Famous in Love (19 page)

The next few
days are press boot camp. My agent has hired me a media coach, Tawny Banks, who sweeps into my hotel suite like a hurricane. For four days all we do is go over how to speak into a microphone, how to answer this question, that question, what to do with my hair, how to talk about Wyatt, Rainer, Jordan. She doesn’t even ask me what is going on with Rainer. She simply reiterates the sound bite I’ve already been given: “He’s a great guy. Love working with him.
Blah blah blah
.”

Never open your mouth really wide, never yawn, never roll your eyes. If you don’t understand a question, ask for it to be repeated. Never put down a coworker. Never speak negatively about anyone. Never congratulate yourself.

My head is spinning by the time the night of the premiere arrives.

I haven’t been able to see Rainer or Jordan. Rainer has been holed up at his dad’s. Apparently Greg wants to reserve all the buzz surrounding our reunion for the night of the opening and didn’t want to risk anyone seeing Rainer and me together. We’ve spoken on the phone a few times but not about anything important. He’s said he’s excited, but that’s all. We both know the decision that awaits us when we see each other. We don’t have to bring it up.

Jordan is home in L.A., too, but I haven’t spoken to him. Just knowing he’s close makes me feel crazy. I want to call him, but I’m constantly surrounded by people. I couldn’t get away even if I tried.

At six
AM
on the day of the premiere, there is a knock at my door. I open it, bleary-eyed, expecting to see Tawny’s wiry, tense frame, but instead I’m met with round, familiar curves. Lillianna has arrived to do my hair and makeup. I’m so relieved to see her, I practically weep into her chest.

“Hey, hon,” she says. “Remember me?”

She sits me in the chair, and when Tawny shows up, clipboard in hand, Lillianna somehow manages to shush her out of the room.

“It’s just you and me this morning,” she says. “So now tell me—what is up with those boys?”

By three o’clock, we’re ready to head to TCL Chinese Theatre. I’ve already done one round of solo interviews, and they went pretty well. I managed not to spill my guts to anyone. So far, so good.

I’m wearing a black racer-back dress and tan heels with tiny orange buckles. My hair is blown out straight, and my makeup is all brown tones—neutral, but grown-up. I feel sleek and sophisticated. At least on the outside.

Tawny leads me out into the hall, down the corridor, and into an elevator. We take it to the first floor, and I follow her to the conference room.

My heart is beating a steady rhythm with my stilettos on the marble:
thump-thump, thump-thump.

Acting is one thing, but having to answer all these questions in front of hundreds of people is petrifying. I think my face has turned green. I haven’t been able to consume anything but an apple all day, and my stomach is simultaneously in knots and growling. Not a great combination, but at least now I know how Hollywood stars stay so damn thin. It’s not diets. It’s fear.

Rainer is standing by the double doors to a suite. He’s wearing black pants and a crisp button-down, and his hair is shorter than the last time I saw him, trimmed expertly on the sides. He smiles when he sees me, his dimple winking.

“Hey, beautiful,” he says. My pulse hammers. I can’t tell if it’s excitement at seeing him or terror at what I have to do, and for a moment I wonder if I’m making the right decision. I want to fall into Rainer’s wide smile and welcoming arms.

I go over to him and give him a hug. He smells exactly like I remember, and I close my eyes against him. Warm. Safe. I take a deep breath. I will myself to focus on what I have to do.

Tawny clucks next to me.

“Rainer,” he says, keeping one hand on my waist and extending the other to Tawny. “Do you think you could grab me a soda?”

Her forehead and mouth pinch up at exactly the same time, but she takes off down the hallway, leaving us more or less alone. He smiles down at me. “Alone at last,” he says, but it’s not exactly flirtatious. I think he might be as nervous as I am.

“Hey,” I say. I disentangle us so we’re facing each other.

“How are you?” he asks.

“Good,” I say. “I think. How are you?”

Rainer smiles. “About the same. How was home?”

I nod. “Home was really nice, actually. My sister is getting married.”

His face breaks into a wide, open grin. His dimples dance. “Yeah?” he says. “That’s awesome.”

“It is.”

He looks at me for a beat. Neither one of us blinks, and all of a sudden the question is there, right between us. “I missed you,” he says.

