by Lucy Score
The fuse was lit, and detonation was imminent.
“How dare you!” Paige hissed at him. The bartender eyed them from arm’s reach of the greasy phone mounted on the wall. “What the hell is wrong with me? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. The guy I’ve been sleeping with has been cheating on me with his girlfriend who showed up at my job and humiliated me today. That’s what’s wrong with me, you imbecilic asshole!”
“You get pissed off over a misunderstanding, freeze me out, and then I have to come looking for you, and I find you drinking alone in a bar in a city you don’t know!” Gannon plowed down his list of Paige’s offenses.
“A misunderstanding?” Her voice had reached dog whistle heights. She knocked back the rest of her drink, threw some bills on the bar, and rose. She wobbled a little and then righted herself, turning on him. “You want a fight? You got one. Let’s go.” She threw a little salute to the bartender and stormed out the front door.
He didn’t let her go far. She’d barely made it to the curb when he gripped her upper arm with surprising force. “Stop it.” He gave her a little shake that rattled her teeth, and she rounded on him.
“You’re giving me every reason in the book to break that pretty face of yours,” she warned him, enjoying the slow burn of alcohol and anger mix in her gut.
He hauled her down the sidewalk, ignoring the looks they got from the handful of late night wanderers. Paige noted none of them seemed remotely interested in intervening.
“Let go of me!” She tried yanking her arm free, but he only tightened his grip. In an impressive show of immaturity, Paige tried to kick him in the shin. She missed, catching him instead in his muscled calf. He solved the problem by slinging her over his shoulder and carrying her the half block to his pick-up truck.
He put her down and caged her against the door with his arms. “Now, I’m going to put you in this truck and you’re going to stay put and listen.”
She glared at him, her hair disagreeably falling over one eye. He brushed it back for her. “Please.” The word sounded like it pained him.
She didn’t agree, and he didn’t wait for it. He opened the passenger door, manhandled her inside, and strapped her into the seat. When he slammed the door, he locked the truck with the key fob to slow her down if she tried to make a break for it before he could get behind the wheel.
Paige didn’t want to run. For once in her life, she wanted to fight.
Gannon climbed in and relocked the doors but didn’t make any moves to start the truck. “What in the hell were you thinking?”
Paige waded in with every ounce of hurt and rage that her body held. “I’d ask you the same thing, but judging from Meeghan’s, rack I can take a wild guess.”
Gannon slapped the steering wheel. “There is nothing between me and Meeghan!”
Her gasp fogged up the windshield. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I have no mental faculties whatsoever, and I’ll just decide that I’m fine being the other woman?”
“I expect you to trust me! Do you honestly believe that I’d put you in that position? How can you think that?” Volcano Gannon had just erupted. But this time, it wasn’t Paige’s job to calm him down and refocus him.
“Trust you? Your girlfriend—that I asked you about repeatedly—showed up on set to surprise you, suck your face off, and then I saw you dragging her into your hotel room!”
That shut him up for a second. “Ah, Christ. That wasn’t what it looked like, Paige.”
The look she shot him would have felled a lesser man.
He clenched and relaxed his fists, took a deep breath and then another. “Look, I know exactly how it looked and how that sounded. I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry you were ever put in that position. But I thought you knew me. I thought you trusted me.”
“You aren’t making any arguments about the facts, Gannon.”
“What the fuck do you want me to say? That that,” he gestured in the direction of the hotel, “could never on its best day be real? That it never was anything and that it kills me that you don’t believe me or that she thought she could come in here and stir up trouble for you so she could get attention and ratings? She’s a fucking piranha, and she’s nothing to me. It was the network, and I told you that.”
She felt it, that unwelcome spark of hope burst to life inside her aching heart. But she shook her head, trying to ward it off. He lied. He made her look and feel like a fool. Her job, her reputation, was at risk because he’d played games with her.
“Don’t shake your head, Paige. That was never real. But what I feel for you and what I think you feel for me? That’s fucking real. I need you Paige. I…”
He trailed off fighting the words.
“Just say it,” Paige murmured, staring woodenly at the dashboard.
“I love you.”
She took the words like a hit, crumpling in on herself. Nothing he could have said could have produced more pain than those words.
“I had my suspicions,” he continued. “But when you walked off set today, I felt like I was watching my life walk away. And I knew. I love you, Paige, and you’re killing me by not trusting me.”
“Don’t you dare say that! Not now, not because of this. That’s cruel, and that’s one thing I never thought you were,” Paige said with a sob. No, she didn’t want the hurt. She didn’t want those words as an apology. She wanted to get back to the anger. It was safer, meaner.
She reached for the door handle, but Gannon was grabbing for her over the console. “Don’t go.” She heard the desperation, the pain, and hated how her skin heated at his touch.
“You can’t go,” he said as if he’d made the decision for her and that was that. She shoved at his hands, but he was pulling her back. When she turned to tell him exactly how much she hated him in that moment, his mouth was so close.
