Chapter Twenty-One
Tate was headed west, to the coast. Kellie assumed he was taking her to watch the sunset, which sounded perfectly amazing right now. When he pulled into a driveway near Topanga Beach, she silently questioned him again.
He turned to her with a big ass grin, knowing he was driving her crazy. What a shit.
“Ready?”
She shrugged, trying to remain nonchalant. “Sure, I guess.”
He laughed and put his truck in gear again, but this time he cranked it into reverse and backed down a narrow concrete pad next to the back deck that faced the water. Kellie was just beyond guessing at this point and had to go with the flow. She had to admit that Tate’s excitement was extremely sexy, and she told herself to just relax and enjoy that instead of her intolerance of the unknown.
“Come on, gorgeous girl. You. Me. Bed of the truck. NOW.”
Those deep, sexy commands made her insides dance with arousal, and she watched him come around to her side of the vehicle to open her door.
“Get your fine ass out. Come on,” he motioned with a wink.
She was so turned on she could barely function, so finally he had to take her hand and pull her along.
It was beautiful out—the sun about to set within the next twenty minutes—but she was not expecting Tate to hoist himself into the bed of the truck and start pulling out a bunch of blankets from nylon bags that were tied down below the back window. He even hopped back out and grabbed some pillows that were stuffed behind the driver’s seat; then he lined the edge of the truck bed with glass votives and lit the candles inside them.
“Well?” he asked, standing there with a happy smirk on his face. He motioned to the bed of the truck—which was now a real bed, thick with blankets and pillows, and lovely candlelight. “Join me?”
He flipped the tailgate down, hopped up, and held out his hand to assist her.
“Okay, I’m seriously… I’m impressed,” she finally said.
“Oh? So you’re not mad at me for taking your picture and I might be getting thank-you sex tonight?”
“Hmm, trust me, you didn’t have to do all of this in order to get sex out of me. All you have to do is look at me and I’m wet.”
He lightly laughed. “Good to know.” He sat down against a pile of pillows and patted the space right next to him. “Join me.”
She easily complied, sitting next to him on the soft bed of blankets as his arm came around to hold her close. With the tailgate open, it was the absolute perfect view of the ocean as the sun descended.
“I could go to sleep here,” Kellie said after a few minutes of silence. It was so peaceful listening to the waves crash while she was in her own little private nest with Tate.
“If you’re tired, go ahead,” he replied softly, running his fingers along her arm. He must have felt the goosebumps on her skin, and even though it was from his touch, she was glad he pulled a blanket over them. With the sun disappearing into the water, it was starting to get chilly.
She nestled up against him tighter than she’d already been. They were now stretched out lying down, and it was hands down the sweetest, most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her.
“This is perfect,” she whispered, almost afraid to break the idyllic setting.
“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing,” he replied. It was starting to get dark out, and the sound of his voice in the dark was always sexy. “I’d do anything for you, Kellie,” he added unexpectedly. “I hope you know that.”
She did, and she realized it more and more every day. “I do know that,” she answered softly.
“Good because…you mean a lot to me and…”
She could detect a bit of nervousness in his voice, and because her head was resting close to his chest, she could feel his heartbeat getting more intense. Was he really going to say it? Her heart picked up speed and was beating right along with his, just in anticipation of—
“I love you, Kellie,” he finally said.
She hadn’t expected the words to take the air right out of her, but they did. It was like the thrill and elation of his admission sent a celebratory cheer throughout her body, using her very breath to make it happen.
He kissed her on the top of the head as his arm tightened around her more securely. “I just wanted you to know that.”
She realized she hadn’t responded. How awful she was for making him think she didn’t return his feelings!
Kellie turned just a bit and propped herself up on an elbow. There was enough candlelight that she could see his face as she leaned forward and kissed his lips. “I love you too. So much.”
His grip tightened on her again, pulling her closer to him. Half her body was on top of him as she put everything she had into proving how much he meant to her. It was the first time she’d ever told a guy she loved him and he was going to be the last. It was funny how she’d been so hesitant to fall in love but all it took was… Well, Tate. All it took was Tate. And she couldn’t imagine anything different.
“Make love to me,” she whispered against his lips.
He gently rolled her onto her back as he pulled the blanket back over them. His hand slid up her skirt, rubbing his palm against her skin before gripping her hip tenderly. His touch set her on fire, and a minute later when they were both skin-to-skin, Tate laced his fingers with hers and kissed her deeply while he rocked in and out of her.
If there was a way to bottle this moment up, she would. There were few things in her life that were worth remembering forever, but this was definitely the best one. In fact, most all of her happiest thoughts and moments were of Tate and she was quite all right with that. It was such an unexpected fate that she would be at this point in her life already, but definitely a place she now wanted to be.
