Now a Major Motion Picture (11 page)

“What the hell happened to you last night, man?”

Noah shook his head. He spied his keys on a table by the front door in a spot he’d never left them. He grabbed them and ran out the door without a word.

When he pulled up at Amelia’s place five minutes later, he dashed up the stairs to her second-story unit, his head still pounding. His vision swam, and he paused outside her door, taking deep breaths to try to pull himself together. Why hadn’t he taken some Tylenol or something? A hangover sure wasn’t going to help his case. He had no idea what to say to her, but he knew
“I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing”
wouldn’t go over well. Still, honesty was all he had at this point. He took another deep breath and knocked.

The door opened, and Reese held it open for him before passing through it herself. He shot her a thankful glance, and her eyes confirmed what he already knew: he looked like hell. She studied him for a few seconds and then pursed her lips, dropping her eyes from his. She left in silence, closing the door behind her with a soft click.

He found Amelia on the floor beside her bed, her back resting against the bed frame and her arms wrapped around her knees. She didn’t look up when he entered the room.

He dropped onto the carpet beside her.

“Amelia.”

His eyes searched for hers. She twisted her head, refused to meet his gaze.

“Lia, I love you.” He cringed as she winced.

“I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I…I don’t know how it happened.”

In a movement that seemed like slow motion, she swung her head toward him.

“You don’t know how it happened?” Her voice was bitter, sarcastic. “Do you want me to explain it to you, since I saw it myself?”

She shook her head, and the pain in his gut was as real as if she’d kicked him. The immensity of what he’d done, what she’d seen, crashed onto him with a force he hadn’t felt yet, and suddenly his cheeks were wet.

She was crying, too.

“How could you?” she whispered. “How could you do this to me?”

He knew now why people always described shame as hot. His insides felt like they were boiling. Sweat pooled on his brow and dampened the back of his shirt.

“I don’t know. Believe me, I don’t know. I didn’t want to hurt you. I love you. I didn’t want this to happen. I don’t even know how I got there with her. I…I’d been drinking. With Sean. Amelia, you know I’d never do something like this to you. I really don’t know what happened—”

He’d never felt more pathetic.

“Would you please stop saying that? God, Noah. Really? ‘I was drunk?’ That’s really all you’ve got?” She paused long enough for his panic to set in, really grind itself down deep.

She wasn’t going to forgive him. He could see it in her eyes.

“It did happen, Noah. It did.”

As she stared at him, her face changed, her eyes growing wide.

“Did you even use protection?”

His eyes widened, too, and he felt a sudden, violent urge to throw up. He hadn’t thought about any of this—all he’d been thinking about was her.

“My God, Noah.” Her voice dripped with disgust. “You could have gotten her pregnant, for all you know. You could have some disease.”

His stomach dropped like he’d just plunged down a roller coaster. She was right! Of course she was right.
Oh, please, God, no.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
Why
didn’t
I think?

“I’m so sorry, Lia.” His voice trembled with panic and desperation. He wanted to rip his own heart out, hand it to her. Anything to fix that look of despair, of humiliation, in her eyes. “I could literally kill myself for doing this to you.”

Her voice sounded strangled. “You might as well, Noah.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “You’re dead to me now.”

Icy tendrils of dread clawed at his spine. He’d never heard her say anything so cold, not to him, not to anybody. Words flooded from his mouth—he was afraid to stop talking. He pleaded with her, told her again and again that he loved her, that he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t know how or why it had happened, but that he’d do anything to go back in time and erase it. He described everything he remembered about the night before. He told her how he’d asked off work, how he’d planned to go home early to surprise her. He talked more to be near her than to convince her at this point—he could tell she wasn’t even listening anymore. He was terrified to leave, terrified she’d never let him back in this space they shared.

He tried to meet her eyes, but she wouldn’t look at him. He felt her slipping further and further away, and he thought his heart would literally break—his chest felt like a lead weight compressed it. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He grabbed her shoulders and forced her to meet his gaze.

“You’re my whole world, Lia,” he whispered, his voice raw.

