Kissed by Reality (4 page)

T
he Mondrian was
one of the hottest watering holes for the trendy LA elite. I'd been here once or twice after my fame on Mr. Right last year, but never at night.

And never in a private setting like this.

Lanterns with chunky white flickering candles littered every surface, and the open spaces between the beams of wall gave us a spectacular view of the glittering city at night.

When they'd announced that the group date held a swim challenge, I'd practically known that Chuck set this up just for me to win. It wasn't a secret I was an avid swimmer, anyone who had watched Right Now Island knew that I swam almost three miles each morning.

I sat across from Finn at a cozy table filled with fruit, cheese and wine. Too bad we couldn't eat it. Oh, you didn't know? Contestants are never allowed to eat the food. Its all staged and eating looks too messy and unattractive on camera. They just put the delicious looking spreads in front of your face to taunt you more.

"So what have you been up to? Have you been practicing lately?"

I try to start the conversation off on a neutral subject, and one that I know Finn likes to talk about. It was one of the things that drew me to him on Right Now Island, the fact that he had a steady job. Even though I couldn't say the same. He was somewhat passionate about physical therapy, although I knew that it was the traumatized soldiers who drew him to the work more than anything else. He saw through them, as if each patient was exactly like he was, broken and angry at the world. I'd seen that side of him only twice, but it had been scary. I couldn't imagine what it was like for those men fresh off the battlefield.

Finn leaned casually back in his chair, his muscular, boot camp-worthy body eclipsing the small table we sat at. He looked gorgeous, with his hair slicked back in that classic swoop and his indigo eyes dazzling under the starlight. I might have been drooling.

"Just this mostly. I get back to see the guys at the clinic every now and then, and home to see my dad in Nebraska about once a month." He eyed me, folding his arms across his chest.

I heard the slight mechanical noise of his prosthesis as he crossed one leg over the other.

Finn had always been conscious of it, almost ashamed. I hated that. In every other aspect he was the confident, do-it-all, positivity guy. His leg had never bothered me, and I'd told him so a thousand times. One night I'd even caressed the shortened appendage as I went down on him, wrapping my lips around his shaft. Did he think about that sometimes?

It slays me that he is hyper-aware of it now, as if he had to hide it from these girls. Worse, I knew some of them would react like immature children at the first sight of it.

Our conversation was beginning to become stilted, boring. We weren't strangers, he couldn't ask me questions about what I saw for my future or how many kids I wanted or what love meant to me. We'd already had those talks, they'd already aired on TV. Now there was nothing left but stale memories, regret and hatred.

"Do you have enough to make a segment?" Finn looked at Chuck after we'd been talking for about ten minutes.

"We can piece something together, yes."

Finn stands, his full six-five figure startling me from where I sit. I'm short, I know this, but next to Finn I've always looked like a Hobbit. Six inch heels are like a full time requirement with this man.

He's about to walk back into the hotel when I speak. "Finn, wait..." I turn to the crew, Mitchell and Chuck. "Can you all give us a minute?"

Chuck looks at me disapprovingly. "Leighton, you know we can't do that. You're not supposed to get anymore time than any other girl."

I see through his fairness act. "Spare me, Chuck. You brought me here for a reason, and it wasn't to play nice or fair with the other women. Get out."

My tone is like ice and my message comes across clear. They begin to pack up and head for the doors inside, waiting for the elevators to come and take them to the cars back to base camp.

Finn is still standing there, barely keeping his annoyance restrained. My eyes float over him, and again I wish he had been in that pool today. Maybe I would have given it my all when beating the other three girls. Not that my half-trying didn’t net me the win.

"What?" He grits through his teeth.

"Can you sit?" I try to play nice.

He walks back over but leans against the wall instead.

"You can't treat me like this for the next month and a half." I twirl a lock of hair around my finger, suddenly nervous.

"Treat you like what?" Finn fires back.

"Like I'm the dog shit stuck in your shoe."

He chuckles, but its quiet and deadly. It's not his usual uninhibited laugh. "You're lucky I even sat at that table with you and made small talk without throwing you in the pool. Or over this ledge."

"Jesus, Finn, that's harsh." Although I don't know why I wasn't expecting it.

"And why wouldn't it be? Do you remember what you did to me? What you put me through, Leighton? Fuck, I don't even know why you're here."

He was dangerously close to making me spill the truth. That I was back here for him. That I still loved him with everything I had. "I told you before...I need the money, my mother made me—“

"Oh cut the shit! You might be a great actress and liar to everyone else, but you forget that I know you. I don't buy the fame-whore bit, not this time."

He stares at me, those brooding, stormy eyes invading my soul. Its like he sees through me, into me, and I know I'm caught. "Would it be so bad if I was here for you? To get you to fall in love with me?"

