He should have found a way to tell Mona how much Birdie meant to him. He should have found a way to just tell Birdie once and for all how much she meant to him. He could have said that she turned him to stardust, that he wanted to spend every second of every day with her, that he couldn’t believe he was such a complete fucking moron seven years ago, walking away or letting her push him out. Maybe they’d both put up boundaries the next morning because that was muscle memory for them. But maybemuscle memory causes the rest of your heart to atrophy. Elliot didn’t want to atrophy anymore.
“You realize,” Mona said from one of the queen beds when Elliot sighed so loudly that he couldn’t be ignored, “that this doesn’t all add up, right?”
Elliot turned to stare at her. It was as if she were reading his mind. Twins. Still.
“What do you mean by that?” He had a pit in his stomach that was lurching toward illness.
“Kai didn’t answer me back there when I asked him. About mailing the letter,” Mona explained. “Like did he really know that Birdie lived in Barton? Because I was under the impression that basically no one had any idea, other than the people who knew her from back then, and I guess, like, Simon, who knew because you were friends with him first.” She paused. “Although to be fair, I didn’t even know they were screwing. Maybe I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Oh.” Elliot deflated even further. Mona’s theory was not nearly as promising as he’d hoped. “Well, he obviously knew she was from Barton. He just didn’t answer you because he was distracted.” How could he not be distracted by Birdie?
Mona raised her eyebrows and pushed off the bed. “Okay, well, you can’t say that I didn’t try to help you. But I guess you really can only lead a horse to water.” She retreated to the bathroom. From behind the door, she called, “But I’m not hiring you at Monads.”
Elliot reached for his phone. He could at least try to fight for Birdie, even if he suspected that he didn’t stand a chance against a man whose face was on half the billboards on Sunset Boulevard. He typed in her number and stiffened while it rang. Four rings later, and he was rolled to voicemail. He jabbed his screenand hung up. He was willing to do a lot of things for Birdie Maxwell, but leaving her a desperate message while she was getting reacquainted with Kai felt like a low even he couldn’t stomach.
Elliot cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck around three times.Fine.He’d write the story that would save his job. It might not be particularly helpful to Birdie—writing about a years-long off-and-on romance when Kai may or may not have been engaged, piled on top of her fallout with his brother. The public would probably say she was aggrieved, desperate, that maybe her fight with Sebastian was just a way to get Kai’s attention all over again. Or maybe the opposite would be true: maybe the article would be tremendously helpful, and she and Kai would be the newest media darlings, and Birdie would be forgiven for all things.
Either way, if he filed the story, he’d lose the girl.
But work was work was work. Work was the one thing he could rely on. So he did.
Thirty minutes later, he’d written the draft. It wasn’t perfect, but it was down on the page at least, and Francesca would be thrilled. He squeezed his eyes shut.Don’t send it don’t send it don’t send it.
But when given the choice, personal or professional, Elliot O’Brien was always a pro.
46
BIRDIE
Kai kissed Birdieas soon as the latch on her door clicked shut. And really kissed her. A muscle-melting, brain-dizzying type of kiss that Birdie had always been a sucker for. This time, she did indeed feel her blood pulse, and small zings of electricity coursed through her from limb to limb, but mostly she thought of Elliot. How when they’d kissed in the camper just a few days back, it had been more than palpable sparks and jolts of lust. It had been an animalistic, set-your-body-on-fire, impossible-to-stop type of connection. Shehadstopped it, though barely. And now she could hardly remember why. Thewhy, she reminded herself, was that he’d already walked out on her once, but goddammit, she of all people read enough scripts to know that sometimes you needed two bites of the apple, two shots at the bullseye, two swings of the bat, before you hit it out of the park. If she really wanted to start fresh, not just with Elliot, but withherself, maybe she needed to forgive him for the ways he had hurt her and forgive herself for the ways she had inflicted her own damage.
By the time she wrapped her brain around all this, Kai had whisked off her shirt, like they were falling back into bed so easily all these years later.
“Wait,” she said, putting her hands on Kai’s chest and pushing him back a few inches.
“Baby,” he murmured, “I don’t know if I can.” He pressed his hips against hers, and part of her wanted to cave, to let him do whatever he wanted because that’s how it had always been between them. She was easy for him, in just about every way.
But then something dawned on her: the question Mona had asked downstairs on the casino floor.
“Kai,” she said, her arms folding across her breasts as if he didn’t have a right to them anymore. “How could you have known where I lived? How did you know to find me in Barton, not Medford? California, not Oregon?”
Birdie specifically remembered that she’d never corrected the record about her childhood hometown with him. Kai spent his early years globe-trotting with his famous dad and model mother, and she was worried he’d judge her, for barely graduating high school, for growing up in a split-level midsized home that could probably use some renovations in a town that definitely needed a makeover. And then months, years, went by, and once she was in over her head with him, it felt too late to be honest, and she felt too foolish about what a stupid thing it was to lie about in the first place. She never wanted to give him even a sliver of a chance to find fault with her—which, she supposed now, she couldn’t blame Kai for. That was on her. She was so busy concocting a version of herself that he’d love that she forgot that one day he might find out the truth after all.
“I—” Kai started, then dropped his hands from her shoulders and to his sides. “Fine, very well.”
“Fine, very well, what?” Birdie asked. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. This all felt too familiar. The dread, the ominousness, the way she was waiting to be disappointed.
“The second one,” Kai said. “I was the one who sent you the second one.”
“You were the one who sent me theemail?” Birdie wasn’t sure if she felt rage or relief. “Not the letter?”
Kai nodded and glanced to the floor. When he met her eyes again, his were damp and set to spill. “I just... I just couldn’t bear the thought that you were out there without me, Birdie. I had Galen set up a dummy email. ButI’mthe one who wrote it. Not him. Me.”
Galen, Kai’s assistant. Kai required his assistant’s help to woo back the woman he allegedly loved.
“So you sent me the email because you didn’t want me to be with someone else? Or you sent me the email because you wanted me to be withyou?”
He offered her an apologetic grin. “Is there a difference? What does it matter? I’m here. You’re here. Let’s see where this goes. I’ve been missing you like crazy, baby.”
