed a book from Savannah’s bookshelf. Before she could make herself comfortable on the couch, the doorbell rang.
“I’ve got it,” she called out, hoping that the bell hadn’t disturbed whatever it was they’d been doing.
Figuring it was Savannah’s sister Brooklyn or Gabriel’s best friend Declan, she pulled open the door without checking the peephole, which she immediately realized was a stupid mistake. It could have been anyone at the door, although they hadn’t found her yet, she figured it was only a matter of time before the reporters figured out where she was hiding. It was too late to correct her mistake, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t Declan or Brooklyn or the paparazzi standing at the door.
It was Liam.
Chapter 7
Liam
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in L.A.? You have meetings…shit…”
For the first time in three days some of the tension he’d been carrying around seemed to seep from his body. Just seeing her, finally hearing her voice was enough to make him feel better. It didn’t matter that he had no idea how their conversation was going to go or that she wasn’t wrapped around him like he’d hoped she’d be as soon as she saw him at the door.
“I had to see you. You weren’t taking my calls and I needed to know you were okay,” he told her before stepping through the door she was hiding behind. “I have to fly back tonight for my meeting tomorrow, but I am most definitely coming back on Friday and we’ll have at least two weeks this time around. Assuming you still want to explore this with me. I know some things have changed since I left.”
She didn’t look at him as she closed the door behind him. With slumped shoulders, she walked toward what looked to be the living room. He was scared of what she was going to say, but he had to remind himself that at least she wanted to talk. She allowed him into the house which he was going to count as a small victory. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d slammed the door in his face and told him to go away. She could have sent him packing the minute she opened the door. She didn’t owe him a conversation or an explanation.
His life had invaded hers. She couldn’t sleep in her own bed because of him. She couldn’t run her business because of him. The two most important things to her had been taken away from her, which was exactly what she had been afraid of before they ever got started. His career had nearly been a dealbreaker and now here they were after only a few days of trying to be together, dealing with the fallout of his fame.
After talking to Elijah, he knew there was more to the situation than just the invasion of privacy the pictures presented. He wouldn’t go into details, saying it was Finley’s story to tell, but he had been the one to urge Liam to go see her in person. And now that he was sitting next to her on the couch, Liam was thankful for his friend’s advice.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hoping she felt how sincerely sorry he actually was. “I should have been more careful.”
Finley sighed, her eyes coming up from her lap to meet his. “It would have happened sooner or later. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls. I had a lot I needed to think about. I tried calling you back.”
“I know. I was driving here and couldn’t answer. Does that mean you’re done thinking about things?”
She nodded slightly. “I don’t like to talk about my childhood, about the things I went through with my mom. My problem with you being an actor goes a lot deeper than the invasion of privacy and the horrible comments that your fans make. I didn’t want to be reminded of what I went through at the hands of the one person who was supposed to love and protect me. I didn’t want to go through anything like that again, which is why I never wanted to be a part of the Hollywood monster again. Has Elijah told you anything about my life when we
were kids? I know you’ve talked to him about me.”
“No. He said it was your story to tell. I only know that you became friends because your moms were friends and that you’d known each other practically since birth. That’s all he’d say. I don’t even know your mom’s name just that she was an actor.”
Finley’s eyes dropped back down to her lap where she was wringing her hands together.
“My mom was Miranda Lane, Hollywood darling until she got pregnant with me. She had no idea who my father was since she’d been sleeping with a couple different men during that time. Both of them were married, both of them co-stars. Her career options were starting to dry up and she had just finalized her divorce from Andrew Forbes. She was lonely and needy, so she started looking for love in all the wrong places. And these married men let her. She still had plenty of connections around town and they had no problem exploiting her need for love to get what they wanted.
“She didn’t mind the press getting ahold of her story. It kept her in the spotlight longer, which was exactly where she wanted to be. She did everything she could to stay relevant, even if whatever she did caused a scandal. After she had me, she continued to make movies, but many of them were straight to video or made for TV. On each set, she had another new man in her life, whoever was willing to give her affection. It didn’t matter that she had a child to raise, I was usually in her way, so she had someone on set watch me for the twelve hours or longer that we were there each day. Of course, I didn’t really know any better until I started school and then I spent most of my time at Elijah’s while my mom was off filming all over the world. She hated being seen with me as I got older, I was chubby and awkward and the tabloids were merciless with the attacks against me. Her fans said horrible things about me and she took those comments as a slight against her and of course I was to blame for them.”
Finley paused, her eyes catching his again. He knew she was trying to gauge how he felt about her story so far. They’d barely scratched the surface, but all she was going to see in his eyes was anger. He was pissed that someone could abandon their child the way Miranda had abandoned Finley. He had a feeling that his anger was going to grow as she continued. His jaw was clenched as he fought the urge to pull her into his arms. He wanted to hold her as she told him about her life. More than anything he wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to tell him the rest, but he knew she needed to.
“At fourteen I finally had a growth spurt. I got taller and my boobs finally came in. The tabloids didn’t make fun of me anymore and Miranda wasn’t ashamed to be seen with me. In fact, she pushed me to jump into acting, even though she knew I hated it. She saw Elijah doing well and how his career was shining the spotlight back on his family. She wanted that boost in popularity for herself since she was getting older. She pushed me to audition for the sexier roles that were usually reserved for the older girls. The paparazzi followed me non-stop, exploiting my new-found curves and the tiny clothes my mother forced me to wear.