So much for Ice Queen status…
***
A night in the bed of Tate’s truck. He’d offered to take her home but she refused. She couldn’t leave the paradise she’d been in, entwined with him all night, making love a couple more times, and cuddling under the stars. And he’d come prepared with snacks and drinks, so Kellie was perfectly content staying all night. She knew he had the next day off, so when it was Tate’s turn to use the bathroom in the house, she sent a text into work to say she wasn’t coming in.
She rarely ever did that, but they could deal with it this time.
Then she realized why she’d had that day scheduled in the first place. Her mother. Amelia was coming to town and Kellie had deliberately booked as many hours as she could to avoid her. She knew she couldn’t dodge her entirely, but the less she spent around her the better.
Tate knew about her mommy and daddy issues. He knew the back-story of her childhood and the issues between her parents. He knew she lived with her grandfather for a couple of years until she moved in with Jay and Teague. He definitely knew she wasn’t close to her mom, but what she hadn’t told him was their entire history. She felt that kind of needed to be addressed before Tate met Amelia, but it was a subject she would have preferred to sweep under the rug.
However, after a very long walk on the beach and a little bit of fruit for breakfast, they sat in the bed of his truck again, talking about anything and everything; from some of the people Tate had met during his recovery, to his grandmother and how much he knew she liked Kellie, and then at last the mention of her mom. She figured it was as good a time as any to get it over with.
“So yesterday I said I wanted to talk to you about something,” she began. Tate only nodded, but she had his full attention. “I’m just going to be blunt with this because I don’t want anything hazy lingering between us.”
“I very much agree with you. And you can tell me anything, Kellie. I promise I will keep it to myself.”
“It’s not really that…”
“Then what is it? Why do you hesitate?”
She sighed and looked into his dark green eyes; those eyes that could penetrate her heart in a matter of seconds. “It scares me. I’ll just put that right out there. I’m scared that you’re going to hear something that you won’t like and—”
“Kellie,” he sighed, shaking his head. He looked totally devastated right now and it crushed her. “Nothing is going to disappoint me, okay? Is that what you’re worried about?”
“Yes,” she answered right away.
He licked his lips and shook his head again. “I’m truly sorry you feel that way, but believe me when I say I know there are many different sides to people and even though something might be a bit surprising, it doesn’t take away from who you are. We’ve all got our demons—our challenges—and I know that for a fact.”
She stared across the beach at the waves crashing one by one. Why did insecurities get the best of her? She knew what he was saying—she even agreed with him because she couldn’t imagine Tate telling her anything that would make her love him less—so why was it so hard for her to see herself from that same perspective?
God, the complexities of the human brain…
She took in a deep breath of ocean air and slowly let it out. “Growing up in my family—the only girl out of a bunch of boys—was actually more than I could handle at the time. My parents had a rocky relationship from as early as I can remember, their business was always in the tabloids, and my mother was forever concerned that I was not making a good enough impression in Hollywood.
“After she and my dad split, she became even more obsessed with me making my mark as a McCallan. I was in everything you could think of: voice lessons, dance, modeling, acting classes… anything that could help me become a prestigious figure in Hollywood. I hated it all, I’ll tell you that. And my mom knew it. However, it’s like it propelled her into becoming more obsessed, like she needed to do more to “convince” me to accept it. My appearance and my weight had always been an issue, but when I hit fifteen/sixteen, I became way more insecure. Tabloids have a way of doing that, posting less than appealing photos and sometimes even photo-shopping them to look worse.
“Well, I’m ashamed to admit it, but it really got to me. So bad that I was barely eating any food just to stay tiny for my mom’s approval. I got carried away with diet pills and working out two hours a day, seven days a week. Finally my body took a huge crash. I passed out at one of my grandpa’s fundraisers. Thankfully it was behind-the-scenes and not in front of anyone but Max, but he’d kind of been catching on to what had been going on with me. Long story short, Max convinced me to see a specialist—which basically put me into a rehab program for a month, particularly as a break away from the public. My sudden absence was all over the media in a matter of days; rumors that I was having a baby, I have cancer, I eloped or moved away… It got so bad that my mom was focused more on making up stories to appease the public than she cared for my health.
“I kicked the problem, with the support of Max, Teague, and Jay. They were the ones that were truly ‘there’ with me through all of that, not my parents in the least bit. I was doing pretty well, but a few months later—when I was eighteen—I started dating Aidan Sanderson.” She looked at Tate to catch his recognition. He did. He obviously did not live under a rock since Aidan was the frontman to a hugely popular rock band. “My mom and grandpa had set us up, and since I was still at an age where I let them have a say now and then, I went with it. It was a huge deal, right when Aidan’s career had made a gigantic impact on the music industry. Twenty-one-year-old rock star and he was dating the granddaughter of the most prominent movie producer in Hollywood.
