"Tiny!" Isla hollers.
"Solene!" Declan vaults over the table, shoving more glasses and a vase of flowers to the ground. He races across the grass, with me and Sinclair in pursuit, just as Tiny takes a flying leap. He snatches the bottle of champagne from Solene’s hand and turns it upside down with the head of the bottle somewhere down his jaw.
The impact shoves Solene and she loses her footing, but before she can fall, Declan is there. He catches her in his arms, the momentum taking them both to the ground. He hits the ground first, and she crashes into his chest. The two lay there, winded.
The next moment, she jumps up and stabs a finger at him. "Get the hell away from me, you asshole. I don’t need any of your false concern."
"Wait, what?" Declan shakes his head as if to clear it. "It’s not false."
"Tell that to your girlfriend, you piece of shit," Solene spits out.
"Girlfriend?" He staggers to his feet. "You’re my girlfriend, baby."
"So, who’s the woman I walked in on with you in your house?"
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Read an excerpt from Declan and Solene’s story
Solene
“Champagne, I need more champagne.” I glance up and down the long table. "Where is the champagne, anyway?"
We’re at my friend, Abby’s wedding to Cade Kingston, captain of the English cricket team, and while I’m happy for her, I can’t wait to put this event behind me and focus on figuring out how to revive my singing career. A career headed for the biggest collapse in the fashion that only a pop star with a #1 chart hit can face when the fans decide they don’t like the music you make one day.
"Uh, we wanted to avoid any accidents, so the champagne is on that table.” My friend, Summer points at the table at the far end of the room.
"Accidents?" Declan scowls at her, then turns to me. I hold his gaze for a second, long enough for those blue eyes as unfathomable as the depths of the sea to widen. A-n-d there is the other reason I want to be as far away from this table as possible—my boyfriend. I haven’t met him face-to-face in months and I’ve been evading him since I arrived at this wedding.
I jump up and head toward the bubbles. I reach for the bottle of champagne and begin to pour it into a glass. Thud-thud-thud. Why is my heart pounding so fast? Thud-thud-thud. The next second, something sails through the air—not something but someone, or rather someone’s dog, Isla’s Great Dane Tiny—snatches the bottle of champagne from my hand and turns it upside down with the head of the bottle somewhere down his jaw.
Whoa, that’s some acrobatics. And whoever heard of a dog drinking champagne, or rather, a champagne drinking dog? I lose my balance, and the world tilts, and that’s when I realize the result of the dog’s bottle stealing tactic means I’m falling, falling. I brace for impact, which comes.
Only I don’t hit the ground. I slam into something which feels even harder. Something which feels like a muscled chest, and when his arms come about me and that familiar sandalwood scent of his swirls about me, I allow myself to sink back against that tank-like expanse for a few seconds. During which time the beating of his heart thuds against my back, his thick forearm is banded about my waist, and my hips are nestled against his pelvis, the thick column in his crotch stabbing into the valley between my butt cheeks. My thighs tremble, and a waterfall seeps out from between my lower lips. Oh, god, it feels so good to be in his arms, with his length supporting me, and his breath raising the hair on my head. His chest rises and falls, his breath coming in quick pants. He tightens his grip around me, and the movement breaks the trance I’ve fallen into. I push up and off him, then jump to my feet.
"Get the hell away from me, you asshole." I stab my finger at him. "I don’t need any of your false concern."
"Wait, what?" Declan shakes his head as if to clear it. "It’s not false."
"Tell that to your girlfriend, you piece of shit," I say in a voice so cold, so hard, that I can’t stop myself from flinching.
"Girlfriend?" He staggers to his feet. "You’re my girlfriend, baby." He straightens, and keeps straightening, looming over me so I have to tilt my head back, then further back, just to meet those stupid, gorgeous, traitorous eyes of his. Eyes crowded with concern and confusion, and maybe, even love.
No-no-no, I won’t try to discern what his eyes are saying when he’s never, not once in the months we’ve been together, ever come right out and told me how he feels. Surely, I must be misreading the emotions?
I shove aside the need to throw myself into his arms and tilt up my chin. "So, who’s the woman I walked in on with you in your house?" I ask softly. I should be angry and raging. I should be spitting out the words at him. I should be losing my shit, but somehow, all I feel is a sense of calm. At least, I don’t have to pretend. Like I did over the months of trying to maintain the facade of a relationship to the media, to him, to myself, when in reality, we’ve been running on parallel tracks for a while now.
He blinks, then the confused expression on his features fades away. The crystalline blue of his gaze hardens to a dirty grey, so brittle, surely, it’s going to shatter like my heart. He steps back, putting distance between us. A cool wind rushes in between us, and I shiver. Goosebumps pepper my skin.
"You came to our house?" he finally asks.
"Your house."
"And you saw me with a woman?"
Oh, god. He’s not denying it. He’s not. I glance around to find our friends are following our exchange with interest. They’re not close enough to hear us, thankfully. I take a step back, and it might as well be a thousand paces, that’s how huge the distance between us already seems.
"Who was she?" I manage to force out the words through lips gone numb. My stomach churns, heat flushes my skin, and yet, I’m so cold. I wrap my arms around my waist. "Who was she, Declan?"
He looks away into the distance as if calibrating his response. His jaw ticks, and a vein pops at his temple. His shoulders bunch and I know, whatever he’s going to tell me is going to change my future.
I sense the impending shock and brace myself, so when he opens his mouth and says, "I can’t tell you," I’m almost not surprised and yet, I am.
What, I expected him to say she was his wife, a girlfriend? The real love of his life? The reason he’s been unable to make time for me as we danced the transatlantic-long-distance-relationship-that’s-been-going-down-the-shitter-shuffle.
"You can’t tell me?" I finally push the words out through lips gone numb.
He doesn’t answer.
"You can’t tell me who the woman I saw you talking to was? The woman whose shoulders you held; the woman who you consoled as she sobbed into your chest. Was she your sister? A cousin? A relative?" This is the chance for him to tell me it was all a stupid misunderstanding. That what I saw was completely innocent. That, there was a perfectly logical explanation to why he’d been comforting her.
"Declan?" I whisper, hating how desperate I sound in the moment. Hating the fact that although I thought I’d resigned myself to the fact that our relationship was slowly fading away, faced with evidence of it, I now realize I hadn’t. I’d hoped we could set things right. That we could meet and talk things out. That we’d each apologize for being so focused on our respective careers. That we could come together and stay strong in the face of all the media scrutiny every time we were spotted together in public.