“We’re here.” He turns away from me, and the moment is over.
Now there is just his diamond sitting on my finger, the weight foreign and upsetting. I plaster a smile on, the shouts from media and photographers already starting as the car pulls up to let us out.
The minute the doors open, they descend upon us like seagulls down at the Jersey Shore. Flashes go off in every direction, and Dean laces one hand through mine as he raises the other one to wave to the crowd of screaming fans being barricaded behind metal gates. He helps me onto the carpet, which is swarming with celebrities, industry professionals, crew members, cameras, media types with microphones, and everyone in between.
“Dean! Kara! Over here! Smile! Kiss! Show us that attitude!”
People shout at us from every direction, and I just keep that sunny smile on my face and follow Dean, blind as to what to do right now. He maneuvers us expertly down the carpet, and then stops on a mark when a woman in all black clothing holds up a hand for us to stop. I look down the row, and there are celebrities I’ve seen on the covers of magazine standing on various marks down the carpet, the backsplash for the movie hanging behind us all.
“Smile, baby.” Dean looks at me, wrapping his arm around my waist in an intimate, picture pose.
I snap into action, draping myself appealingly over him, laughing on cue and making moony eyes at Dean every time we turn toward each other.
And then I make the ultimate move, placing my left hand on the breast of his suit jacket, my brand-new engagement ring catching the light. It only takes point three seconds for one of the media outlets to notice, and then it’s as if the world spins into chaos.
“Are you engaged?! How did he pop the question? When is the wedding?”
The pictures that end up splashed all over every website and morning paper show a happy couple, madly in love. And that’s what I’m being paid to portray.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kara
“Yes, Mom, I promise I will not look at wedding magazines until I come back out there for a visit.” I roll my eyes, chewing on my lip knowing that I will never have the privilege of planning festivities for this engagement with my parents.
Guilt suffuses me … how hurt will my mom and dad be when Dean and I end this?
“Okay good, because I just can’t wait. I can’t believe my little girl is getting married!” she screeches, clapping her hands.
I know she’s probably on Pinterest, a website I taught her to use a couple years back when she was getting inspiration for redoing the living room.
“Okay, give Dad my love, and I’ll call you later this week.”
“Mwah! I love you, future Mrs. Jacobs!” she teases, and then we both hang up.
I sigh, digging my feet into the sand. After the initial shock of seeing our engagement in the news rather than hearing about it from their daughter, my parents were thrilled. Mom can’t stop talking about weddings and grandchildren, and I think Dad thinks that I finally gave up my stubborn streak to admit that I love Dean and have been miserable without him.
Little do they know, their daughter is no better than a hired escort, acting in love for money.
Over the past two weeks, the news of mine and Dean’s engagement has gone viral. We’ve done four interviews, two on the radio, one an online video for the most popular celebrity news site out there, and one on the hit morning show that Dean had announced our relationship on. All buzz of his impending trial and rape charge has vanished, so the thing we set out to accomplish has pretty much been attained.
I’ve been contacted by every high-end wedding planner, dress designer, florist to the stars and people trying to make me a donut wall … not that I even know what that is. Hundreds of gifts have arrived, from both people who knew us since high school, and the trendiest of celebs. One of the biggest music stars in the world, who may or may not be in U2, sent us a pair of candlesticks that were carved by hand in an African village.
It’s so overwhelming, from the media coverage to the girls at work fawning over my ring, that I find myself spending all of my free time out on the beach.
“Mind if I join you?”
Dean’s voice comes from behind me, and my silence is my compliance. Aside from public appearances, where we now kiss and act like the two most in love people under the sun, we haven’t seen much of each other. I’ve been working a lot, and he’s been in the studio or planning his upcoming tour.
“I don’t come out here enough.” Dean sits next to me, resting his elbows on his knees.
Clad in a V-neck white tee and gray jogger sweatpants, he looks comfortable and relaxed. I shed my work attire the minute I got home, trading those clothes for a terry cloth romper that was so comfortable, I could probably sleep in it for days.
“You rich people, never appreciating what you have.” The comment is said without any bite, and Dean chuckles.
“I guess you’re right. We buy these mansions in the most beautiful locations, and barely stay here to use any of it. There are about twenty-five rooms in that house, and I use about three of them.”
“Come a long way from the little ranch in Elm Hill.” I trace nonsensical patterns in the sand.
“I miss it, sometimes. Not my childhood, obviously. But the simpler times.”
It’s only then that I look at him, but those stormy eyes are looking out to the sea that matches their color. “Why did you never come back?”
There are so many things I’ve wanted to ask him, so many things I’ve wanted to talk about. Something about this rock weighing my left hand down makes me bolder, allows me to feel like I have the entitlement to bring those things up.
Dean sighs, glinting at me against the slowly descending sun. “You know why. After we … ended, there was nothing left there for me.”
Emotion clogs my throat. “Not even when your father died?”
The expression in Dean’s eyes is threatening, and he doesn’t even bother answering the question. I shouldn’t have gone there.