“I know,” I say. I suck my bottom lip in. “I missed you, too.” It’s true, I did. I missed him so much. The way he makes me feel like this is all going to be okay. That as long as he’s here I can do this. I can get through all of it.

He puts a finger under my chin and tilts my face up to his. His eyes search mine. They’re bright, so hopeful they make my heart hurt. “Is this what you want?” he asks.

But I don’t have time to answer because just as I’m about to, voices erupt through the door next to us. So loud it makes us both jump back.

“Don’t you dare bring her into this,” a voice bellows. It’s Jordan.

“Keep it down. This is business.”

“Bullshit,” Jordan says.

Rainer and I look at each other. I can tell from the way his eyes dart to the door and then get wide that I’m right. The other person in that room is his father, Greg Devon.

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“She concerns me,” Jordan says.

“Oh, I know that.”

Who are they talking about? Britney? But then I hear it. We both do.

Greg: “Who Rainer dates is his business. I’d stay out of it this time.”

I can see Rainer’s fists clench up. He makes a move for the door, and I put my hand on his arm.

“Like you did? Like you
are
? Don’t tell me you wouldn’t be thrilled to have them holding hands on the cover of every magazine. You disgust me.”

I hear Greg laugh. It makes the vertebrae of my spine feel like ice cubes. “Oh, we’re back here, aren’t we? You think I always have ulterior motives.”

Jordan: “I know you do.”

“And you don’t? You took the part, Jordan. No one forced you to. You knew everything that happened with Britney, you hated me for it, but you took a job from me, anyway.” There is silence. Then, “We all play the same game, Wilder.”

There is some shuffling, an opening and closing of a drawer. I watch Rainer’s face, a mixture of anger and confusion.

“So is that it? You just handed me this role to keep me quiet?”

“You’re a good actor,” Greg says. “You’d be wise to stop asking so many questions.”

I can feel Rainer’s body go limp, and in the next moment, the door opens. Greg comes strolling out, looking calm and collected. Until he sees Rainer. Instantly his
face drops, like a diver over a cliff. “What are you doing here?” he demands. “You guys are supposed to be running questions.”

Rainer inhales. “What did you mean about Britney,” he says. It’s not a question, though. Not even close.

Greg laughs. “What are you talking about?”

“She was telling the truth, wasn’t she?” Rainer’s voice is loud, angry. “She was right about you.” Jordan comes into the doorway. I try to keep my eyes trained on Rainer. I can’t look at Jordan, not now. I’m too afraid of what I’ll do.

Greg’s cheek quivers, and I see his eye twitch slightly. “Let’s talk about this in private,” he says.

I notice, out of the corner of my eye, a stray reporter. Rainer notices, too, but he doesn’t flinch. He pushes on.

“No, Dad. I want to talk about it now. You told me she was crazy.” His voice is coarse, dry. “I believed you. I believed everything you said to me, and it was all a lie.”

I can feel Jordan’s gaze on me, then on Rainer. Rainer looks at Jordan. “Say it,” Rainer says to him. His eyes are wild. They look almost feral. “Say that my dad tried to sleep with Britney, my eighteen-year-old girlfriend.”

Jordan nods slowly. “It’s true,” he says.

The reporter starts scribbling wildly. Greg’s eyes are so on fire, I think they might combust.

I’m sure Rainer is going to lose it. That he’s going to
start screaming at his father. But instead I feel him take my hand. “We have to go,” he tells me. He starts pulling me forward, away, toward the conference room. I look back at Jordan.

Our eyes lock, for just a moment, but it’s enough. Enough for me to see that whatever is going on inside me is going on inside him, too. That we’re both there, right where the other one is. I think about Wyatt’s warning over those pictures with Rainer. Jordan’s words: “Have them holding hands on the cover of every magazine.” Then Sandy appears, and we’re all being shuffled in the same direction, toward the press junket, toward all the waiting journalists ready to hear our answers. Rainer is still holding on tightly to my hand when the doors open, and Tawny comes by and yanks us apart right before we enter the room. “Don’t do that unless you mean it,” she cautions.

We’re greeted by an ocean of faces, stretching all the way back to the doors leading to the lobby, like the horizon.

We take our seats. Rainer on one side of me, and Jordan on the other. Too close—my hands are shaking.

The questions start. About the movie and working with Wyatt.