My voice is a whisper, insecurity and meekness carrying on the wind. I suddenly felt very small and afraid, as if saying the words out loud made them this tangible thing. He was open to, and probably would, reject them.

And then the Finn I'd only seen twice in all of our time together surfaced. It was like he'd shed his skin, the one made up of a funny, charming man, and turned into a monster filled with hurt and rage and fury. He grabbed the chair he'd been sitting in only minutes before and swung it off its legs, smashing it hard into the wall just inches from my head. I flinched and ducked, covering my skull in case any debris hit me as the chair splintered and crumbled to the ground.

I looked up quickly, just in time to see Finn throw what remained of the chair into the pool. His cheeks were red and ruddy with anger, his eyes rabid and menacing.

"I did fall in love with you, don't you remember? I found you and you found me on that goddamn island, and I fell head over heels for you. I made promises to you, I held you, I was inside of you. I got down on one fucking knee and pledged my life to you forever. And what did you do? You stabbed me in the back until my fucking organs were spilling out of my body! You flirted with and kissed another man. You had me so fucking twisted up in your lies that I couldn't see straight. So congratulations sweetheart, you did get me to fall in love with you. And I'll never make that fucking mistake again as long as I'm fucking breathing."

Without waiting for a response, he stormed away from me. I swore I could see my heart, a fractured, ground up piece of meat, lying still and defeated on that pool deck.

L
eighton sat on my couch
, her hair up in one of those top-of-her-head buns she favored when it was just us. Those crazy thick black waves ballooned over her skull, and I couldn’t help but smile.

She was so damn adorable. And sexy, and amazing, and…just everything. I still couldn’t believe I’d landed her. That she’d said yes when I asked to put my ring on her finger.

“What?”

I walked to the couch and plopped down, taking one tit through her pink cotton t-shirt in my hand and palming her cheek with the other. “I was just admiring how fucking sexy my fiancé is.”

She smiled, planting a kiss on my lips that had my cock stirring in my sweatpants. “I love when you call me that.”

It had been three weeks since we'd gotten home from Right Now Island, the reality TV show that we'd met on. And while most people, especially our families, were calling us batshit crazy, I knew this girl was it for me. I'd taken one look at Leighton, given her my first "date card" on the show, and had already fallen half in love by the time the director called cut at the end of our meal.

She was spunky and sarcastic, but with a sweet and demure side too. She was the typical California girl, with her high-maintenance but laid-back contradictory ways; one second she needed the right kind of facial cream and the next she didn't care if she had dirt running up and down her arms on a nature hike. She was the quintessential cool girl, feminine one minute and one-of-the-guys in the next.

I loved her personality, but her looks were what had blown me away first. I was such a guy.

She was a classic beauty, with those thick, black waves, long eyelashes and lush mouth that I had imagined wrapping around my shaft the entire first day of filming. When I had finally gotten the real thing, it was even better than I'd dreamed.

She was the full package, and I had practically begged her to marry me on the finale.

We'd missed the first three episodes aired on TV since the show began to run before the finale was taped due to summer programming. The window was too short to film the entire season and then air it after; there was always an overlap.

It didn't matter though, I knew what happened. I'd gone after Leighton that first episode and we hadn't been apart since. Sure, we would be the boring couple who fell for each other right away, but there were plenty of castmates to take the drama out of our hands.

The credits began to roll for Right Now Island as I put my arm around Leighton and shoved a handful of popcorn into my mouth. I stuck my hand between her ass and the couch, kneading it the way I knew got her turned on. We probably wouldn't make it through this episode fully clothed.

And then we came on the screen, grinning at each other as we made our way down the beach in Bermuda. Ah, I remembered this day. We'd talked about what we wanted to be when we were kids.

"An actress, duh. Just like any little girl who grows up this close to Hollywood." On-screen Leighton pinched her thumb and forefinger together, signaling how close she'd grown up to the celebrities and stars.

"Well, looks like you got there." On-screen me slings an arm around her shoulder as we sit in the sand.

I see a look pass over her face on the TV, disappointment or misery, I can't quite tell what. Because for as open as Leighton is about some things, she's even more closed off about other things. I know it's something she is trying to work on, and I'm okay helping her through that. More than okay, because its just another obstacle we can knock down on our walk towards the aisle.

"Yep, I got my fame and fortune." She smiles again, on screen, and I move my hand up (in real life) to her hip, the olive skin there exposed thanks to her rising t-shirt.

I brushed her smooth flesh with my fingertips, feeling the goosebumps rise under them as I softly tickled her hipbone.

"Finn...I thought we were watching the episode..." She said in a whiny voice, even though she leaned into me and tilted her neck to the side.

I took that as an open invitation to trace the slender arch with my tongue, grinning against her skin as I felt her shudder. The tip of my cock shuddered too, swelling and warming as all of the blood in my body rushed to the appendage.

