The Interview

by Alice Ward

  “Great.” I flopped my head back against the chair mesh and groaned.

  She rounded the flimsy wall into my little square of space, but she didn’t hop up onto the desk as she normally did. “Don’t worry about it, Sadie. You’ve got more important things going on than some nobody and their shitty British accent.”

  “Yeah, but my landlord isn’t going to see it that way. Rent is due, and I’ve had three delayed articles. That’s going to make this check tight.”

  “I’ll lend you the money if you need it.” She crooked her head.

  It was hard to be miserable around Jenna. The girl was a walking, talking attitude on heels with a heart of gold beneath her designer dress and Swarovski jewelry. “That’s sweet, but I couldn’t let you do that.” I shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay, but the offer stands.” She took a step toward me, and I noticed for the first time that her arm was hooked behind her back with her hand out of view. “I’ll let you get to work then, so you can make that rent you won’t borrow, but I have something I think you’ll want to see first.”

  I slid my eyes suspiciously to the hidden hand, trying to lean to the side to get a peek. “What is it?”

  She produced the hand, and in it was the latest edition of The Apple. I scrunched my nose as she held it out to me. “Here.”

  “Why are you giving me this? I can get one for free.” I took it gingerly, half expecting to see big red letters printed across the page denoting my dismissal from the paper’s staff.

  “Just look it over.” Her eyes twinkled, and she edged toward the cubicle exit. “Believe me, it’s worth it.”

  She disappeared with clacking heels before I had a chance to press her for more details. I looked down at the paper in my hands, unsure if I wanted to peruse it or not. If there was something bad in there, like my last review had been pulled, I wasn’t feeling too confident I’d be able to handle the blow.

  If there was something good, however, I couldn’t believe I wouldn’t have heard about it through the office grapevine. Then again, I hadn’t been the most attentive of people lately. With butterflies in my belly, I flipped the paper over to the front page… and froze.

  There he was, dark hair and eyes identifiable despite the black-and-white, jawline as sturdy as ever.

  Tate McGrath and Everything You Never Knew: The Tell-All Interview.

  My body was instantly doused in cold sweats. Goose bumps prickled my arms and legs, and I felt a pressing need to vomit and weep at the same time.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered.

  I hadn’t even gotten past the photograph. It was the first time I’d laid eyes on his face since our return from California, and I was as riveted as the night I met him in his dressing room. The flood of emotions that doused me were so powerful I couldn’t will my eyes to move to the article itself, but the typeface was starting to burn itself into my peripheral vision.

  With the kind of effort I usually reserved for moving my refrigerator to clean behind it, I started to read. It was a tale, a mournful tale of a boy and his brother living in a poverty-stricken corner of California. It was Tate’s story.

  He’d told it. All of it. The secret was out.

  My hands were shaking so badly I had to set the paper down on my desk and hover over it to continue reading. Not a detail had been left out. There was his mother’s murder, his father’s prison demise, the foster homes. He explained running away and making a life on the street, surviving by whatever means necessary. And then there was the playhouse, his perverted benefactress, and Artie’s unfortunate fate. Everything I’d learned the last time I saw him was written and printed and available for the masses to see.

  My heart didn’t know what to make of it. One second, it was fluttering as light as a feather, only to skip and stop altogether the next. My knees were so wobbly that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stand at all for the next eight hours, and everything from my chin up felt like it had been soaked in Novocain.

  I saw him in the backseat of the car. It was the last time I saw my father.

  The pain was visceral, even through the emotionless medium of ink and unbiased journalistic writing.

  His body was covered in bruises. I was lucky I found him when I did.

  It was playing through my mind all over again, the scenes Tate had described to me while we looked at the sites of their horrendous scenes.

  I was crying silent tears, weeping for the sadness I read and weeping for the man I knew. Because I did know him. Tate McGrath and Tyler Finnigan were the same person, but Tate was the part of Tyler that didn’t hurt. Now, the world would know him too.

  There were no more secrets.