Jordan answers that Wyatt’s the best in the business, and we’re all proud of this movie because he was at the helm.

Then, finally, someone asks it. The question we’ve all
been waiting for. It’s for me, and I’m glad. I want to get it over with.

“There have been a lot of rumors about a possible romance between you and Rainer. Some are even saying he’s been after you since you got to Hawaii.” Laughter throughout the room. My insides feel numb. “Can you confirm whether you’re together?”

I take a deep breath, ready to answer, to finally say what is in my heart, but my gaze slips and lands on Rainer. His eyes are wide, hopeful. He’s looking at me the way Annabelle does when she wakes up. Like his whole survival, his whole existence, is dependent on what I do next.

And then I think about it again. Jordan’s words the day he saved my life on the beach: “Some things are sacred.” The protection of love is sacred, but something else is sacred, too.

Our word. Rainer told me that day on the cliffs in Paia that whatever was waiting, whatever was going to come our way, he’d stand by me. He meant it. It didn’t have anything to do with Greg Devon. It was just between us, me and him. And now, it’s my turn.

I know what I have to do. Rainer needs me now, and I want to be there for him. To be
with
him. His world has just been shattered. His dad isn’t who he thought he was. This journalist will write a story; the whole truth will come out. His family’s reputation will be ruined. I know
what that feels like. I remember those years with my sister, how people whispered about us. How they would point at the grocery store, the post office. I don’t know what I would have done without Jake, how I would have coped if he hadn’t put both his hands on my cheeks that night and kissed me. If he hadn’t said he’d be there.

But knowing it’s right doesn’t make it easier. It’s a choice. And the second you make one, you let go of the other.

I touch my hand to the small metal charm around my neck. I take a deep breath. It’s easier than I think, to get out those three words. “Yes, it’s true.”

Then they start—a blinding, brilliant flash—so bright that for a second I think maybe the stars have fallen out of the sky straight through the ceiling. They keep going as Rainer pulls me close to him and then kisses me, right there in front of hundreds of journalists, cameras, television screens—uniting us for good. But I don’t feel anything. Not his lips on mine. Not his hands at my waist. Nothing. When he pulls back, he looks at me. “Thank you,” he mouths. Someone asks another question, and Rainer answers—explaining how we fell for each other on the set. I sit back in my chair, a smile plastered to my face like Tawny taught me.

I can feel him next to me. Jordan. But when I look at him, he doesn’t look sad or angry. His eyes are lit up, like the flashbulbs that are pointed toward us. And all of a sudden, I understand why. I’ve been wrong. About
everything. Because the thing I didn’t understand about love—the biggest thing, the thing that makes it worthy of books and movies—is that epic, epic love is not about having someone. It’s about being willing to give them up. It’s sacrifice. It’s my mom’s theater tickets stuffed down at the bottom of her jewelry box. It’s Noah and August. It’s my sister and Annabelle. It’s Jordan and his mom, the truth he reserves to protect her. And see, that’s the thing I didn’t understand. The thing no one tells you. That just because you find love doesn’t mean it’s yours to keep. Love never belongs to you. It belongs to the universe. To the same wind that blows the surfers across the waves and the current that carries you back to shore. You can’t hold on to it because it’s bigger than anything you could possibly grasp with your own bare hands. It’s bigger than me or Rainer or Jordan. It’s bigger than everything.

And then the announcement comes: The studio wants to green-light the other two movies. They got results back from test screenings and every audience loved
Locked
. They’re thrilled with the film; they want to make two more with the same cast.

Rainer says he’s sure we all have to talk to our agents, but that we all work well together and that he knows he speaks for all of us when he says we’d love to play out our roles. “They’re a part of us now,” he says.

And that feud between him and Jordan Wilder?

“I was wrong,” Rainer says, staring straight ahead. “Jordan has been nothing but a good friend and a stand-up guy. I’d be honored to continue working with him.”

Then we’re separately ushered into waiting town cars. Tawny is sitting beside me, prattling on about what good press this relationship with Rainer is, how smart I was to save the announcement for the first official press junket. Why didn’t I tell her! I think about how many more of these we have. How many more times he’s going to kiss me onstage, with Jordan watching. How many more questions people are going to ask us about how we fell in love. It feels endless, almost too much to bear.