If I Stay

by Tamara Morgan

  Ryan’s pulse picked up at the sound of wheels screeching.

  Under normal circumstances, the rubbery squeal of a sharp turn had a way of filling him with excitement rather than dread. Screeching meant speed, and speed meant momentum. When a man had been mired in stagnation as long as him, anything that fostered forward movement was a thing to welcome with both feet on the pedal.

  But that was his old life. Here, at Montgomery Manor, where birds chirped and people went quietly about their business, screeching wheels were practically harbingers of doom.

  A female gasp and another screech had him rounding the corner of the basement-level hallway at a clipped pace. Darkness enveloped him almost instantly, save for the blinding flash of light as a car went up in flames.

  He watched for a moment, emotions of regret and longing swirling through him, before speaking. “Did you know it’s virtually impossible to make a car explode like that in real life?”

  Amy screamed and fell off the edge of the couch, where she’d been curled in a ball, clutching a throw pillow embroidered with tropical birds. The rec room wasn’t a place he normally sought—the wall-to-wall media center set aside for employee use reminded him uncomfortably of the past—but he’d sought her out everywhere else and had come up empty.

  Now that he was here, it didn’t seem like such a bad place, but that was probably Amy’s doing. Her presence rendered the black painted walls somehow warm, the vintage movie posters more kitschy than pretentious. But then, she could probably make the desolation of the moon feel like home.

  Ryan laughed as she rolled over onto her stomach and glared up at him. “You jerk. You scared the crap out of me. How long have you been standing there watching?”

  “Not long.” And long enough. He reached for the remote control that had been abandoned on the couch and pushed Mute. Watching The Devil’s Run was hard enough on its own. Listening to it was torture. He’d done a lot of really bad action flicks early on in his career, complete with cheesy one-liners, scantily clad women and cars exploding for no reason other than a director with a love of pyrotechnics.

  Though the pyrotechnics were pretty cool. A few of the burn scars on his forearms could be attributed to a little preshow experimentation with the squibs.

  He reached out a hand. “You should have told me you wanted to see one of my movies. I have a lot better ones than this.”

  “I dunno—I’m digging the outdated special effects. You must have been really young when you got started.”

  “Young and stupid and careless,” he agreed, hoisting her up. “It’s why I got so much work. I did the movies no one else would.”

  He took a moment to wrap an arm around her waist and savor the fact that he was actually doing this. Holding her. Leaning in. Stealing a kiss, though calling it stolen was a bit of a stretch at this point. Her lips were willing, her tongue enthusiastic, her body pliable. It seemed wrong to take so much joy in the physical pleasures of her proximity when so much between them remained unfinished, but he didn’t know what else to do.

  He’d talked to his agent that afternoon, hoping for some kind of non-Montgomery-inspired miracle on the job front, but she’d had nothing for him other than another stricture to “Sit tight and keep up the clean profile.” It had taken all his restraint not to tell her where she could shove her clean profile, then hang up the phone.

  He didn’t want to touch Mr. Montgomery’s offer. He wanted to shove it deep in a drawer and pretend it never existed. But it was looking more and more as if a deal with that devil was his only option. He’d have to cash in on Amy’s messed-up family life. Admit that Mr. Montgomery owned him—owned them all.

  He groaned, a sound that was as much a plea for help as it was a visceral response to Amy’s tongue sliding across his own. There was no happily ever after in his story, and he was weak to drag her into it. She deserved the setting sun, the kiss on the beach, the credits rolling to a theater full of happy sighs.

  Not a bunch of assholes who would take what she had to offer and give nothing in return.

  Amy took Ryan’s groan as a sign he was about to start beating himself up again, so she dropped to the couch, tugging on his hand so he had no choice but to sink into the cushions next to her. This was clearly one of those times he needed to be coaxed into a good mood, and it just so happened she was in need of a good coaxing herself.

  “Want to watch the rest of the movie with me?” she asked brightly. “You can give me a personal play-by-play, fill me in on all the insider gossip. Ooh, or point out the hot starlets who slept with you to get ahead.”

  “Nobody under the age of eighty calls them starlets,” Ryan grumbled, but he made room for her as she settled herself lengthwise on the cushions and placed her head in his lap. No man could remain grumpy for long when a woman’s mouth was less than a ruler’s length away from his crotch. “And you’re deluded if you think anyone uses the stunt crew to boost their careers. We were one very small step up from craft services.”

  “Ooh, craft services sound promising. Is that like découpage for movie stars?”

  He ran an abstracted hand through her hair, playing with the strands and sending jolts of awareness down her neck, making her entire body feel like a limb returning to life after a deep, prickly sleep. “Not quite. They’re the people who provide on-set meals.”

  “Even better. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a soft spot for people who carry snacks. Now turn the sound back on. You’re interrupting my Ryan Lucas marathon. I started from the beginning and am working my way through.”

  “This is my fourth movie. How long have you been down here?”

  “Hours,” she admitted. “Though Alex made me fast-forward through most of Halloween House of Horrors. He kept having to come down to investigate all my screaming. By the fifth or sixth time, he was ready to break the DVD in half.”