She winced, her lips trembling and her beautiful hazel eyes shrouded with grief. She shook him off, closing her eyes and tilting her head away from his.

“Just go,” she said.

He knew he’d lost her.

* * *

Wrenching himself back to the present, he couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down his cheeks again. Misery and self-derision melded his thoughts into an incoherent blur. He felt ridiculous—like half a man—for crying in the darkness over a relationship that had ended nearly eight years ago.

He couldn’t believe his night with Erin had brought this out in him.

The overwhelming sense of loss he’d experienced in the months after their breakup crashed down on him, and he knew now why he’d shied away from women, from dating, from anything that might come close to love. The pain he was experiencing tonight was the result of getting too close to someone. He’d kept all women at a distance out of self-preservation.

He saw now how unrealistic that was.

Amelia was gone. She’d been gone a long time.

It was time to move on.

And he was terrified. After all these years, he didn’t know how to be the man again that he’d been with Amelia. The mistake he’d made with Ashley had stolen more than his fiancée, his future. It had stolen his belief in his ability to love.

Through the years, he’d tried not to dwell on the void Amelia’s loss had created in his life. When he could function again, he worked to fill the empty spaces her absence had left in his time, his thoughts, his plans for his future. He finished his degree, built his portfolio, advanced his career. When thoughts of his loss threatened to overwhelm him, he worked that much harder.

The unexplained misery that had smothered him since he’d left Erin at her door tonight began to take a new shape. He’d never realized that instead of pushing toward his goals, he’d been running away from them. He felt a new rush of sadness at the thought of what he’d been missing all these years by retreating within himself.

Suddenly he wanted everything he’d thought he’d have with Amelia: the love, the marriage, the house, the kids. He wanted what his parents had, what he’d grown up surrounded by.

He thought about Erin.

He didn’t know if she was who he was looking for, but she’d unearthed something within him that had long been buried.

He closed his eyes. Behind his lids, Erin’s wide, green eyes replaced the beloved hazel pair that had tortured him enough for one night. As the first dim rays of sunlight sneaked around the edges of his bedroom windows, he finally fell into an exhausted slumber.

Start the Insanity

Amelia, June

The timidity that plagued her as a youth swelled up inside Amelia, silent but fierce. She stood stock still, her stomach churning with a mix of nervousness and disbelief as she stared at the muted TV screen in her hotel suite.

It was the third time she’d seen the news flit by in the past hour. Even though it only added to her anxiety, she couldn’t bring herself to change the channel. The camera panned once more across the mob scene outside the Manhattan bookstore, and she swiped at the prickly layer of perspiration on the back of her neck.

Lines of people—no, swarms of people—were waiting for her book. She found it hard to believe, but the proof was right there in front of her. In about an hour, she would be in the middle of that crowd.

Gnawing at the tip of one previously flawless fingernail, she glanced down at the flyer she’d tossed onto the coffee table. It was a promotion piece about the signing that included her picture beside an excerpt from the book. Her eyes skimmed to these words:

Nick grabbed Liana by the shoulder, almost roughly, but she shook him off. “No!” she spit out. “Leave me alone, Nick. You’re going to have to do this without me now.”

“Won’t you at least hear me out?”

She spun to face him, her eyes narrowed into thin slits. Her “somebody’s about to die” look, Nick liked to joke. In happier times it was actually funny. “There is nothing to hear. Nothing you could say will fix this. Nothing.” She turned her back on him again. “You’re dead to me now. Just get out.” When he didn’t leave she said it louder, pointed to the door. “Get out. I mean it. Leave me the hell alone…”

A sharp knock at the door startled her, causing the flyer to slip from her fingers. She eyed her wrecked manicure in dismay as she crossed the suite. Her taupe leather heels echoed loudly in the marble entry as she opened the door for Nina Esposito, her publicist.

Nina’s incessant, sparkling chatter trailed her into the room. She glanced at Amelia, gave her a quick once over, winked.

