Her Perfect Gift: A Christmas Romance Page 15

  “Hey!” Seth smiles at me, all bleary eyed. Obviously, he is rather intoxicated. “I didn’t know that you were still up. It’s so great to see you. How did your work thing go? It sounded super important.”

  God, how do I tell him that not only was there no work thing today, but that there hasn’t been anything work related to work out for me in LA? He so wants it to happen for me, I can see it in his eyes. I am just letting him down by being a failure over and over again. I can’t seem to get anything right for anyone. Least of all myself.

  “Hmm, fine,” I reply blandly instead. “How are you? Looks like you had a good night.”

  “It was awesome. We were celebrating the love scene that me and Winter had to do today. And we nailed it. We really did well. So well that we left work early and were out all night which, as you know, isn’t like the director at all. But he loved the chemistry that we brought on set today, so yeah… it was a good one for me.”

  I can’t freak out, however much I want to. This is just his job after all. Sex scenes are going to happen, I know that. I have seen them happen in some of his other movies and not got this jealousy, but there is something about the idea of him and Winter and their ‘chemistry’ that kills me. Maybe it’s because this is a different type of movie for him, perhaps it’s because this is the first one since we have been together, or it could be just the bad, inexplicable, feeling that I get from her. Whatever it is, the idea of them filming a love scene together makes all of my insides squeeze tightly together with a pain like nothing I have ever felt before. But of course, it would be totally uncool of me to let that show because I knew that he was an actor in movies before I came to LA.

  “That’s great,” I reply through gritted teeth, silently blaming my newly discovered hormones for the internal over reaction. “Glad that you have enjoyed yourself. You must be tired though.”

  “I might have a shower; I haven’t had a chance since we went out straight after. You want to join me?”

  As he wiggles his eyebrows playfully at me, I feel dreadful. Normally I would love this idea, but today I am too emotionally drained to feel anything at all. I shake my head and smile regretfully at him.

  “I’m shattered, just about ready to crash. Can I get a rain check on that one?”

  “Of course.” He swoops over to me and kisses me on the mouth. “I will miss you, but I will be quick.”

  He heads towards the shower and I take my weary ass body to bed, struggling as every step feels far too heavy for my liking. Luckily, I already have my pajamas on so I don’t need to worry too much about changing, I can simply crash on the sheets. All the while, allowing my mind to dart back and forth erratically in the most unhelpful way possible. All the worst possible outcomes enter my brain and make me feel even worse.

  What am I doing here? I wonder sadly. Why is this nothing like I want it to be?

  It hurts. Failure of this magnitude is painful. My makeup line didn’t do well back home but that was because there wasn’t the audience. I was safe in the knowledge that it wasn’t totally my fault. Here, I have all the tools and consumers to make me successful, but I can’t muster up the right attitude. It doesn’t seem to suit me here, that’s all. I can’t have it both ways, but that’s I want. I didn’t have any romance back home, because no one was Seth. No man could live up to the fantasy relationship that I created in my mind about the man that I had and lost six years ago… weirdly, now that I have Seth, I don’t even think that the fantasy is the issue because the real him is so much better. It just isn’t right… LA isn’t right, but it’s where he absolutely has to be. There isn’t any way around it. I either accept it all… or none of it.

  Is this where I want to have a baby though? This isn’t even about just me anymore. I have another life to worry about and I don’t know if I would like to have a child here. Sure, there is the sun, but that’s about it for me…

  This is way too hard. I curl around myself and cling on to my belly. It shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t…

  The fairy tales never tell it like this, do they? They don’t explain how hard it will be after the ‘happy ever after’ part. I suppose because that wrecks the fantasy, doesn’t it? It isn’t a nice story then. But perhaps if they did discuss that part I would know what to do about it, wouldn’t I? I would have a frame of reference to make things work even when they aren’t as perfect as they are supposed to be. I shouldn’t even be thinking about leaving Seth behind. I finally have him and I love him so much, why am I so damn scared of staying?

  As soon as I hear Seth coming out of the shower, my eyes snap shut. It seems like I am lying tonight, pretending that I’m asleep because I don’t know how to deal with him. Who have I become?

  “Darcy?” he whispers to me as his body weight falls on the bed beside me. “Are you still awake?”

  I keep my breathing steady, so he doesn’t suspect a thing, and soon I feel his eyes falling off me. He is buying it that I am asleep which is perfect. It means I don’t need to deal with anything more awkward. Since he has been drinking, I’m sure that Seth will crash out soon anyway, leaving me alone with my thoughts. My terrifying thoughts that aren’t doing anything at all to make me feel better…

  “Darcy McNeill,” Seth surprises me by practically whispering. I can already tell that whatever he is about to say is more for himself than me because he thinks that I can’t hear it, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me. “Darcy, the girl next door, the woman that I have wanted for as long as I can remember… and now I have you. In my bed, in my life, loving me just as much as I love you. It’s just perfect… isn’t it?”

  Everything inside of me stiffens up, I ball my fists tightly to try and keep my emotions inside. This is agony, hearing him say all of these nice things to me while I’m a mess hurts. I’m going to have to keep acting like I’m asleep, because if I dare open my mouth then there is no telling what will come out.