“Not even for me?” My voice is so quiet, I’m shocked I even voice the question.
“Were you expecting me to? Because I think you made it pretty clear that we were over. Don’t tell me you don’t remember those messages you left.” His jaw clicks, and I can hear his teeth grind.
“Did you mean those things you said at Incognito the other night?” We hadn’t talked about it yet, and I’m not sure why I’m bringing it up now.
Maybe I feel like, with all of the news about us that should be genuine and happy, I need some kind of real connection.
He flexes his hands, my eyes catching on the tattoos running up his arms. Roman numerals, a Celtic cross, and the skull and bones laying over a field all stick out to me.
“You mean that I didn’t cheat? Yeah, I meant it. Because it’s true. I would never have done anything to hurt you, Kara. I loved you.”
The last three words make my blood pressure sky rocket. “Why didn’t you ever say anything? Those pictures …”
Guilt and the loss of the time we could have had make my heart sob. What if he’d tried to fight for us? What if I wasn’t so stubborn? What if, what if, what if.
“Yeah, I knew they looked bad. When I first woke up to the news, I wasn’t sure what I’d done that night. And then I got your messages, my agent was calling like crazy, I didn’t know what to do. I was alone, confused. And hurt that you, the one person I had always been loyal to, so quickly turned your back on me. I was a proud jackass, furious that you could just walk away. It only took me a day and a half to realize that I was so wrong, that I should fight. But you wouldn’t return my calls, and I started doubting myself. Doubting us. Maybe we were just a high school love story that had run its course.”
I look out at the water, my voice a whisper. “Were we? Just another high school love story?”
We shouldn’t go here. I should be smarter than this, stick to the confines of the contract and just do what I came out here to. Learn in the best possible pr
ofessional setting I’ll ever find in my career. Be Dean’s beard. Get him out of a rape charge, both in the public eye and the legal system. Build walls around my heart at all costs.
But per usual, the more time I spent around this man, the more he broke me down. It’s why I’d stayed away for seven years, unable to even hear the sound of his voice or see his face in a magazine.
When I look back at Dean, he’s studying me. “For me, we were the love story of my life. I will never find what we had with anyone else for as long as I occupy this earth. I’m done being angry at you, irrationally upset because you believed others over me. I’m still in love with you, it’s like I’ve walked around half blind for years because you weren’t by my side. I didn’t want to talk about it until I was sure I wouldn’t spook you, even though I probably still am right now, but everything for me the other night was real. What I said, and especially the way I kissed you. I meant every inch of that kiss. So no, we weren’t just the cliché high school sweethearts, and you know it. It’s about damn time we start admitting that.”
His diatribe leaves me shaking like a leaf, fear and adrenaline and the bald truth staring me in the face. I can’t even speak I’m so shocked, his words sending tremors through my body.
A masochist, that is what I am. Because I swore Dean Jacobs off for good, and now I wanted nothing more than to sit here and listen to how he still loved me. How we belong together. And how he meant every damn thing he did the other night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kara
Another Friday, another date night.
Except, this time, I’m not so annoyed at having to enjoy a meal with Dean. In fact, everything from the car ride here to our appetizers has been … lovely.
“This place is insane.” I laugh when the gigantic tower of food is set down on our table.
“It’s called Glutton for a reason. I think my stomach is going to explode each time I walk out of here, but it’s so good I keep coming back.” He grabs a ring of calamari off the monstrous seafood steeple before us.
“Good thing I’m not one of your model types, because then all of this would go to waste.” I start to pile food onto my appetizer plate.
“I always loved that about you.” There was that word again, and although I could brush it off without addressing it, the goose bumps on my skin could not.
“So how has the studio been going?” I try to change the subject.
Dean pops a fried oyster in his mouth. “Pretty good actually, I’m taking a longer break between albums this time, which I kind of like. Gives me more time to write, flesh out ideas. How is your residency?”
He’s been very interested in my work. “While I was skeptical about coming out here in the first place, it’s actually great for my career. I’m learning things lightyears above my office in New Jersey.”
It was true, I was seriously kicking some major dermatology ass out here. The procedures they knew and trained for, the different technologies and lasers that I never could have gotten my hands on back home … it was worth it just for them.
“Who knew you would be so into pimples?” He smirks.
“Don’t you remember how rigid I was about my skincare in high school?” I bite into a juicy piece of crab and sigh, it is amazing.
“Do I remember? The nights you would sneak out and sleep over, we couldn’t go to bed for half an hour until you’d used at least four products and exfoliated or whatever that shit is called.” He shook his head, the memory making us both grin.
“God, I was ballsy back then, huh? My parents had to have known I was spending nights at your house and not Heidi’s.”
“Maybe they were just so in love with me, they didn’t care.” He brushed fake dirt off of his shoulders.
“That Dean Jacobs charm, it always pissed me off when it came to my parents.” I roll my eyes. “They thought you could do no wrong. Still do, considering their daughter ran off and got engaged in the matter of months and they aren’t questioning a thing!”