  I hadn’t even finished reading the interview before my eyes zoomed back up to his picture. The man staring back at me looked different than the one I remembered. Clear-eyed, open, hopeful. Full of possibility beyond what he had already accomplished.

  Then, I noticed something I hadn’t before. The byline.

  Jenna Grammer.

  The tears started all over again, but they weren’t sorrowful. They were the tears of someone with a heart so full there was no other outlet. I gathered the paper in my arms and got up from my chair. My knees were still weak, but I was so focused that I hardly noticed the wobble in my step. I left my cubicle and headed up the west row into the only workspace with any personality.

  “This was you?”

  I didn’t mean to whisper. I wasn’t embarrassed by my emotion, or afraid anyone would overhear. I simply had no control over my voice, and it seemed to have disappeared in my awe.

  Jenna turned around with a smile. It was a very smug, very Jenna-like smile, but the moment she saw my face, she did something that stunned me. She welled up. Tears swam along the neat trail of her false lashes, and a single droplet slid down her cheek, marring her perfectly applied makeup. I’d never seen such an expression of emotion from her, and it broke me down even further. The next thing I knew, our arms were around each other, and I was crying onto her shoulder.

  “I was afraid you were going to be pissed at me.” She laughed shakily and rocked me from side to side.

  “Why on Earth would I be pissed at you?” I blubbered. My nose was starting to run, and I was sure I bore a striking resemblance to Rudolph.

  She shrugged and stepped back, snatching a couple tissues from the box on her desk. Handing me one, she dabbed at her eyes. “Because I met with him and didn’t tell you. He asked me not to. He didn’t want you to know until it was published.” She scowled at the makeup that had come off onto the tissue and reached for her purse, digging out mascara to apply a fresh coat.

  “Did he ask you to do this?”

  Rolling her eyes up toward the ceiling, she stroked the wand over her fake lower lashes. “Yeah. Didn’t you read it?”

  “Most of it.” I wiped away the remnants of my tears and tossed the tissue into the little aqua trashcan she kept beneath her desk.

  She dropped the mascara wand like it had electrocuted her, practically ripped the paper from my hands, and flapped it in front of my face. “No, you have to read all of it.” I took the paper back. “Trust me.”

  Skimming to the last part I’d reached before discovering who’d penned the piece, I continued. The rest was as I expected, the chronological tragedy that was Tate’s life prior to Broadway. Until the very end.

  “Oh my god.”

  I stopped breathing as I read the final words he’d wanted the world to know.

  JG: Why did you decide now was the time to give everyone the Tate McGrath tell-all?

  TM: I met a woman who taught me I’m worth loving. She deserves to know the man who’s in love with her.”

  As I stared open-mouthed at the word — love — Jenna placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her, stunned into speechlessness. Like always, she said enough for both of us.

  “Go get him, honey.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Tate

  The knock inte
rrupted my slumber like a grenade, jarring me out of sleep in an alarmed panic and sending me bolting upright in bed with wide eyes. I sat stock-still for a moment with my ears pricked, uncertain whether or not I’d dreamed the sound, but another series of knocks assured me I had a better grasp on my consciousness than it seemed.

  Throwing the blankets off, I stumbled sleepily to the chair where I kept my pajama pants and tugged them on before stumbling just as sleepily from the bedroom to the door. I hadn’t gotten to bed last night until the sun had spilled into my windows this morning thanks to a late Concrete performance and a serious bout of stressing over the exposé piece. Judging by the position of the even brighter sun pouring through my windows, it wasn’t even ten in the morning yet.

  I opened the door expecting to find a staff member standing there with an apology prepared for losing their key. Who I found instead was much more unexpected and eternally welcome.

  Sadie was clutching something to her chest, and a brief glance revealed it to be a newspaper. Not just any newspaper. The Apple. And one of my headshots was staring back at me.

  She didn’t have to tell me why she was there. The newspaper and the glimmer in her eyes was explanation enough. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her with everything I had, absorbing her into myself like a sinner would his savior. She threw her arms around my neck, the paper fell forgotten to the floor, and I devoured her.

