Break It Up (23 page)

My heart pounds hard enough that I’m sure he can hear it. How could he not? The blood rushing in my ears is almost a roar. “Zach?” I say. It comes out as a strangled whisper.

“Hi.” He still doesn’t look at me.

It occurs to me:
What if Zach’s here to visit Lizzie?
I think I’d die right on the spot. “You here to see me?” I ask.

He nods.

Okay. I decide to assume that he’s here to yell, which is fine. Anything is better than the agony of not knowing where he is or what he thinks. I pull my keys out of my purse with a jangle. “You want to come in?”

He chews his lip and lifts his gaze to meet mine. I don’t know how to read him. He seems as nervous as I am, but that tells me very little. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Okay.”

I unlock the door with shaking hands and let him enter first. My new home, despite being a two-bedroom penthouse, isn’t all that huge. It’s just got great views and is in a building with tight security. The front door opens into a living room, and I invite Zach to take a seat on the couch, which he does.

I sit down in the chair and clasp my hands between my knees. I resolve to be ready for anything. Anything at all.

Zach is silent. He stares down at his feet.

Okay,
I think.
He wants me to talk first. That’s not a lot to ask.
“Listen,” I say. “I’m sorry about—”

“I know.”

“Really. I am.”

He nods, glances at me, and looks away. “Yeah. I know.”

“How are you?” I ask.

“Um…yeah… I’m… I don’t know.”

It’s not much of an answer, but I’ll sit here all afternoon just to breathe the same air he does if he’ll let me.

He fidgets before forcing his fingers to unclench. Those steel blue eyes lock with mine again. The intensity is still there. My insides quake under the force of that gaze, but his posture is despondent.

“I assume you want to yell at me,” I say.

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Then what?”

He chews his lip and looks, for all the world, just as lost as he did the night we chased down his contract with Aidan. His confidence is gone and he’s just scared and alone. “Was it real for you? What we had?”

“The friendship or…”

“Or…yeah.”

I summon every scrap of courage I’ve got. “The ‘or’ part was real. The friendship was a total lie. I’ve fantasized about you my whole life.”

He winces at that. “Your fantasies are no doubt way better than the reality.”

“Don’t say that about yourself.”

“Compared to you, I might as well be a virgin. There’s nothing I’ve got that you haven’t seen or done or…” He winces again at his own words. “Not that I mean to call you…anyway.”

“I’ve never felt like anyone liked me for me. Even though I know I kept some big facts from you, you still knew me better than a lot of people.”

“You were my best friend.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blow it.”

He doesn’t answer that for a long minute. He stares at his hands as the seconds tick by. Then he shuts his eyes. “I lied too. Every time I called you my best friend. I just wanted to kiss you. I mean, come on, I gave you a massage that one night. How obvious was that?”

So I wasn’t the only one tortured by that whole experience. I feel my cheeks grow warm. I’m guessing someone with more normal dating experience would have picked up on that clue. “Why me?” I ask.

He folds his arms across his chest as if I’ve jabbed him with my finger. “Because…I don’t know. You’re the one person I could always talk to and you always had my back. You never used me, and you always listened.”

“Lot’s of girls can do that.”

“Yeah…not really.”

“And you saw how bad it all got. You don’t want more of that.”

“I saw how bad it got, and I saw you...” He looks me in the eye. “I don’t even know a word for it. Triumph doesn’t even cover it.”

I shake my head. “A lot of people still hate me.”

“But you don’t hate you.”

“No.” I let myself relax and slouch against the arm of my chair.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called or texted or anything,” he says, and he does sound sincerely apologetic. “My whole world kind of exploded and...”

“I know.”

“Clearly you can take care of yourself but I should’ve...done...I don’t know. Something.”

“You didn’t throw fuel on the fire.”

“I chickened out.”

I shake my head again. “Nah.”

“Kyra, are you dating anyone? It looks like it wouldn’t be possible with all the coverage you get, but...”

“I’m not.”

“I miss you.”