  Ryan chuckled and moved on to an actual scalp massage—firm fingers, strong hands, a woman about to propose marriage based on the equal merits of both. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather watch a romantic comedy?”

  “Wow. That’s quite a sacrifice. You must really hate your own movies.”

  His only response was to click the play button and resume the show. It was awful, the plot holes so huge that not even the highly muscular cop hero could lift them, but she liked slowing the driving scenes down to see if she could catch a glimpse of Ryan. She thought maybe she’d seen his adorably protruding ears in one or two of the shots, but that could have been her overactive imagination mating shamelessly with wishful thinking.

  He shifted as a particularly loud car scene started, this one moving improbably through a parking garage that had to have been eight hundred levels tall for it to last as long as it did. “Oh, so this part coming up? Watch when the car slides into that spot behind the Jeep. You can see me get out of the driver’s side before they cut to the actor. That happens a lot more in the lower budget movies than in the newer ones.”

  Sure enough, she caught a flash of his face—young and earnest and clearly proud of his maneuver—as he jumped out. The sight of him hit like a sucker punch to her emotional center. This movie was only about eight years old, but there wasn’t even a glimmer of that kind of joy in him now. Or at least not without some major coaxing and bedroom antics first.

  “You don’t talk much about it, despite it being such a big part of your life,” she said between explosions. “What was it like?”

  Even though her attention was fixed on the screen, Amy knew the exact moment when Ryan looked down at her, felt the pressure of his scrutiny like weights piled directly on her solar plexus.

  “The driving was incredible.” His gaze grew lighter as he slipped into a nostalgic tone. “Remember how exhilarated you felt that day in the rental car—after just five minutes? Imagine living that every day. I’ll never be the kind of guy who can own the
types of cars Mr. Montgomery has, but for a few hours every day, I got to pretend I was. I got to be the badass fleeing from a squad of hit men. I got to be the getaway driver with fifty million dollars stashed in the trunk.”

  “I knew it! You totally like to play make-believe.”

  His laughter shook her. “I guess I do. I never thought of it that way.”

  She could understand the appeal. It was the same as putting on her princess gown and waving to crowds. Losing yourself in someone else’s story held a kind of magic few people could appreciate or understand. “So what about the rest of it? I want to hear everything.”

  “What everything?”

  “You know. The parties. The lifestyle. The glamour.”

  “There was no glamour.” His words were flat, but the continual movement of his hands through her hair robbed them of any malice. “There were parties, though. Actually, that should be singular. Party. Just one. A sad, never-ending dance of drinking, drugs and self-indulgence. I walked through the doors one night and never left.”

  “I saw an old photograph like that once.” She nestled deeper in his lap. It was impossible to ignore the fact that her head was encased in great, powerful thighs—that a rotation of about forty-five degrees would have his cock and her mouth in an interesting position. A soft sigh of longing escaped her lips, but that was all she allowed herself. She wasn’t messing up this opportunity to peek under Ryan’s skin. “It was some old-time dance marathon, and these three couples had been on their feet for like forty-eight hours or something. The party was a mess of deflated balloons and torn crepe paper, but the couples were still standing in the middle of the room, barely able to keep their eyes open, but determined to win. They were literally leaning on one another to stay standing.”

  He released a soft huff. “I’m not talking about your grandma’s sock hop. This was more like a frat party where everyone was in competition to be King Dick. We were all fighting to be the one who could drink the most, the one who could drive the fastest, the one who could take the biggest risks and not get caught. And I lost. I lost everything.”

  “Maybe that’s only because you didn’t have someone there to prop you up.”

  Ryan stopped his movements through her hair, his fingers gripped so firmly in the tangled strands it almost felt like he was trying to hurt her. But she knew, from glancing at the twist of his mouth, that her pain didn’t touch his.

  “I think you might have missed your calling,” he finally said. “You’re very good at finding easy solutions to the most complex problems.”

  “I know, right? I’d have made an excellent shrink. It’s because I manipulate tiny brains all day long. They can’t handle much more than the easy solution.”

  “I’m going to take that tiny brains comment as a compliment.” He smiled down at her. It was such a soft, gentle smile—so unlike someone who’d hidden behind drunken Hollywood frat parties that she had a hard time reconciling the man in the movie to the one sitting on the couch with her.

  “So how much do I owe you, Dr. Sanders? I warn you—I don’t have much to give.”

  “One kiss. Possibly two.”

  He brought her mouth to his. The kiss he claimed was light to the point of nonexistence, even more meaningful because it was all the payment she’d ever need.

  “We don’t have to keep watching the movie if you don’t want,” she offered. “If it’s painful, I mean. I just wanted to see how you used to be.” I wanted to see what it is about these movies that holds so much allure. I wanted to see what it is I’m competing against.

  Ryan shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Though I don’t suppose we can cleanse the palate with any videos of you dancing, can we? Some obscure European ballet I can use to fuel my fantasies for the next decade?” He’d meant it as a joke, a way to change the subject, but the way Amy frowned indicated that she took it as anything but. Trust him to turn something as beautiful and valued as classical dance and turn it into a sex fantasy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to come off so perverted.”