  Thighs curled around my waist as my hands found solace beneath a sumptuous ass, and our chests melted together through the thin fabric of her blouse. Our kisses weren’t just kisses. They were the wordless expressions of everything we felt, everything we feared, everything we were. Tongues danced to tell the story of our romance. Breath mingled to weave us as one. All the barriers we had battled before were gone, and in their place was nothing but an open expanse of imperfect perfection.

  I took her to the bedroom. I didn’t ask. Permission wasn’t needed, because her desires were clear in her touch. She clung to me as I lowered her on top of the comforter, releasing only when she was flat on her back, but I didn’t pull away. I was never going to pull away again.

  My lips found the soft spot of her neck just below the jawline, and I lapped a trail along the seam. She tilted her head to allow me access and exhaled a meow of pleasure. My cock was hard already, but I wasn’t overcome with lust.

  This was so much more than that.

  She was so much more than that.

  This wasn’t sex or screwing or fucking. This was lovemaking, and I was going to make sure she knew how loved she was before I stopped. Taking her lobe between my teeth, I tugged on the sensitive flesh and started unhooking her skirt. She wriggled her hips, helping me free her, and I shivered as soft palms flattened against my back.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  She exhaled again, this time a sigh of satisfaction unlike any I’d ever heard. “I love you too.”

  I throbbed, and I succumbed to the urges. Primal need guided my hands along her curves, which shivered beneath my fingertips. I wanted to taste those shivers. Sliding lower down her body, I shifted her blouse up to her chest and traced my nose along her side.

  “Tate…”

  “No.” I looked up at her from her stomach, running the very tip of my tongue around her belly button. “Tate exists only onstage now. It’s Tyler who’s about to make you scream.”

  Her teeth fastened on her lower lip, and I felt her hips rise beneath me. She moaned in her throat, and I knew. Physical pleasure was great, but nothing I could do to her was as wonderful a gift as giving her myself.

  But she was going to get the best of both worlds.

  I bit the waistband of her panties and started worming them down, watching her mound appear bit by bit until she was revealed to me in her entirety. Her pussy was glistening with arousal, and I couldn’t resist taking a quick lick just for a hint of her flavor. She sucked in a sharp stream of air. I repeated the motion, this time taking care to slow to a near halt when I reached her clit, which twitched beneath my tongue.

  “So ready, so quickly, sweet Sadie.”

  Her breathing hitched, and she lifted her head to look down at me. I paused when I realized she was staring at me in surprise. “What happened to Juliet?”

  Tilting my head, I acted as though I was considering the question. “She was a nice girl.” I shrugged. “I think I’m over her, though. The woman I love is named Sadie.” With a teasing grin, I winked. “Sadie Danes, The Apple.”

  “You’re so cocky.” She tried to hide her elated smile, but I could feel her thrill in the sudden swell of heat that burst between her thighs.

  “Cocky or confident?”

  She lifted her head a little farther to make a greater impression. “Cocky.”

  I chuckled. The taunting throwback to our first meeting only made this fantasy more exquisite. “Gorgeous, you have no idea.”

  Then, before she had a chance to come back with a snarky reply of her own, I suckled her clit into my mouth and traced rapid circles around the sensitive surface. She bucked, but I pressed my thumbs into the creases of her hips to push her back down again.

  A moan started rolling from deep within her belly, cascading over me and filling the room, and I responded by mimicking the vibrations with my tongue. Her hips started to rise once more, but I held firm and refused to let her relieve the intense build.

  “Tate… Tyler… ungh!”

  I lifted a brow, popping my mouth off her. “Yes?”

  She groaned. “Oh, god, don’t stop!”

  “You spoke to me. I was just replying.” I could feel my lips twitching with amusement, but I kept it contained. I hadn’t felt so sexually charged since the first time Sadie and I had gotten this intimate, and I was going to have fun with it. And she was never going to forget this day. It was going to be the day we expressed our love for one another, and it was going to be the day she felt that love in all its forms.