"Twice wasn't enough already today?" Leighton purred, leaning back and inviting me to lay between her legs on the couch. The popcorn was pushed to the floor, spilling over the rug in my small Nebraska apartment.

It was never enough, not with her. Sure, I'd been with other women before, my fair share and then some. But Leighton was intoxicating. She was the drug I would never get enough hits of, that I would never be able to get out of my system.

As I snaked my hand under her tee, I palmed one full, perfect tit, a carnal sizzle racing down my spine as I realized she had no bra on underneath. Leighton's breasts were the thing of gods, they were once-in-a-lifetime tits. And now I had them all to myself, for an entire lifetime. Lucky, lucky Finn.

"Remember the first time we did this?" Leighton murmured in my ear as she wiggled beneath me, her legs locked firmly around my waist as she pushed her pelvis up into my cock.

How could I ever forget it?

I’d made love to her right there on the sand, nothing but the moon, the ocean and our moans. I’m not typically the soft, mushy “make love” type either, despite my affinity for romantic reality TV. But with her, that first time, it was just that. Making love.

“Of course I do.” I licked the sensitive lobe of her ear and got the reaction I’d been craving when her whole body bucked beneath me.

“Will you go on a date with me?” I heard come through the speakers on the TV. In the back of my mind I placed the voice. Ian, one of the guys on our season of Right Now Island.

“Of course I will, hun…” Someone responded to him.

Wait.

My head snapped up from where I’d been nibbling on Leighton’s lips, my neck pivoting to watch what was unfolding on the screen.

On-screen Leighton was leaning across the kitchen island in the house in Bermuda, her perfect tits nearly spilling out of the little tank top she had on. She had a half full glass of wine in her hand, and I could tell from the look swimming in her hazel eyes that she is drunk.

“But aren’t you with Finn?” Ian is ogling her body, not even bothering to look at her face when he talks to her.

A couple of other people linger on the main floor of the house on the TV, playing drinking games and overall just being assholes in paradise.

My body goes cold, pinpricks of anxiety and looming fear moving over my flesh as I still lay on top of Leighton on the couch. I still haven’t looked down at her, dreading what emotions I’ll see on her face when I do.

“Oh come on, I’m not settling down just yet! I came here to meet some hot, interesting guys.” The girl on screen gives Ian a seductive smirk and hits his bicep in that purely-feminine way.

They continue to talk on the TV, but I don’t hear it. She said she didn’t want to settle down? We’d already had our night in the cove at that point in the season. We’d already been on three dates, had numerous hangouts off camera. I’d almost told her I loved her at that point, and in her eyes I knew she meant it back.

“What. The fuck. Was that?” I gritted out the words, moving off of Leighton and standing. After pacing a few times around the rug, I looked at her.

Her face was ashen, her eyes big as saucers and her mouth drawn into a tight circle like she might be sick at any second. “Finn—“

“You weren’t there to settle down? You wanted to meet hot guys? What the fuck, Leighton?! We’d already had sex. You knew how I felt about you at that point!”

I was shouting now, feeling the fury ratchet up a notch in my veins.

“I was drunk Finn, and we…Ian and I, we were just messing around. You know how I felt about you then…”

“Apparently not. Apparently you can’t know everything about someone you get engaged to after two months of knowing them!”

I kicked the spilled popcorn and it went skittering across the floor as Leighton walked to me and tried to brush her hand down my arm. I shrugged her off, almost violently, and she flinched.

I try to reign it in, feeling the monster inside of me biting at its leash. I roll my neck, walking all the way across the room and urging myself not to pry the Kansas City Royals vintage framed picture off the wall. My fingers tingle with the need to rip something limb-from-limb. Leighton has never seen it, has only gotten a dose of it in the nightmares I wake up screaming from.

“I’m sorry, Finn. I’m so sorry. It’s no excuse that I was drinking, I wasn’t…the producers suggested just flirting with someone, making my storyline interesting. You know it was always you. It’s only ever going to be you.”

She moved closer, the pleading tone in her voice allowing me to tamp down on the beast flexing its muscles inside of my chest. She looks small and fragile, and I notice that she’s shaking.

“Please…Finn, I can’t…can’t lose you…” Leighton chokes on a sob and I see the big, fat tears dropping from her eyes. She tries to hold them back, but I can practically smell the desperation and sadness coming off of her.

And it breaks me. Her sorrow always breaks me. I rub her shoulders, stooping down to eye level and running the tip of my nose up against hers.

“You’re not losing me. We just need to communicate. This doesn’t work if you keep secrets from me. I love you, Leighton. I want to spend my life with you. We have to figure this out as it comes. No more secrets?”

“I promise. I love you, Finn. No more secrets.”

How wrong I had been to believe that.