Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 63970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“No,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t want to do that. I’ve missed you.”
Of course she also didn’t want to talk about this, either. “I’ve been gone a long time. Or I guess you’ve been gone. I didn’t actually go anywhere.”
“I shouldn’t have left.”
“I think it was for the best.” At the time she’d been devastated. It felt like the end of the world. Now she knew better. Now she knew what it felt like when the world ended.
“It wasn’t best for me.” He looked out over the field. “They look happy. Everyone here looks happy.”
The longing in his voice pulled at her heart. She knew that same longing. “I’m sure you know lots of happy people.”
“Fewer than you would think. I know the image is of glitz and glamour and everyone thinks if they just had money and fame everything else would fall in line. It doesn’t work that way. Money isn’t love. Money isn’t family. Fame isn’t happiness. You go into the whole fame thing thinking this is the way I get love. When all these people love me, then I’ll be worthy.”
“Jared,” she began.
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I know what I was doing back then. I was looking for acceptance. I was looking for affection. The trouble was not a one of those people knew me. They loved an actor who smiled and showed off his abs. They didn’t know I missed my brother. They didn’t know what haunts me at night or what I want for the future. I was a pretty face, a nice body, an aspirational ideal. I was a fantasy, and I’m no fantasy man, as you found out.”
She sighed and wished she could reach out to him, but that was a bad idea. “You were always a real man to me, Jared.”
He chuckled, but it wasn’t a humorous sound. “I doubt that.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He stared at her for a moment as though trying to decide if he wanted to reply. “Sarah, you watched me work out like it was meant to entertain you. All we talked about when we met was Hollywood crap and who I knew and what kind of parties I went to. It was a fantasy I wanted to take further because you blew me away the moment I laid eyes on you. One of the reasons I walked away was because I knew how hard it would be on you if I let the fantasy become real.”
Had she made him feel like he was a piece of really gorgeous meat? In the beginning she’d seen him as something of a conquest. She couldn’t help it. He was one of those men who wasn’t quite real. He was far too perfect. “At first I thought I could steal a couple of days with you and then I would be able to tell my friends, yep, I bagged him.”
“You wouldn’t be the only one,” he pointed out.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel that way. I wouldn’t want to feel like no one knew the real me.” She hadn’t even thought of it. She’d seen him as a gorgeous piece of man meat, a prize to be won. Something that had slipped from her fingers. “If it helps, I don’t think of you that way now.”
“I don’t think you think of me at all.” He stared out over the field. “Could you tell me what I said? What I did to make you stop talking to me? I thought we were becoming friends.”
The whole world seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them. “Is that what you wanted? To be my friend?”
“No. That’s never what I’ve wanted from you. I wanted more. I want more.”
“I can’t give it to you.” It was the “more” part that she couldn’t do. The forever, happily ever after part.
“Is it because I’m not working much anymore?”
The words were a kick to her gut. “No. Not at all. I think we were getting to be friends.”
“Don’t you want to know?” He didn’t make a single move to close in on her, but those eyes of his pinned her. “I’ve spent every day since I met you wanting to know.”
He didn’t have to say the words. She knew exactly what he meant. Didn’t she want to know what it would feel like to have his arms around her? To lie beneath him while he thrust inside her? Didn’t she want to know what it felt like to make love to Jared Johns? The trouble was she didn’t care what it felt like to make love to the movie star anymore. She could have handled that. It was the man who moved her, the man who made her want things she couldn’t have.
She should tell him she wasn’t curious, that she had no interest in him sexually. “Of course I do.”