The phone rang again.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“Leave it.”
I left it. The ringing stopped. Farley’s mouth moved to my neck, and I forgot my own name, let alone the phone—
It rang a third time.
Farley dropped his head back against the couch cushion with a groan of pure frustration. “Someone really wants to talk to you.”
“Someone can go to hell.”
“Check it. Please. Before I throw it in the fireplace.”
I reached for my phone on the coffee table, fully intending to silence it forever—and then I saw the name on the screen.
SABRINA
The heat drained out of me so fast it was almost physical.
“Samuel?” Farley’s voice came from somewhere far away. “Who is it?”
“My agent.”
The phone stopped ringing. The silence felt louder than the ringtone had.
I stared at the screen—at the notification showing three missed calls and a voicemail—and felt the bubble we’d been living in about to burst. Sabrina didn’t call three times unless it was urgent. Sabrina barely called at all; she preferred passive-aggressive texts and calendar invites to “discuss your future.”
Something had happened. Something that couldn’t wait.
Farley sat up beneath me, and I shifted off him automatically, the mood thoroughly broken. We sat side by side on the couch, both of us breathing harder than we should be, neither of us looking at the other.
“You should call her back,” Farley said quietly.
“I really don’t want to.”
“I know.”
I looked at him—at his mussed hair and swollen lips and the mark I’d apparently left on his neck—and felt something twist in my chest. Five minutes ago, we’d been heading somewhere. Somewhere important. And now...
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.” He ran a hand through his hair, trying to restore some order. “Real life doesn’t pause just because we want it to.”
Real life. LA. The contract. The network. Everything I’d been successfully ignoring for the past week.
The phone buzzed with a text. I didn’t look at it.
“I’ll listen to the voicemail later,” I said. “Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.”
Farley nodded, but something in his expression had shifted. Closed off slightly. The walls I’d spent days dismantling were rebuilding themselves brick by brick, and I could see it happening in real time.
“Hey.” I reached over and took his hand. “Whatever that call is about—it doesn’t change anything.”
He looked at our joined hands. “You don’t know that.”
“I know I’m here. Right now. With you.”