Looking back, she couldn’t remember which one of them made the move, but in one heartbeat they were fighting each other, and in the next their mouths were fused together. There was so much heat, so much anger, in the kiss.
It felt mean and desperate and needy. His hands were everywhere, and it vaguely registered to Paige that hers were greedily trying to drag him across the console to her. She needed him like oxygen.
His lips bruised hers, teeth dragging over her, tongue delving into her. “I love you, Paige. I love you so fucking much.”
She barely heard the words over the racket of her heart pumping thickened blood through her veins. She tasted something salty but didn’t care. She poured herself into the kiss. But it was Gannon pulling back.
“Honey,” he breathed, his voice ragged with pain. Gannon dragged his thumbs over her cheeks, and it was only then that Paige realized she was crying. “Please don’t cry. You’re killing me, Paige.”
He pulled her to him again, but this time it was to cradle her against his chest. He kissed the top of her head, and her heart broke just a little bit more. This was the Gannon she knew, the Gannon she wanted. But who was the man who dragged Meeghan Traxx into his hotel room?
He couldn’t be both.
“Take me back to the hotel, please,” she said, her voice flat as she looked away from him and leaned against her door.
“Paige—”
“I can’t do this Gannon. You obviously have things that need to be worked out, and I can’t risk my reputation on a mess like this. Not when I’m so close to really doing something.”
Without his warmth, she felt cold, empty. Alone.
“This isn’t over.”
“It is for tonight.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
She wasn’t a coward, Paige told herself as she dragged her suitcase down the hallway to her apartment. She had just avoided an unnecessarily messy scene.
Filming the morning of reveal day had been so tense that when Andy took her aside she actually thought he was going to fire her. But in a shining moment of heroics, Andy had offered her an out.
“I’m not going to pretend to know what�
��s going on. The network didn’t tell me they were sending Meeghan here, and I don’t want to know what they hoped to accomplish. But I think you could use a break. So Mel’s got a plane ticket with your name on it. I told her you had a family emergency. Go home and promise me you’ll be back next season,” he’d told her.
She’d hugged him hard and pretended she didn’t see Gannon watching them. Under normal circumstances, she would never have left the set. Not on reveal day and certainly not when the family was a sweetheart of a military couple who was finalizing the adoption of two kids out of foster care.
But it was impossible for her to be around him. He hadn’t explained anything. Certainly not why, if he wasn’t dating Meeghan, she felt so comfortable just showing up on a shoot across the country to lay a kiss on him. A kiss that he hadn’t exactly fought off. And then he had taken her back to his hotel room. That couldn’t be misconstrued. But then why had she spent the entire flight from Albuquerque to New York trying to come up with alternatives to the facts?
Was she that desperate to be with him that she was willing to sweep all of his lies under the rug?
Pathetic.
Her mother would be horrified.
She let herself into the apartment and was immediately accosted by five feet of Latina fire.
“What are you doing home so early?” Becca launched herself off the couch and covered the eight feet to the door in record time, wrapping Paige in a suffocating hug. “Oh my God, you didn’t get fired did you?”
She almost wished. Home now, Paige just stood in the doorway. She didn’t want to go back out into the world, but she didn’t want to face her sad mattress in her sad room either.
“Okaaaaay,” Becca said, picking up on the cues loud and clear. “I’m just going to take this bag from you, and you’re going to go sit on the couch, and we don’t have to talk.”
Becca hefted the suitcase with one hand and shoved Paige toward the couch with her other. “Go. Sit.”
Paige did as she was told, slumping down on the worn cushions that Becca had hidden under a gold slipcover. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes.
When she dropped her hands and opened her eyes, a glass of red wine floated before her.
“Take your medicine, babe,” Becca said, wiggling the glass.
“Thanks, Bec.”
“Okay, I know I said you didn’t have to talk about it, but I’m revising. Does this have anything to do with Gannon?”
Paige shot Becca a look over the rim of her wineglass. “Maybe.”
“Does it also have anything to do with a vapid vampire blonde named Meeghan?”
Paige thumped her head back against the low cushion of the couch. “Ugh. Does the entire world know?”
“Of course not. I, being your caring and protective roommate, have been stalking Meeghan—stupid fucking name, by the way—on social media since you and Gannon started…”
“Having incredible, mind-blowing, cheater-y sex?” Paige suggested.
Becca patted her on the shoulder. “We’ve all been there through the divorce that was never finalized or the long distance relationship that ‘just ended.’”
“I asked him straight up on multiple occasions, and he said they weren’t together. He said it had been a publicity thing set up by the network to help launch Kings.”
“I saw her post on Instagram. ‘Surprising my man at work!’” Becca mimicked in her very best valley girl voice. “Does she get her lips injected with car tires? Because that’s some serious perma duck face going on there.”
“She showed up on set, after I had decided to talk to Gannon about maybe continuing things in the offseason, and laid a porn star kiss on him.”
“What did he do?”
“He didn’t exactly fight her off.”
“Did he kiss her back? Bend her over a saw horse and start going to town?”
