Lila rolled her eyes. She probably deserved that, but instead of falling on the easy excuse, she took Cobie’s hand and pulled her into a conference room, slamming the door behind them. “No cameras, no mic, just me and you, Cobie. I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner, and I understand if it’s too late, but I made a terrible mistake.”
“We both made mistakes,” Cobie said. “I don’t blame you.”
“I do,” Lila said. “I went to see Selena the morning after we made love. I don’t know why. I guess I felt like I had to make peace with her, but I was wrong. Or maybe I handled things the wrong way. I should have made peace with the fact that she wasn’t there for me and never would be, and I needed to move on. Instead, I just stood there feeling like a helpless teenager all over again as she said I couldn’t trust anyone. I should have woken up right there. I shouldn’t have believed her. I don’t know why I did, but I got scared.”
“Of course you did.” Cobie reached out to stroke her cheek.
“But I shouldn’t have, because she kept talking about herself when I could only think of you. She railed on about saviors and rescuers. You were offering partnership. She ranted about things that had no bearing on my life anymore and no relationship to you.”
“But she hurt you.” Something hot and hard flashed in Cobie’s dark eyes. “Someone you loved betrayed you again, and then all those pictures of me with Cordelia. Lila, I should’ve understood, especially after what you’d told me the night before. I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. I pushed you away. God, Cobie, I pushed you away so many times. My only experiences with relationships have been terrible, but you were different, and I refused to let myself believe that. You tried so hard to show me something better, and I scorned you.”
“And I let you,” Cobie admitted. “I should have fought, should have dug deeper, but I took the coward’s way out. I knew we were more than we let people see on the surface, but I was just as complacent in accepting the tidy little narrative you wove. I was just as bad as the press about underestimating you or discounting your motives.”
“I’m not even totally sure what my motives were, between Selena and my career and all the things you made me feel. I had controlled everything in my world for so long until you came along, then everything got jumbled. I panicked.”
Cobie nodded. “We could never just be us. I feel like I don’t even know who I am right now, or who I’m becoming. It’s not who I was last month, and I don’t even think it’s who I was six months ago. It’s going to take some time to figure it all out.”
“Time,” Lila repeated. “You deserve that, but does time have to mean time apart?”
Cobie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll try to give whatever you need, because I know I don’t deserve a do-over, and I don’t even want one.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I want a do-different. I want a fresh chance to do things right. I want to ask you out myself, no managers, no press. I want to kiss you with no one watching. I want to get to know who you are, not just what you can do for my career.”
“But something like that would affect your career,” Cobie said, suspicion in her voice. “You and I together long-term wouldn’t mesh with your image.”
“Then maybe I need a new image. The one I had doesn’t fit anymore. And honestly, with or without you, the new record is on hold.”
“Why? I thought you were done.”
“I couldn’t record the song.”
Cobie frowned. “Because it wasn’t good enough?”
“No.” Lila took her hand. “Because the words were too good, too true.”
“I thought you liked to sing the truth.”
“I thought so too, but no truth has ever hurt the way losing you did,” Lila said as she stared into those big dark eyes. “I couldn’t live with the prospect of singing those lyrics every night knowing I was destined to miss you for the rest of my life.”
“Lila,” Cobie whispered, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll give me another chance,” Lila pleaded, her heart throbbing against her rib cage. “Say we can start again from the beginning. I didn’t show you before, but I’m strong and passionate, and I can bring those things to a partnership the same way I do in other areas of my life if you’ll just let me have another shot.”
Cobie’s eyes watered, and she sighed heavily before saying, “No.”
“No?” She nearly choked on the word.
“We can’t undo what’s been done. We can’t just forget everything that’s already happened between us,” Cobie said softly. “I can’t, anyway.”
Lila nodded and fought hard to swallow the emotions threatening to explode out of her chest, but all she managed to say was, “If you feel that way . . .” before the weight became too much and she started to cry.
“Hey,” Cobie cupped Lila’s face gently in her hands. “I said we couldn’t go back, and I don’t want to. I know we both made our fair share of mistakes, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything, because they got us here.”
Another tear fell. “You do know that ‘here’ is crying in a conference room, right?”
Cobie laughed. “But you said you loved me, and I love you, and even though I don’t know where we are going to go from here, I think being in love is about as good a starting point as any.”
“You love me?”
“Madly,” Cobie said.
“Since when?”
“Probably since the first time you kissed me.”
“You kissed me the first time.”
“Nope,” Cobie said, a hint of blush coloring her cheeks. “You stood right there in front of those windows, looped your arm through mine, and kissed me on the cheek. I melted for you right there. I let you talk me into your wild scheme and dress me up and parade me around like a show poodle, and I pretended it was all about my career because that seemed easier to face than admitting I was just another one of the many fools who had fallen for the beautiful and talented Lila Wilder.”