Even saying it now peeved me a little. Yes, I was glad they weren’t prying too much, because I would most definitely break down and tell them about my fake engagement. It was bad enough that Heidi knew, not that she would tell anyone, and Dean wasn’t aware of her level of knowledge.
“I knew I always liked them.” He pops a piece of crab cake in his mouth, and I watch his tongue do devilish things as a spot of remoulade lands on his lip.
Now that I’m trying to let bygones be bygones, it’s like Dean’s sex appeal has ratcheted up seven notches from where it sat at a twenty out of ten before. Everything he does, every step, each flex of a bicep or the way he uses manners with waitstaff or drivers, makes me swoon. I feel like I’m a walking lady boner at all times, and I have to tamp down my sexual frustration. Since that kiss, it’s like my arousal button is always turned to the on position.
One of his tattoos catches my eyes, and I have to spill the question I’ve been biting back. “What do they all mean?”
I point my fork to his arms, and he follows the motions, studying his arms. “Some are meaningful, some are complete crap.”
“They’re … beautiful.” I breathe, because I can’t help it.
So intricate, wrapping around the muscles and veins of his arms. As a person who worshipped clean, healthy skin, it was probably against the rules that I was captivated by a man who had put needles and ink to his flesh. But I did.
His eyes were a dark blue over the flicker of the candle on the table. Dean pointed to one in particular. “These are roman numerals with the date of my father’s death. You asked me the other day why I never returned to Elm Hill? It was because, on this date, I finally felt the lead weight drop from my shoulders. The anvil I’d worn around my neck for so many years had finally been taken off. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of lightness that passed over my body when I heard of his death, Kara. And so I want to remind myself of it every day.”
His explanation takes my breath away, and wasn’t what I expected when I got into this conversation.
Dean doesn’t give me a break though, but barrels on. He points to one on the opposite arm, a necklace looking scroll of ink whose illustrated chain winds around his wrist. “This … this is the locket I gave you for your sixteenth birthday. Had to search high and low for a picture of it for my tattoo artist. I wanted it around my wrist, because I was always bound to you and I wore my heart on my sleeve when I was with you.”
At this description, I choke up, not able to contain the errant tear that slides down my cheek. Dean wears the stories of his life all over his skin. I’d forgotten about that locket, the one that sat at the bottom of a bag full of Dean related items buried under my bed so I would never have to look at them.
Seeing my emotional outbreak, Dean smiles and winks at me. “Then this one, it’s a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. I thought it would be so metaphorical, but in reality, it looks idiotic. But it makes me laugh.”
I laugh through the lump in my throat. “How about that one?”
“Oh this, a drunken dare from Neil. He bet me a thousand dollars that I wouldn’t tattoo Bon Jovi’s face on my arm, so I did. Thing is, I don’t even really like Bon Jovi … but don’t tell the media that. He’s a nice guy, just not too into his music.”
I have to giggle at that one. “You’re from New Jersey, you’re pre-programmed to love Bon Jovi.”
Dean takes a sip of his beer. “False. I’m pre-programmed to love Bruce Springsteen and flipping people the middle finger in traffic being from the Garden State. No one said that ‘Living on a Prayer’ was a requirement.”
I hold my hands up, our banter making me feel giddy. This feels like … us again. “Okay, I give up. You win.”
Dean’s eyes sparkle from across the table, and I know he feels it too. Something has changed over the past couple of months. It’s like all of that resentment has dropped off my shoulders, the same way he described his father’s death.
For the first time in se
ven years, I look back on that time and thank my younger self and Dean for splitting us up. Even before the did he/didn’t he cheat scandal, we weren’t in a good place. I was lonely, and causing fights over stupid things only because we were in a long-distance relationship. We both needed time to grow, individually as people and in our separate careers.
It may be unconventional the way we found ourselves here, and I still wasn’t sure I was ready to give this a real shot, but I had to admit it to myself.
I was falling for my fake fiancé.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Dean
If you’ve never had the ultimate privilege of standing up on a stage in front of thousands of people, singing your heart out while they belt the same lyrics back to you … then I’m sorry but you haven’t lived.
It’s something akin to taking a hit of the strongest drug, not that I’ve tested that out, but I dabbled in the less severe substances in my earlier youth and can pledge that playing a concert for hundreds of screaming fans is better. It lights your skin up like a spark, charging you from the inside as if you stuck your hand in an electrical socket or something.
And tonight, it was as if the entire Los Angeles power grid was plugged directly into me.
Kara had only come to one or two of my early shows, the ones where I’d performed in clubs or small theaters to crowds of less than fifty people. In high school, she’d sat front row at every talent show, but once I’d come out here, she could never afford the flight. By the time I’d really starting hitting it big, we were already through.
Having her here, sitting across from me in the backstage dressing room, is making my legs shake uncontrollably.
As Long As You Hate Me Page 9