  “But, Darcy…” It seems like he isn’t done yet. “I don’t make you happy, do I? You pretend for my sake, but I know the truth. It doesn’t matter how much we love one another, being here isn’t making your life as complete as it should be. I would do anything, anything, I could if I knew that it would change things, but I don’t know what to do. I want to ask you, but I’m scared of pushing you further away from me. I always feel like you might be on the verge of leaving.” He huffs loudly, breaking my heart in to a million pieces as he does. “I thought that it was going to be perfect here, you and me at last, but I don’t think it’s what we thought. Plus, Winter kept saying tonight that she doesn’t think I am happy either. I think I am, but what if she’s right?”

  Fucking hell, does it have to be her name again? Really? Do I have to listen to him going on about Winter’s opinion on me and him? I don’t even know her. Why is she commenting… unless she wants him? God, if she does then I am fucked. Of course he’s going to choose her. Especially if me and him aren’t making one another happy. He’s slipping through my fingers like grains of sand and there isn’t anything that I can do to keep hold of him. However tightly I squeeze my fist, I’m losing my grip on him anyway, slowly losing everything.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Seth

  January 21st

  Ring, ring… Ring, ring… Ring, ring…

  I don’t want to move. Not when everything inside of me hurts so badly that I could scream, but this is the third time that my cell phone has woken me up in the last twenty minutes, so I’m starting to think that this could be something urgent. While I’m not in the mood to deal with any kind of emergency, I guess that I don’t have any choice. So, with great effort, I roll out of the bed and stagger into the bathroom where I drunkenly left my clothes last night since I had the dumb idea of taking a shower in the middle of the night.

  “Hello?” I grip on to my forehead as the pain gets worse. “Sierra? Is that you?”

  “What the fuck took you so long?” she yells, clearly annoyed and with no consideration for my he
adache. “Fucking hell, Seth, what is wrong with you? This is bad, really bad. Especially for you.”

  Oh God, I don’t like the sound of that at all. It makes me want to puke. “What are you talking about?”

  “I guess you haven’t been on the Internet at all today then? You haven’t seen the pictures of you and Winter?”

  “Winter?” What the hell is she talking about? I kinda feel like there is something here, but I’m not sure what. I need to rack my brain hard to figure it out, but I don’t have the strength. “What pictures?”

  “Winter dressed in your clothing, hugging you, clearly flirting with you, kissing you…”

  “What?” Now I snap into more of a sober state. “Kissing? Flirting? What the fuck are you talking about? Me and Winter are just friends. There isn’t anything else going on between us. You know that.”

  “So, you weren’t alone with her last night? Drunk and kissing outside a bar? Because I have evidence…”

  Oh shit. An iciness trickles down my spine as I realize the truth. All of a sudden, the world feels cold and nasty. Not a place that I want to be in. I wish that I could go back to sleep so none of this would happen.

  “She kissed me… but I pushed her off. I think it was just a mistake anyway. Nothing serious. There hasn’t been anything going on with us. I’m with Darcy. The world knows that, don’t they?”

  “I’m going to warn you now, Seth, that doesn’t matter. A picture speaks a thousand words and these pictures say everything. No one is going to assume that you are with Darcy anymore. People will either assume that you secretly split up because it wasn’t working and you moved on to Winter, or that you cheated… but I will be honest with you, Darcy isn’t mentioned at all in any of the articles that I have seen. She isn’t famous, so the public doesn’t really have an interest in her. Not like they do Winter. They feel like they know her, which is why they are going to be more invested in you two. Now, if this were going to be a career move…”

  “This isn’t a career move,” I snap angrily. “This isn’t supposed to be all over the Internet. It’s just a bunch of misunderstandings. And now it’s going to fuck everything up for me and Darcy for nothing.”

  Sierra continues to talk to me, but to be honest I have switched her off. She pissed me off with her bullshit, assuming that I am doing this for attention or something. How could she? I have someone who I want to be with, and it isn’t Winter. I wish that stupid drunken moment didn’t happen at all.

  Eventually, I force Sierra off the phone, and I head back into the bedroom. All I want to do is climb back under the sheets and block this out for a little while. I would love to deal with it later… but as I spot Darcy sitting bolt upright with wide shocked eyes as she scrolls through something on her phone, I know that isn’t going to happen.

  “Wh… what?” I ask her, wishing that she hadn’t seen what I’m sure she’s seen, before I even had a chance to explain. “What have you seen? Because it isn’t what it looks like. I need to tell you…”

  “I thought that you were out with everyone last night,” she whispers with distrust rolling off her tongue. “I thought that it was all of you. You said that it was the director and everyone else too. I don’t understand.”