Lila took Cobie’s hands in her own and kissed her cheek. “Okay then, if we are starting this new stage of our life with a rousing bout of honesty, then I have to tell you I started to fall in love with you the minute you tripped over my shoes and offered to buy me new ones.”
“No,” Cobie protested. “I annoyed you.”
Lila shook her head. “You were so damn beautiful and adorable and sincere and earnest, I couldn’t believe someone like you could possibly exist in this world. Part of me didn’t even really want someone like you to exist because of what it would mean for someone like me, who had compromised and neglected those parts of myself, but another part of me just wanted an excuse to be close to you. That’s why I didn’t bat an eye when Mimi suggested I come out as bisexual. All I could think was, ‘I am open to any options so long as they come in the form of her.’”
Cobie kissed her again, full and fast, then broke away laughing. “Can you imagine what we would have been able to do if we’d just admitted those things on day one?”
Lila shook her head. “So many more days by your side, so many nights in your arms. No, I can’t imagine, but I want to live it. You’re right, again. I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward, with you, starting right now.”
Epilogue
“Cobie!”
“Lila?”
“Over here.”
“Smile!”
Cobie heeded the last command, not because she felt any affinity for whatever member of the press had shouted the order, but because as she turned back to face the limo she’d just exited, she caught sight of one impossibly-high heel emerge, followed by a stunningly long leg.
Stifling the urge to hop back into the limo, she held out a hand and shivered as Lila’s red-nailed fingertips slipped seductively across her palm. With a gentle tug, she helped her girlfriend to her feet, then wrapped an arm possessively around her waist.
Lila rewarded her with a l
ittle kiss on the cheek before whispering, “Look at the cameras.”
“Why? They’re all pointed at you.”
“They’re all pointed at us,” Lila corrected as she lifted her chin and angled her face toward another barrage of flashbulbs.
Us. She did love that word. Using it for months on end had done nothing to dull the pleasure it sent through her core. Thankfully, the press hadn’t seemed to grow tired of the concept either. If anything, their genuine union seemed to generate more buzz than their fauxmance had. Or maybe the union had just generated so many opportunities artistically that they were finally getting press for all the right reasons.
That thought made it infinitely easier to keep from rolling her eyes as they stopped every three feet along the red carpet outside the Lincoln Theater.
By the time they made it to the lobby, spots of white light were burned into her retinas, but she’d grown so used to the experience, she simply closed her eyes for the five or six seconds it took for her vision to return to normal. When she opened them again, she was met with another one of her favorite sights.
Talia and Addie walked toward her, with Addie’s new girlfriend, Mazie, following behind in a star-struck stupor. The two of them had met on set, where Mazie had landed a summer internship as part of her art design program at NYU. “Cute as kittens” was how Talia described them together, and Cobie couldn’t disagree, even though the term always made Addie scowl.
“Well, don’t you look the part of dark and sultry superstar,” Talia said, scanning Cobie’s leather pants and tuxedo jacket.
“Lila dressed me.”
“Duh,” Addie said, as she ran her hand through her dark spiky hair, then turned to Mazie and said, “Lila will dress anyone who gets within a ten-foot radius.”
Lila’s blue eyes sparkled with mirth as she gave Mazie an exaggerated once over. “Six-foot, actually.”
Everyone laughed as Mazie deliberately stepped closer.
Despite the excited buzz of press and producers, Cobie’s heart warmed at the ease of the interaction. This moment, like the thousands of others that had taken place on sets and stages, spoke to none of their early encounters. The pace, and in some ways the pressures, had only grown as albums were launched and blockbusters filmed, but here, in their small circle, the reality always remained better than any performance. She gave the slender curve of Lila’s hip a subtle squeeze.
Lila responded to the pressure by turning to face Cobie. Her red lips curled up and her long dark lashes fluttered. Everyone else faded from the room, and the contented pride that had filled Cobie’s chest moments earlier was replaced by something more raw that registered lower in her body. The urge to kiss her was swift and strong, and she leaned into the impulse, but before she had the chance to muss up their make-up, someone thrust a microphone between them.
“There’s the woman of the hour!” a young reporter in a navy-blue velvet suit exclaimed.
Cobie blinked away the haze of lust and looked over her shoulder, then back at him before realizing he was talking about her. Remembering that she was at work tonight, she quickly rolled her shoulders and flashed her camera-ready smile.
“Or should I say, the power couple of the year, because you’ve really both become so much bigger than any one moment.” The reporter continued to ooze praise. “How does it feel to be just moments away from seeing yourself on the big screen as the character so many people now say you were born to play?”