  “No—it’s not that.” She frowned and then laughed, from one end of the spectrum to the other. “Well, it was kind of perverted of you, but that’s not the problem. I kind of like your perverse side. But what would you say if I told you there aren’t any videos of me dancing?”

  “I’d say it’s a shame,” he said honestly. “And probably not true. Someone, somewhere had to sneak in a camera phone and post a pirated copy of one of your performances. I’m sure I can find one. I’m not just a glorified mechanic. I have exceptional Google-fu.”

  “Not even the best Google-fu in the world would help you with this one, I’m afraid.” She struggled to sit up and brushed a lock of hair from her face, her expression earnest. “Can I tell you something? Something I’ve never told anyone?”

  “Of course you can,” he said quickly. Too quickly, like a man no one trusted with secrets, a man who sucked at letting people in. Slower and with more consideration, he added, “I hope you never feel like you have to hide things from me. I know I haven’t been very good at this opening up to other people stuff, but I like to think you’re helping me be better at it.”

  She nodded once. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

  He took her hands and waited, expecting her to launch into her tale, to break into tears, to do anything that would justify the sudden swell of anticipation he felt. Whatever she wanted to confess, it couldn’t be any worse than the things he’d done lately.

  “You have to promise not to laugh.”

  “Of course not. I’d never do that.”

  She cast a doubtful look at him, her nose wrinkled. “I mean it. This is serious. This was my life for almost five years. No giggling.”

  “I don’t giggle.”

  “You might when I tell you this.”

  “Amy. I have never, in all my life, felt an urge to giggle at someone else’s misfortune.”

  “Misfortune? You have it all wrong. I loved working at the Enchanted Forest.”

  “The enchanted what?”

  “Forest. Just outside Des Moines—you know, Where fairytale dreams come true-la-la?”

  That ditty sounded awfully familiar...

  “I was Fairy Princess Number Three. Do you know how many of us there were? Twenty-five. And I was number three. That’s how good I was.”

  He shook his head as if to clear it. When that didn’t work, he reached over and clicked off the television. When that didn’t work, he finally gave in and spoke. “I’m sorry—did you just say your big confession is that you worked at a theme park? As a princess?”

  She lifted a finger in warning. “Are you giggling right now?”

  “No.” He clamped his mouth shut. “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Ryan, you promised!” She sprang to her feet and tossed the bird-embroidered pillow at his face. When it landed square on his nose—that crooked, rugged, as-far-removed-from-theme-park-foresthood-as-you-could-possibly-get nose, she gave in to a profound urge to giggle herself. “I can’t believe you. You’re such an asshole.”

  “It’s just...I can’t...” He really did give in to laughter this time. “Do you know how many times I’ve compared you to an animated princess in my head? You fended off tourists with a baguette. You delight children in your spare time. I was sure that birds landed on your windowsill in the morning to wake you up.”

  “It’s not funny,” she protested as he pulled her into his arms and held her there. His chest rumbled as his humor subsided, wiping away any and all negative feelings she’d ever had about her life decisions. It was almost scary, how easily Ryan could make her feel better, this man who didn’t laugh at anything unless she made him. “My mom and Mr. Montgomery and everyone—except Jenna, it seems—thinks I was this super great ballet dancer. But I wasn’t. I was mediocre at best. I hated almost everything about it
. The body shaming and the competitiveness and the being banished from home.”

  “Hey,” he said when her voice caught on that last bit. He tilted her face to meet his, and she could see that the laughter in his eyes had been replaced by a hard glint. “Did they really banish you?”

  “Of course not.” She buried her head in his chest and spoke directly to the muscles. The muscles understood. “But I was too ashamed to come back on my own. Ballet school was a lot of money, Ryan, and they wanted so badly for me to be successful. You have no idea what it’s like to have all these people rooting for you, holding you up and supporting you, and then...boom. Nothing. Failure. Letting them down with a crystal tiara and potted rouge.”

  “No. I wouldn’t know what that’s like.”

  Her mouth fell open. Oh, crap. That was a really shitty thing to say to this man, all alone in the world with no one around to care what happened to his career, good or bad.

  But he continued on, unabated. “But I do know that your mom loves you. And that you deserve to do anything in this world that makes you happy, regardless of what anyone else has to say about it—especially if their last name is Montgomery. And that you were probably the best fucking princess the Enchanted Forest has ever seen.”

  She choked on a watery laugh. “I was fantastic.”

  “See?” he said gently. “It’s not so terrible.”

  And when he said it like that, things didn’t seem quite so bleak. No one made her take ballet. No one forced her to keep going after that first burst of homesickness when she was nineteen. Her mom might have been disappointed if she’d come home without any accolades trailing behind her, but wouldn’t have barricaded the doors against her entry.

  “I guess I was too scared to say anything,” she admitted. “I got swept up in my lies until it became easier to live with them than to try and correct them.”

  “No kidding? You? Avoiding confrontation at all costs?”

  She shoved him on the chest, intending to be playful but coming across hard enough to knock him backward. He caught her wrists and held her there, his grip hard but his expression soft. She thought she might melt in his eyes, in the understanding reflecting back at her. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m not judging you. It’s just an observation.”