Much as I want to believe this, I need to keep a clear head. “You sure this isn’t guilt? It’s not because you’ve got thousands of girls with racy pasts hounding you to prove you could love someone like them?”

“There has been a lot of that, yeah. You have no idea. But no. That’s not why. And I understand if you hate me after what my mom and Aiden and Ben did to you. You can throw me out right now and I’ll understand. But…” He shrugs. “I had to try. This is me being brave. Probably not all that impressive to someone like you.”

I press my fingertips to my forehead. My emotions are a churning mess, but I force myself to be logical. Fair. Zach’s only seen my media storm from the outside, and it isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. “I’ve missed you so much. But I really doubt we could just pick up where we left off. Maybe it’s better if we both move on.”

“Does that mean you have? You’re over me?”

I look away. “Not yet.” Not for a good long time. My heart’s still thoroughly bruised.

“Kyra.”

I shut my eyes and fold my arms. The world I could stare down. Zach is another matter. One harsh word from him could hurt me worse than a hundred hate mail letters.

I hear him get up from the couch and I hold my breath, bracing myself. I imagine the sound of his footsteps retreating and the door opening. But I hear nothing, not even the sound of his clothes rustling.

Like a jolt from a cattle prod I feel his hand grasp my arm. He’s so close all of the sudden. I hear him exhale and feel him nudge my knees apart so that he can kneel in front of me.

A single tear escapes my eye and I begin to shake so bad that I’m afraid I’m going to fall apart completely.

His arms go around my waist and he pulls me to lean against his chest. My arms go around his neck instinctively and more tears course down my cheeks.

He strokes them away with his thumb. “I’ll beg,” he whispers. “I’ll do anything. I’ll sing.”

“Without autotune?” I whisper.

“Yep.”

I know I should laugh, but I cry harder, clinging to him hard enough that my nails bite deep into the fabric of his shirt. I kiss his cheek and the line of his jaw, my hand sliding up to grasp the side of his neck. And still I’m crying. Any minute he’ll peel me off him with a look of revulsion. There’s no way he’ll keep letting me nuzzle him with my warm, on-the-verge-of-runny nose. Finally I pull back and grab a tissue to clean myself up, and still he stays. His fingers trace my cheekbones and stroke their way down my hair. I feel him startle slightly when he spots my tattoo. He turns my arm to get a better look and I feel his fingers trace the design. “This new?”

“Yeah.”

“I like it.”

“Zach...” I still can’t open my eyes and face him.

He leans in and kisses me. He’s not the same kind of desperate he was the night of our first kiss. He’s lonely, but he’s not rushed. He moves like he’s got all the time in the world, and his fingers stroke my hair and face like he’s memorizing me. I kiss his fingertips and his palm and he tugs me up out of my chair to lead me back to the couch with him. Soon we’re lying next to each other with the familiar weight of his leg over mine, and finally I open my eyes and meet that forceful, devastating gaze of his.

His lips twitch, then curl into a smile. “I win? You give me another chance?”

I’m the one who needs to ask for a second chance, but I can’t argue because his lips are on mine again. I wrap my arms around him, feeling the solid, weighty,
realness
of him.

“My roommate,” I whisper between heart stopping kisses. “She’ll be back, eventually.”

“Lizard can deal.” Zach presses his lips to my neck.

“What did you call her?”

“Lizard.” He kisses the bare skin over my collarbone. “She and I go way back. We were part of the cheesy blond kids’ entertainment union. You know, factory-made by Hollywood?”

I snort a laugh.

He pulls back and looks down at me. “She’s one of my oldest friends. She’s who I was talking to the first night you and I met.”

“Oh.” I look up into his gray blue eyes. “Whose idea was it for me to be her roommate?”

His right eyebrow twitches, whether with amusement or irritation I couldn’t say. “Hers. She’s like that. Been calling to tell me how you are every other day.”

“Really?”

“She’s your fan. Not mine. Made it clear where her loyalties lie.”

