Angelica had to swallow again, the emotions trying to escape and consume her, but she couldn’t let that happen.
“Angel, I love you.”
“I know you do.” Angelica’s lips pulled into a small smile. She reached up, brushing her thumb across Hope’s lips, savoring the warmth of her skin and the softness of her body. “I’m not worried about love.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
Hope might be on to something with that, but Angelica wasn’t going to say that right away. Love and relationships, committed ones, weren’t something Angelica was adept at navigating, though they’d managed fairly well in the last year. She shifted and moved in, pressing their lips together. Angelica closed her eyes, parting her mouth and deepening the embrace.
She stayed there, kissing and holding onto Hope for longer than she would have normally, but this touch centered her today. She pressed their foreheads together and closed her eyes, breathing in Hope’s breath.
“I miss you,” Angelica whispered. Nothing truer than that in this moment. “I miss just you and me.”
“In Colorado?” Hope asked, her lips brushing against Angelica’s with each word.
“Yeah, away from all of this, from the chaos, from the drama.” Angelica hummed and leaned in to kiss her again. “Telling Eva about us was so anticlimactic. I thought…” Angelica pulled away and lowered her gaze down to Hope’s fingers. “I worried she’d be upset.”
“She…” Hope stopped and shook her head. “I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it from her. It is an adjustment, but also nothing is changing or different right now because we’re acting the way we normally act on set, especially when it’s my week.”
“I know.” Angelica dashed her tongue across her lips, taking in the last little flavor from Hope that she could manage. “I know.”
Hope groaned. “If I had time to take you upstairs right now, I would.”
Laughing lightly, the bit of that joy she’d misplaced coming back into her heart, Angelica smiled at Hope. “I know that too.”
“Good.” Hope sighed. “But for now, we need to figure out how we’re going to tell the world that you’re my girlfriend.”
Angelica shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible some days.”
“But you like it.”
“Some days.” Angelica sighed again and picked up her iPad. “I still like the simple post idea and let them run away with it. I don’t want to play into any of the fools out there.”
“You do realize that it’s only going to pick up for a while, right?” Hope stood up and leaned over Angelica’s shoulder to look at her iPad, which had Instagram pulled up on it.
“I don’t think anything is going to just calm this down, but perhaps everyone is right. It’s time to face it head on…” Angelica trailed off. “What if—bear with me for a second—what if Ronan faces it head on?”
“Angel, you can’t flip-flop between personal and work like that. It does my head in.”
“No, but really, what if he actually just calmly and succinctly addressed the issue of his reputation and simply said that he’s trying to right his wrongs and make it up to the community.” Angelica twisted in the chair a little to look up at Hope. “It’d betransparent, it’d be doing exactly what we told him to do through all of this.”
“It would,” Hope agreed.
“I’m going to talk to him.” Angelica was already working through how to encourage that conversation and then navigate Ronan’s immediate dislike of the idea, because he wouldn’t like it at all.
“You do that. But before then…” Hope leaned over and tapped the iPad and opened up the camera. “Let’s take a picture for this social media post you want to make. Though it’d be a better announcement if you were going to put a ring on it.”
“What?” Angelica stiffened.
“Just a joke, Angel.”
Was it though? Most jokes had a hint of truth to them, if not a lot of truth. But they didn’t have time to discuss that—not this morning, anyway. Angelica pushed that curiosity and definite fear away and handed the iPad to Hope.
“You take the picture.”
“Oh, giving me control, are you?” Hope took the device and set it on the table. Then she held her hand out for Angelica so they could stand up and center themselves in the image. “You ready?”
“No, but I don’t have another choice.”