“Sure, Thomas. That’ll be fine. No worries…she’ll be there.” Her eyes widened. “You’re over-thinking this. It’s fine though. That’s what you’re paid to do.”

She laughed, a breezy, airy sound. “Uh-huh. I just got here, she’s ready, we’re leaving now. Ha-ha. Sure. Thanks again.”

Nina lowered the phone, turned her attention on Amelia. “The woman of the hour,” she said, eyebrows raised. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m all right.”

The flutters in her stomach begged to differ. Nina studied her with narrowed eyes and then gave her a sympathetic smile as she dialed another number.

“You’ll do fine—don’t worry! More than fine. You’ll be
great
.”

Nina’s attention was diverted again as whoever was on the receiving end of the call picked up. She turned on her heel, paced over to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Midtown Manhattan, and moved seamlessly back into breathless chatter.

Amelia’s eyes followed Nina’s constant motion as she put all her energy into not freaking out.
Calm down. Focus. You’ve done this…it’s not so different.

She’d had plenty of practice with situations like these.

Well, situations sort of like these.

Well, hell, not really a lot like these. Usually she was in Nina’s role—directing the limelight, not standing in it.

On the cusp of the launch of her third novel—set to be released around the country at midnight tonight—she was staggered by the amount of buzz the book was generating. A medley of phrases from advance reviews flitted through her thoughts.
“Stunning follow-up.” “Extraordinary storyteller.” “Breathtaking.” “Best one yet.”

She drew in a sharp breath. Were they really talking about her?

Yes, and so were the others.
The ones with the less flattering comments, the ones she had to force herself not to think about.
You’d better get used to this, Mel.
She had to develop a thicker skin—or at least try to avoid reading what people were writing about her. Ever since news of the movie, now steamrolling toward production, had come out, everything had amplified: fan mail, hate mail, media coverage, pressure.

Pressure.

Some days she thought her head might explode from all the pressure.

And all of this because she’d sat down and pushed out the words that had been jumbled up inside her head. In her wildest dreams, she hadn’t imagined her writing would lead to any of this—she’d simply seen it as a more appealing option than therapy. Sure, as she’d made progress on the book she’d wondered if her writing might be good enough to be published. But this? The press coverage, the reviews, the fans, the
movie
? It was like some messed up mind trip. A crazy dream.

She pinched herself.

Hard.

“Ow.” She rubbed at the spot that had already blushed from white to pink on her bicep.

“I saw that.”

She glanced up to find Nina walking toward her, the hand clutching her phone spending a rare moment at her side.

“I know. It’s really something, huh?”

Amelia huffed. “Yeah. Something. That’s one way to put it.” She fidgeted under Nina’s appraising stare, turning to study the wall of windows. “I’m scared as hell, you know.”

“I know.”

She swung back to face Nina, not sure whether to feel better or worse. A scene from her childhood popped into her head. She’d been seven or eight, standing stock still beside Brooke as two stray dogs charged up to her on the sidewalk in front of their house. She was frozen, too scared to move or even scream.

“Don’t act scared. Never let them know you’re scared,” Brooke had said.

Never let them know you’re scared.

Amelia looked up at her publicist. “Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.” Her voice shook in a way she hated, and she willed herself to pull it together. “I just feel like, I don’t know, like so much is riding on tonight. There are so many people—”

She gestured dumbly to the TV screen, where commentators’ mouths were now moving in a heated debate. A banner across the bottom of the screen read, “Israeli/Palestinian peace process: Is a two-state solution possible?”

Nina’s eyes flicked toward the TV in confusion and then back to Amelia.

“You can handle this, Mel. I know you. Once you get in there, you’ll be absolutely fine.”

“If you say so.”

Her chest squeezed even tighter as she thought about the night in front of her. Her first stop was the restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel, where she was set to be interviewed by a writer from a national women’s magazine. After the interview, she’d be rushed to a press event at the bookstore on Broadway that CNN kept flashing past. Finally, she’d arrive at the launch party for the book, a massive event that was doubling as a benefit for a literacy nonprofit.