  Sadie shook her head, panting, falling back against the bed. “You’re such an asshole.”

  “Am I?” I slid a forefinger up the length of her slit and back down again, dipping it inside her. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “No, you’re not!” she gasped, arching her back.

  I curled the finger up and stroked it across her G-spot as I resumed my teasing tongue tickling her clit. She rocketed backward involuntarily, her feet digging into the blanket to project her toward the headboard. I clawed her thighs and yanked her down again with a scolding shake of my head.

  “Listen, sweetheart, I just got to hear the three most beautiful words in the world from your lips.” I nuzzled her mound lovingly and offered her clit a pacifying lick. “Now, my ears want to hear the single most beautiful sound in the world.”

  She moaned.

  “That’s my girl.”

  I was so hard that I hurt, but it was an exquisite pain. I wanted to forgive it and forego it all at once, but first I needed to bring her to the height of ecstasy that I knew by simply being in her presence.

  Her scent and flavor surrounded my senses as I burrowed a second finger inside. My lips secured around her hooded bead. She rose beneath me, fell, rose again. Her breathing was becoming labored, and her skin was developing the delicate glitter of pleasure-induced sweat that gave her a fairylike glow.

  God, I loved this woman. A more breathtaking sight didn’t exist in the universe.

  Her cheeks turned rosy pink, and her breathing stopped altogether. She clenched around my fingers. I knew it was coming, and I was going to take it from her come hell or high water.

  She broke. Her moan rose in a beacon of euphoria, her back arcing the same. I couldn’t take waiting anymore. Shoving myself free from my pajama pants, I took my erection in my hand and plunged into her like a sailor who’d been at sea for months.

  Her moan heightened to verge on a shriek, and her hands came up just in time to slam against the headboard with a vengeance. She swallowed me to the deepest, claiming me as much as I claimed her. He
r pussy was still pulsing with the waves of her climax, which worked to build me at a rapid-fire pace. I gritted my teeth and braced myself over her before dropping my mouth onto hers to drink in the gratification she expressed.

  I thrust harder and faster, and she pulled her face away from me. Her eyes met mine with orgasmic sparkles, and once more, I was blessed with words I never thought I could’ve deserved.

  “I love you.”

  My heart swelled beyond capacity, and I stopped moving. Brushing my knuckles against her cheek, I kissed her again, softly. “I love you too.”

  She raised her pelvis, lifting me with her. “Take me.”

  Shit. I’d forgotten a condom. “Damn. Condom. I forgot.”

  She tightened her thighs and took my face in her hands. “I don’t care. Take me.”

  I did.

  I drove myself into her deeply, slowly, each sense I possessed determined to prolong our joining. Her nails skewered into the back of my neck, and I tilted my head to relish the sensation. To test her reaction, I rolled my hips, and she responded by biting her lower lip and emitting a pleading whimper. My cock reacted with a powerful throb, and I rocketed forward.

  “Tyler, oh, please…”

  Hearing her say my real name, a name I hadn’t been in over a decade, was secondary only to her moans, and I couldn’t hold back anymore. I took her, made her mine, ravished her body and met with her soul. She was losing her breath again, and I was losing myself in her.

  This woman was mine.

  She loved me.

  And there was nothing so wonderful as that.

  I exploded, bursting into a billion pieces, and the force of it sent me barreling into her at the deepest I’d ever been. She reacted at once, shattering beneath me. The nails at the nape of my neck raked my shoulders, and the voice in my ear rose two full octaves. I bit into her collarbone, pulsing in and out and in and out, feeling her writhing with a pleasure we shared.

  There were stars popping in front of my eyes even when the waves ebbed to ripples, and the ripples ebbed to still waters. I lowered myself gently, careful not to put all my weight on her as I twisted sideways until I could rest beside her. Gathering Sadie’s feminine figure in my arms, I eased her onto my chest and cradled her to me. With the sunlight pouring into the bedroom and the scent of her hair overtaking my satisfied senses, I sighed.