“I got my first tattoo at fifteen. I made sure it was something visible and obnoxious because I knew it would piss her off. I got my lip pierced shortly after and then added a new tattoo fairly regularly over the next few years. By the time I was seventeen, I had defaced my body enough to completely screw up Miranda’s plans. She started drinking heavily when she realized her career was over and she wasn’t going to be able to rebuild her fame through me. I was a horrible actress, but people hired me in the early days because I was cute and I was Miranda’s daughter. Once I was covered in tattoos and piercings, they refused to hire me. Back then it cost way too much money to cover it all up. Miranda spent most of that year telling me how much I ruined her life and that I’d started ruining it the minute she found out she was pregnant.”
“Jeezus Finley.”
“Oh I’m not done. In a last-ditch effort to regain her popularity, Miranda tried to sell scandalous pictures of herself to the tabloids. I’m talking full on frontal nudity that were staged like paparazzi shots. They all refused. So instead of giving up, my dear mother set up a camera to catch me undressing in my bedroom and tried to sell those pictures to the tabloids. Thanks to Elijah’s dad and the fact that I was a minor, we were able to keep those from ever seeing the light of day. Thank God there was one slimeball tabloid out there that had a conscience or things could have turned out differently. I moved in with Elijah and his parents until the day I turned 18 and then I left L.A. for good. I didn’t even wait until I’d actually graduated high school. Given what’d happened, they let me finish up through email.
“Until Elijah’s wedding, I hadn’t stepped foot in L.A. since my 18th birthday and I hadn’t talked to my mom in even longer. I couldn’t handle being there or dealing with her. My mom died years ago, but that place still reminds me of her. I might not go online, but I know that the tabloids and paparazzi have gotten worse over the years. They don’t seem to have any problems exploiting young kids and it makes me sick. I have no doubt in my mind if what almost happened to me then, happened to me now, there wouldn’t be a tabloid in the world that would have walked away from printing the pictures. They wouldn’t have cared that I was a minor and they would have paid a pretty penny for the honor.”
Liam couldn’t speak. He was too pissed off knowing now what Finley had gone through at the hands of her own mother. Liam was afraid of what he might say if he opened his mouth. Instead, he moved over on the couch until he could put his arm around her. Pulling her against him, until she rested her head on his shoulder soothed the anger boiling in his gut, but only a little. If Miranda Lane wasn’t already dead, he would have felt the need to give her a piece of his mind. As it was, he wanted to hunt down every paparazzi and tabloid hound there was and beat them all bloody.
They were vultures and Finley was spot on when she said they’d gotten worse over the years. It was all he could do to keep his sister and her family out of the magazines and off of the internet when they were just hanging out. Liam couldn’t even take his niece and nephew to the zoo without worrying about who might be taking their picture. And it wasn’t just paparazzi anymore. Every Joe Blow on the street with a smartphone took pictures and video hoping to sell them to anyone interested. That was something Liam hadn’t even thought about when he and Finley had gone on their day out in Seattle. He was just too excited to be with her to think of anything else.
And look where it had gotten them.
“I’m sorry that all of this was brought up for you again. I would never want you to get hurt because we’re together. I can’t lie and say that being with me will be a walk in the park, but I think exploring what’s between us will be worth it,” Liam said, his lips brushing against the top of Finley’s head.
He wanted to beg her to give them a chance, but she had to do what was best for her. If that meant he couldn’t be a part of her life, then that’s what it meant. It would be hard, even though they hadn’t known each other long, Liam had fallen hard for Finley. There was nobody else in the world like her. She’d captured his attention the minute he saw her and had only reeled him in further each minute they were together.
They sat in silence, Liam too afraid to speak until Finley told him what she wanted. He held her against him for what felt like forever, but was probably only another five minutes before she pulled away from him. Turning to face him, Finley’s eyes met his and he felt a sense of calm wash over him for the first time since word of the pictures came out. She didn’t look sad or apologetic. She didn’t look resigned or hurt, she looked hopeful.
“I thought I’d moved past the crap Miranda put me through, but really I let it fester. I let her bullshit affect everything and I’m not going to allow that anymore. I will probably always hate the paparazzi and the overall fuckery of L.A., but I don’t want to continue to carry any of that with me. I don’t want to carry Miranda’s issues with me either. She was not someone that anyone would consider a role model. I am not her and you are not the assholes that used her then broke her heart. It wo
uld be unfair of me to punish us both because of what she went through. Her failures and bad decisions are not mine.”
“So what are you saying Finley?” Liam asked, hoping that the impatience he was feeling wasn’t evident in his voice.
“I’m saying fuck my mom, fuck the tabloids and fuck all the people talking shit about me on the internet. I’m not giving you up because of that crap or because I’m afraid it won’t work out. I know we haven’t known each other long, but this feels right. I want to give us a chance, all of the outside influences be damned.”
Reaching over, he pulled her onto his lap. “I promise you won’t regret this Finley. I will prove to you every day that you made the right decision.”
Before she could respond, he kissed her with all of the fear and hope that had ridden him since he’d left on Sunday. With his lips on hers, he showed her how much he’d missed her. She feasted on his lips with a greedy intensity that Liam relished. This was what his dreams had been made of since the morning he woke up alone in her hotel room. This was how he wanted to kiss her whenever he thought about her, with passion and reverence.
She pulled away gasping for air, her hand on his chest. “As much as I love a really good make out session, I don’t think my best friend’s couch is the best place for that; especially since I have no idea where they’re hiding. Do you mind just hanging out watching TV until you have to leave?”
“As long as I get to hold you in my arms, I’m happy to do whatever you want.”
Finley
“I feel like all we ever do is say goodbye.”