  “I was. At least for the beginning part. I didn’t even realize that everyone else left…” I trail off, realizing just how bad this sounds. It’s like I was so wrapped up in Winter that everyone else melted into the background. It wasn’t like that; I was just drunk and idiotic. “I wanted you to come with us. I didn’t want to be alone…”

  “So, it’s my fault?” She tosses her phone on the bed for me to see the photos, and honestly, they look bad. I can see why she is freaking out. Even if I know the truth behind those images, Winter in my work hoodie because she was cold, flirting with me not in character but as herself, a kiss that I wasn’t really a part of… but I don’t think that I can make any sense of that for Darcy’s sake. This would kill me if it was the other way around. “Because I had other stuff going on? I don’t think all of this is from last night anyway.”

  “No, but none of it is what it looks like, Darcy. I don’t want to be with Winter, I want to be with you.”

  “Do you though?” She shrugs helplessly. “Because I think that you are right. We don’t make each other happy. I can’t help but see what you mean with that statement now. It makes so much sense now…”

  I don’t remember saying that, but it doesn’t seem like something that I can argue right now, because there are some serious flames dancing behind Darcy’s eyes. I don’t really see what I can do to calm her down right now, I can’t think of any words to douse the fire, so I say nothing. Maybe we can talk this through once we are in a better place. As hard as it is, I need to leave her to feel how she wants right now.

  “I see that this looks bad,” I tell her calmly. “But I can assure you that I did nothing wrong.”

  Darcy doesn’t answer me. Instead, she leaps off the bed and pushes passed me, before storming into the bathroom. I want to help her, to demand that she sees what I mean, but I also need to see this story again. For my own sake probably, just so I know exactly what I am up against. Everyone else knows what the world has now been told to think about me, which is generally what they go with, so I have to know as well.

  What does Winter think about this? I wonder as I read with disgust. If she meant what she said last night about wanting to be with me, to be honest my mind is pretty hazy, she might actually like this. This might be what she was aiming for all along. I don’t even want to think about the possibility that it was a career move on her behalf, but she could be happy about what she sees. She must know that this is going to cause a wedge between me and Darcy, how can it not? Not that I’m saying she sold the story or anything. Winter has no need to. I guess we just weren’t careful with how we behaved out in public and it has been misconstrued.

  “What the fuck?” My eyes suddenly find something that I wasn’t expecting, something that can’t possibly be true. But it has to be a little bit true, doesn’t it? Because there has to be a little bit of truth behind everything printed, legally, doesn’t there? I mean, the pictures aren’t what they seem to be, but they are based in some truth. Me and Winter were together and hanging out and it does look bad, but this… this…?

  There is a quote next to the article from my mother. My fucking mother who hasn’t been in my life ever. Who ran away the moment that I was born because I wasn’t enough for her. But now when I am nearly fucking thirty she decides to come back in to my life… but not directly in to my life, to talk to some journalist about me. That is the weirdest thing ever. I mean, who the hell would behave in such a way? That’s crazy…

  And she is talking about me being just like my father, attracting all the beautiful women, which she knows isn’t true because he was fully in love with her. He wasn’t a player when he was with her. So, why would she even say this? And how can she say it about me because she doesn’t know me? Even if she has read all about me in the media, she doesn’t know me. She is just like everyone else, only seeing a character of me.

  I need to research this further. I can’t just let this go, this is too much, so I scroll to the bottom of the article to find the name of the journalist because I need to find out who has written this. I need to figure out who this person spoke to and work out why they are pretending to be my mother… unless this is my mother. God, the idea of it being my mom after all this time is weird. I have spent so much of my existence with no mother that it’s normal for me. Changing that will be too much. My heart pounds as I even think about it. But I can’t just push this away, can I? I can’t simply pretend that this hasn’t happened. I need to dig more. Pandora’s box has been opened and I need to find out what is inside. Even if it’s killing me.

  I don’t know if I want to, I’m not sure that having my mother in my life will magically make everything better. It could even make things a million times worse, but if she is around, I need to find out. I ne
ed to figure out what that missing part of me is. I don’t really feel a hole there, but it has to be, doesn’t it? Kids who don’t have both of their parents around always feel a hole. So, I guess I might be able to fill that. If this really is my mother, I don’t want to get my hopes up after years of disappointment.

  “Okay, Jasmine…” I get her name and her contact phone number, and I call her right away. “Let’s figure out what the fuck is going on here. I am not getting off this call until I find out more.”

  I get so involved with this part of things that I almost forget about the Winter and Darcy drama. I guess that’s because there isn’t anything that I can do about that right now. This, I can fix. Or try to anyway. I don’t know what I’m going to find at the end of this phone call, but I’m getting there. Any minute now, this Jasmine will pick up the phone and she will give me all that I need to know, because this stranger who has written an incorrect story about me knows my own mother better than I do. That is fucking weird.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Darcy

  January 21st

  “What was that about?” I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised by Seth’s behavior. Not only does he not seem too bothered about how sad I am since he hasn’t checked in on me at all, he also has spent the last twenty minutes on the phone with someone else. Someone called Jasmine. It isn’t even Sierra which makes it even crazier. I have been forced to come out here to work out why I have been pushed to the back of his mind.

  “A journalist.” He looks almost excited, which blows my freaking mind and not in a good way. “She has been speaking to me about my mother. Someone who gave her quotes for the article, and from the sound of it, this isn’t someone lying. This is my actual mother, after all these years. Can you believe it?”