He huffs out a breath. “Three guesses.”
“Jonas.”
He was afraid.
He was afraid to tell her that he was afraid.
Can it be anything else?
“I know,” he mutters.
“Youmarriedher, and you couldn’t tell her you were afraid?”
“I think she figured it out. Probably before I did, if I’m being honest. I’ve never…I’ve never been afraid ofanythingbefore. I didn’t even know that’s what it was.”
I shake my head and rub the remaining aloe off my hands and on my thighs. “We’re both relationship disasters, aren’t we?”
“You dodged a bullet.”
“About seven years too late. At least you got out fast.”
He winces.
“I’m sorry.”Dumb dumb dumb. Maybe I need to not—no.No. What’s the worst that happens if I say something to piss off Jonas Rutherford?
He never talks to me again?
That was likely the course of my life anyway.
“Actually, I’m not sorry,” I correct. “Let me go back toyou’re Jonas Fucking Rutherford. So you do a project and it bombs. Totally, completely, unequivocally. It. Bombs. People say you’re a hack. They call you a nepo baby who doesn’t deserve any of what you have. That you should go back to playing teenagers or stop acting entirely. You’re laughed off a stage presenting at an awards show. Former fans leave dead flowers at your doorstep to mourn the loss of their perception of you. For a whole entire year, you can’t go anywhere without someone clucking at you for nefarious reasons to mock you.So what?”
He makes a noise, but I hold up a hand.
I amnotdone. “You’re still young. You’re still rich. You’re still handsome as sin, with a good personality to boot unless you’ve been faking it here with me. You can still go back to Razzle Dazzle films andno one will care. Or—or justmaybe—you fail when you take a leap and then youtry again. And you do it better. And in five years, you’re accepting every major award there is to win for something you put your heart and soul into because you believed in yourself enough to go for what you want instead of hiding behind who you’ve always been.Maybe that happens.”
He visibly swallows again.
His gaze dips to my lips, then back up to my eyes. “Are you talking to me or you?”
“I’m not a freaking movie star. I’m an accountant. A very happy accountant.”
“But you put your heart and soul into a guy who didn’t deserve you for too long. Like maybe I’ve put my heart and soul into something I outgrew years ago.”
All of the breath in my body whooshes out of me. “I can’t get that time back. All I can do is move forward and be smarter and stronger and—and—”
“Braver,” he finishes for me. “We can both be braver.”
This is going sideways, and I don’t know if I like it. “We’re talking about you.”
“You’re right. I need to be braver if I want to prove I’m more than someone who was handed this life on a silver platter. And I needed to hear that. Thank you. But who doyouwant to be?”
Who doIwant to be? “I want to behappy,” I whisper.
“So be happy.”
Is he leaning into me?
Am I leaning into him?
