Thirty-Four
It’s one a.m., and the phone is ringing. Helen flicks on the light.
“Hi, Miss Zhang, this is the front desk—”
“It’s one a.m.,” she mumbles.
“Yes, there’s a, um, a very insistent gentleman here to see you. I wanted to check—”
Helen sits up. “Who?”
The elevator doors open on the eighth floor and Grant looks up, his heart pounding.
Room 805. It’s down the longest hallway in the world, in a fancy historic Hollywood hotel that smells like you can’t afford this. Every step he takes seems to be punctuated by the plush green carpet telling him to give up, give up, give up, and his heartbeat sounds like his own last frayed and battered thread of hope answering, no, no, no.
The door with the metal plaque 805 is in sight, he hopes this isn’t a mistake, and suddenly it’s in front of him, now or never, and he knocks.
She opens the door, and it’s Grant.
There’s a feral glint in his eyes and he’s wearing the disheveled remains of a sharp black suit, his tie lost to the ages. His jaw is clenched and his hands grip the door frame—he has the look of a looming, Byronic hero approaching the edge of a cliff he doesn’t expect to return from.
“Helen,” he says, in a low, predatory voice.
“Grant,” she says, and swallows a lump in her throat. “I’ve missed you.”
He nods shortly, and his eyes sweep over every detail of her—she’s suddenly very aware of her messy, post-premiere hair and the gray waffle-knit hotel bathrobe she’s wearing.
“I read your manuscript,” he says. “From start to finish. All I want to know is what you meant by this.”
Grant holds up his phone and it’s her own email burning brightly back at her on the screen. Her eyes flicker over it, then fall in disappointment. Oh. The legal disclaimer part.
“I meant I wanted to send it to you early, in case—”
“No,” he interrupts, and her hands itch with nervous wanting. It’s been so long since she’s been close enough to touch him. “Not that part. Lower. Read that back.”
He taps the relevant part of the screen.
“Out loud, if you don’t mind,” Grant adds softly.
Helen’s heart trips over two short words. She chances a look up at him then—his gaze is shuttered and she has the sudden, humiliating thought, maybe he came for some kind of vengeful purpose, to give her a taste of her own medicine before telling her never to contact him again.
“‘Yours, Helen,’” she reads, finally.
“Are you?” His voice is hard and his words are cold. “Now or never, Helen.”
Now or never. Helen contemplates a few eternities of nevers she’s already experienced. She never told her sister she loved her. She never told her parents unpalatable truths. She never felt as loved as she did the first time Grant Shepard held her in his arms.
Bring Grant Shepard back to the present tense, where he belongs.
“Yes,” Helen says finally, and she sees a flash of heat behind his eyes. “If you still want me.”
Grant doesn’t move any closer—though his knuckles have turned white from gripping the door frame.
“That day in the hospital,” he says slowly, carefully. “I think I lied to you. I told you—and I can’t seem to stop replaying it in my mind, whenever I think about it—‘I’d rather have a fraction of you than all of someone else.’”
Helen swallows a lump of regret. “I remember.”
“The thing is . . . I had a fraction of you then, and it damn near killed me.”
“Oh,” she says, and nods in understanding. He’s saying it’s too late. “I’m sorry.”
He takes a step forward and her world seems to tilt on its axis.
“I want all of it this time,” Grant says, his voice harsh and impossibly close. “I want the nights and the days and the weekends and the holidays and I want you at my side and in my bed and in my life. I want to meet your parents and I want to take you to a sheep farm in fucking Ireland and my dad’s place in Boston. I want to see what kind of person you are when you’re eighty. I want to do this for real, and I want to call you mine so badly it’s a fucking joke, but if you can’t sign up for the whole show this time, then don’t—”
She surges forward and kisses him then, and he tastes like whisky and surprise. His hands immediately pull her closer, closer, closer, his desperate heartbeat crashing against hers.
“I want all of that too,” she murmurs, and he seems to take offense to her separating from him long enough to even say it out loud. He lets out a growling “hmmph” and chases her lips closer. “I’m still so afraid of messing things up. I don’t think I’ve completely healed yet, and you deserve someone whole—”
“Helen,” he exhales, his forehead against hers. “You don’t have to be completely healed to be everything I want. To be mine. I love every part of you, you silly, infuriating woman. I love the parts of you I haven’t even met yet.”
“I love you too,” she says, and her cold, broken heart suddenly seems to glow from the feeling of saying it out loud to someone else and meaning it so damn much. “I love you so much, it doesn’t make sense to me in words.”
“In that case,” Grant says, and lowers his head to kiss her again, “let’s talk less.”