I’d be grateful if I wasn’t so surprised.

Zach settles himself against me. and smooths my hair back from my shoulder while I try to come to grips with all this.

“So, no moving on?” he presses.

“Okay.”

He gives me another kiss on the neck before he says, “How have you been?”

“Pretty much like you’ve seen in the tabloids.”

“No, I mean, how’s it been? What all happened, for real?”

I shrug. “Where do I begin?”

He shifts to rest his head on my shoulder, his arm around my waist and our legs scissored together. “Wherever you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

In the end, we talk for a few hours and then fall asleep. Apparently that’s our pattern. Lizzie, when she gets home, wakes us up with the sound of the key in the lock, and at the sight of us trying to disentangle ourselves and act dignified, she bursts out laughing. Her smile at Zach is pure triumph.

The paparazzi
know about me and Zach, of course, but we don’t let them get any clear shots of us. That means no nights out unless we meet at a restaurant, use a private back room, and arrive and leave separately.

It doesn’t take me too long to realize, though, I’m comfortable with that whole routine. I know how it goes. All those times Jen told me I was a part of celebrity culture, I never got it, but now I do. This is my life—for real.

It’s weird.

But what’s weirder is how the public stays interested in me and Zach. Pictures of him sauntering out of my apartment building at midnight still sell to the tabloids until Zach rents a unit a few floors down from mine. People wonder whether the pictures mean we’re not sleeping together or we’re just not doing the actual sleeping part together.

It’s no one else’s business but ours. Zach is not and will never be another notch in my bedpost. He’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

Over the holidays, Zach and Logan head back to North Dakota to spend time with family members they’ve barely seen for the last ten years while I go back to New Mexico to fill lumenarias and help make tamales and posole. Zach calls me for an hour every night to tell me all about the people he never knew he was missing from his life and I tell him about my Christmas traditions, like walking around Old Town on Christmas Eve and singing carols by the light of a thousand candles flickering inside brown paper bag lanterns.

And the paparazzi finally evaporate away like mist under the hot sun. Ben gets himself busted for driving under the influence. One of Jason’s former co-stars is murdered by her boyfriend. The insanity moves out of my life, but it never leaves the world.

When I get back to school after the holidays, though, Zach’s waiting in my apartment with another bombshell.

“I want the world to know about us,” he announces. “More than they already do. I want you on the red carpet with me and I want pictures together and I want… I want to go
public.”

This request might all seem a little strange, given the world already knows we’re together, but he’s talking about a real distinction. There’s being together on the down low, even if the media find out, and then there’s being together openly and publicly. There are celebrity marriages that don’t even go this route, people who never walk a red carpet together or do a joint interview. Zach is talking about diving head first out of the frying pan and into the fire. Together.

”Red carpet where?” I ask.

“The Grammys.”

“What?”

“Please?”

I’m barely in the door, and all I can do is stare at him.

“Please,” he begs. “I don’t want to go to the Grammys alone.”

I could point out that he doesn’t have to go to the Grammys at all. Triple Cross has never been nominated for one. They tended to sweep things like the Teen Choice awards.

I drop my duffel bag in the entryway and go to join him in the living room. What he’s suggesting is insane, but when has that ever stopped me? Given all the stupid things I’ve done for guys who weren’t worth my time, who am I to say no to the one I love? “Fine.” I laugh. “Sure. Let’s go for it.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” This is my life now, apparently.

To walk
a red carpet, you have to plan weeks in advance. No grabbing a cute cocktail dress at a boutique and some strappy sandals. As soon as I start researching stylists, the rumor mill gets rolling and designers pour out of the woodwork, eager for the chance to dress Kyra Armijo for her first big public event. Free gifts pour in of ball gowns and Italian leather pumps and clutch purses. It’s overwhelming, but I force myself to be choosy and disregard all the designers who want to be edgy or daring. I go classic with a basic black number that covers my tattoo and pumps that are high enough to make me walk gracefully and not so high that I’ll fall and break my neck.