“It feels pretty amazing to finally be in this moment when we can premiere Vigilant in the city that gave it life. This project was so much bigger than me though.”
“But you’re the one getting all the Oscar buzz,” he said, giving her a little conspiratorial nudge with his elbow.
Cobie’s natural urge to step back was counterbalanced by Lila’s hand across the small of her back. She wouldn’t shrink from the attention she’d earned from early screenings of Vigilant, but neither would she take the bait in that question. The awards would come later, or not at all. What mattered now was getting to share something she believed in with the people who mattered most. “I’m proud of the work that every member of our amazing team did to bring Talia Stamos’s phenomenal book to the big screen.”
“And rumor has it you personally oversaw the assembly of that team, going so far as to hand pick people even as far down the ladder as staff writers and costume designers.”
Cobie glanced past to where some of her co-stars had gathered in the double doors leading to the theater, all bright, talented actors and actresses no doubt on the brink of stardom. Then she looked toward Talia and Addie, who had both taken several steps back, clearly trying to avoid the wide view of the camera lens. “And every one of those people played their parts to perfection, which I don’t think of as being lower rungs on a ladder. They are artists every bit as much as I am, and they deserve to be celebrated just as much as I do.”
She noticed Talia’s shoulders tense at the mere possibility of being pulled onto center stage, and Cobie quickly turned back to face the camera. “I think when you watch the film tonight, you’ll see how our team’s shared vision for this project comes through in every detail.”
“I suspect you also shared a vision with someone important on the soundtrack too,” the interviewer said. The suggestiveness in his tone made Cobie return her focus to the woman making her heartbeat echo through her ears.
“Well . . .” she drew out the word playfully. “We may have had a few conversations on the subject, but Ms. Wilder doesn’t need much help from me in the vision department. She composed a stunning instrumental score for the film entirely on her own and played several of the piano pieces herself during the studio recordings.”
Lila gave an air of being bored with the compliment, but the hint of natural color peeking out from beneath her light blush gave her away. She was as proud of her work on Vigilant as Cobie was.
“Cobie is too generous,” Lila cooed. “This is her night, and I’m proud of what she’s brought together here.”
“What we’ve brought together here,” Cobie corrected. “Lila contributed so much to this artistic process. Aside from the score, she also had a hand in concepts for set design and costuming.”
“And the first single from the soundtrack, ‘Miss Me,’ has been on the top of the charts for a record-setting fifteen weeks.”
“But I have to give all the credit to Cobie on that one,” Lila cut back in, wrapping a hand tightly around her biceps and pulling her a little closer, the way she so often did when memories of that song’s inception flooded their memories.
“Right!” the reporter said excitedly. “Another joint project. Cobie wrote the lyrics to ‘Miss Me.’”
“It’s true. She has a way with words, but she did so much more than put them to paper for me.” Lila turned now, committing the cardinal sin of taking her eyes off the camera to point that breathtaking gaze directly at Cobie. “Her biggest contribution to ‘Miss Me’ wasn’t the lyrics. It was freeing me up to sing it by promising I’d never have to live its message.”
Cobie sighed and smiled, and the reporter went away, or maybe he didn’t and it simply didn’t matter anymore. This time, no amount of microphones or cameras or mussed up make-up could keep her from kissing the woman she loved.
Also by Rachel Spangler
Learning Curve
Trails Merge
The Long Way Home
LoveLife
Spanish Heart
Does She Love You
Timeless
Heart Of The Game
Perfect Pairing
Close to Home
Edge of Glory
About the Author
Rachel Spangler never set out to be an award-winning author. She was just so poor and easily bored during her college years that she had to come up with creative ways to entertain herself, and her first novel, Learning Curve, was born out of one such attempt. She was sincerely surprised when it was accepted for publication and even more shock
ed when it won the Golden Crown Literary Award for Debut Author. She also won a Goldie for subsequent novels, Trails Merge, and Perfect Pairings. Since writing is more fun than a real job, and so much cheaper than therapy, Rachel continued to type away, leading to the publication of The Long Way Home, LoveLife, Spanish Heart, Does She Love You, Timeless, Heart Of The Game, Perfect Pairing, Close to Home and Edge of Glory. She is a three time Lambda Literary Award Finalist and the Alice B. Reader Award winner for 2018. Her thirteenth novel, Love All will be released in Fall of 2018 by Bywater Books. She plans to continue writing as long as anyone anywhere will keep reading.
Rachel and her partner, Susan, are raising their son in western New York, where during the winter they make the most of the lake effect snow on local ski slopes. In the summer, they love to travel and watch their beloved St. Louis Cardinals. Regardless of the season, she always makes time for a good romance, whether she’s reading it, writing it, or living it.
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