“Gross. No to the second. I don’t know about the first.”
“Is it possible that she’s just psycho and trying to make it look like they’re together?”
“Well, that could have been a possibility if I hadn’t seen Gannon physically dragging her into his hotel room like he couldn’t wait to get her naked.”
“Hard to misconstrue that one,” Becca mused.
“Exactly what I said.”
“So you had it out with him?” Becca leaned forward. “You didn’t just go all frosty-Leslie-St.-James on him?”
“I may have had a few drinks and defrosted my ice queen all over him.”
“You didn’t.”
“I tried to kick him in the shins.”
Becca nodded in approval. “Classy and not at all over the top.”
“I kept it classy until he accused me of not trusting him and then told me he loved me.”
Becca, for once, was speechless.
Paige wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Talking about it didn’t make her feel any better.
“Does he?” Becca ventured.
Paige shook her head. “If he loved me, he wouldn’t have kept me as a side piece and humiliated me at work.”
“Does everyone know?”
Paige slumped, sipped. “I don’t know. We were pretty careful, but Andy obviously knew something was going on and felt bad enough about the whole thing that he told my PA that I had a family emergency and sent me home halfway through reveal day.”
“Ouch.”
Paige buried her face in the crook of her elbow. “I let it get in the way of my job. A job I need.”
“Babe, we’ll figure this all out. I promise.”
“I’ve got to get attached to another show like now. I can’t do another season with him, with them.”
Becca shook her head in understanding. “No, you can’t.” She gripped Paige’s hand in hers. “We’re going to figure this out. I promise you, and one day we’re going to look back at this night and laugh about how we didn’t know how awesome things were going to turn out.”
Paige hoped so, but it sounded too optimistic thinking about a time when she wouldn’t feel so damaged.
––—
Paige wasn’t sleeping when her phone vibrated on the sad, pressboard box she used as a nightstand. She’d held firm and ignored the calls and texts from Gannon after he finished filming, but she was looking at the screen when the text popped up.
We wrapped. Everyone’s out at the bar and I’m laying here thinking about you. You didn’t have to leave.
Maybe it was because it was two in the morning her time. Maybe it was because she still felt like he didn’t get why she was so hurt. Whatever the reason, she picked up her phone.
I wish things hadn’t ended this way. Or that we’d never started.
It was the truth. The painful, honest truth.
Her phone signaled an incoming call. Gannon. She debated, nearly sending it to voicemail, and then relented.
“Hey.” Her voice was flat, tired.
“Paige.” Her name was a rush of relief from Gannon’s lips.
She squeezed her eyes closed tight. “I don’t know why I answered the phone.”
“Don’t hang up.” He made the demand abruptly before adding, “Please.”
She sighed, but didn’t disconnect.
“Did you get my messages?” His voice was low and husky.
“I didn’t listen to them or read them.”
He blew out a breath. “I can’t believe how fucked up everything got.”
Her laugh was bitter. “Tell me about it.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to explain. You just packed up and left like I didn’t even matter to you.”
“What’s there to explain?”
“Paige.”
“Did you know she was coming? Was I some kind of joke to you?”
“Jesus. Is that what you think?”
“I’d like to think you’re not that good of an actor,” Paige admitted.
“I’m not. You know I’m not. Paige, you know me.” He sounded frustrated. “I hate this. I�
��m not good at communicating when I’m pissed off.”
“You’re pissed off?”
“She’s trying to ruin everything because I didn’t play ball,” Gannon said. “And you’re going to let her. So yeah, I’m pissed.”
“Meeghan?”
“I told you it was for publicity, but I told the network I wasn’t doing it anymore. The show was good. We didn’t need any of that bullshit to pull in an audience.”
“Obviously, she didn’t get the message.” Paige rubbed a hand over her forehead in the dark.
“I didn’t pay any attention to the press she was giving about us still being together. She’s the network’s problem now. So when she showed up on set and laid one on me and treated you like… like a fucking lackey…” he broke off.
“Did you ever sleep with her?”
His pause was damning. “Yeah, but—”
“Maybe that’s okay in your world. Sleep with some girl, let her think you’re together until you find someone else, but it’s not okay in mine. I never would have slept with you if I thought you were with someone. Even if it is her.”
“Goddamn it, Paige. I’m not with her. I never was.”
“You slept with her.” There was no point arguing. He’d never seen it from her point of view. “Look, I’m sorry for leaving like I did. I should have at least stuck around to have this conversation in person. Whatever happened, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how this relationship is making me feel, and it’s not good. I’m out, Gannon.”
“You can’t just—”
“Thank you for respecting my decision. Good night, Gannon.”
She hung up and shut down her phone. She wasn’t going to waste any more sleep on him.
She finally fell asleep just after dawn, missing the feel of his arms around her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
He was fucking crazy. That was the only explanation for him acting like a damn stalker. She’d made it clear—crystal clear—that she didn’t want to know the truth. Yet here he was on her damn doorstep.
He had to make her understand… and then he would let her have it for not trusting him.