“I started feeling the pressure again by being in the public’s eye. I got all kinds of horrible shit said about me—from stupid bitches that were in heat for him and didn’t know a damn thing about either one of us. The media had a wonderful time picking apart every aspect of our relationship—or lack of, as they stated more than once, which was basically true. I began to hate myself all over again, feeding into the criticism and bullshit that was spewed on a daily basis. Some people may not understand that it’s like putting a recovering addict around the very thing he has a hard time resisting. For me, it was hard to ignore all of the crap that was being said, and it caused me to start spinning out of control again.
“Because Max could recognize how much it was affecting me, he intervened just in time. He told Aidan to back the fuck off and leave me alone, and he took me to Maui for a couple of weeks to get away from it all. It was like a huge breath of air that I didn’t know I needed, and I’m so thankful that he saw what I couldn’t see. I’ve been just fine the past few years, but every once in a while I get plagued with some of those thoughts that I’m not good enough and…it’s been happening again.”
She felt her hands shake as she brushed her hair away from her face. Admitting that out loud was one of the hardest things for her to do. Moisture stung her eyes, and even though she could have willed herself to not cry, she decided to just let it go.
She continued to explain that it was way too damn hard to pretend like this shit didn’t bother her; it was exhausting putting up walls all the time. She’d done it all her life, but the one time she let down her guard just a bit—with Aidan because he’d convince her she needed to tell him what the hell was going on so his P.R. team could be prepared—he turned on her. He didn’t want to deal with any of it; he was more concerned with his future and what his personal life would look like to the public. He told her to get her shit together and that they would resume their relationship when she wasn’t such a mess.
That’s when Max had lost his shit and it was all over the news. Headlines like: MCCALLANS TO KICK ROCKSTAR BOYFRIEND TO THE CURB, and AIDAN SANDERSON FED UP WITH MCCALLANS’ ENDLESS DEMANDS. It was a media nightmare, and when Aidan threatened to expose Kellie’s problem, her grandfather had pulled out the big guns to protect her privacy. To this day she still did not know what made Aidan keep his mouth shut, but she never doubted her grandfather’s reach. But just like so many burned bridges in this industry, Neil McCallan had some sort of arrangement with the Sanderson entourage that put them on friendlier terms recently.
Kellie wasn’t a part of it. No fucking way did she want anything to do with him. He had crushed a part of her soul and had never felt any remorse for it.
When she finally paused from sharing with Tate, she let out a huge breath of air. It was a relief to get all of that out in the open with him, but she was nervous about whatever his response was going to be. She expected he’d be sympathetic or supportive of what she’d gone through, or make some sort of comment about what had happened.
But he didn’t.
“What’s it going to be like when you see your mom again?” he asked.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “My mom? Uh, why do you ask? You have nothing to say about any of the other shit?”
“Stuff that happened in the past?” he asked as he slid his hand around hers and laced their fingers together. “No, Kellie, I don’t. My concern is for you right now and how seeing your mom again is going to affect you. I can’t change anything that happened, and I’m so very sorry you had to go through all of that heartache, but I can focus on you now. I want to make sure you’re okay, and if there are things that trigger these feelings of insecurity and self-doubt, I want to know what they are or when they happen. Do you understand?”
She was beginning to understand quite well. In a way, he was reminding her that she was a different person now than she was back then and he was right.
“I have no doubt you’ll overcome this again—I have complete faith in you,” he said. “But I’m here to do it with you, okay? You are not alone because I’ll always be by your side to support you, however you need it. So tell me about your mom so we can make a plan and stick with it.”
She couldn’t help but smile right now. Yeah, this was some serious shit they were talking about, but that was just it. It was serious, but Tate made it tolerable. Knowing that he was there to help her through it made it so much easier to face.
“Well,” she sighed. “My mom is going to look me up and down—not even subtly—and she’s either going to say something outright about my weight or somehow imply I’m looking ‘bloated.’ Then she’ll drill me about the things I’m doing with my life and specifically focus on what I’m not doing, like acting, singing, attending more awards ceremonies and movie premieres; why I’m not dating certain celebrities… Yeah, after that will depend on how I react,” she barely smiled. “We get into some pretty heated arguments, but she usually won’t pull all of that crap if Jay is around. Max, either. She likes to overpower people, get into their heads and attack when there’s no one around as backup.”
“God, she sounds brutal,” he smirked.
“Oh, she is. She’s also extremely intelligent and very manipulative.”
“Both things I’m immune to.”
“I’m sure,” she laughed, playfully nudging him.
“I also won’t kiss anyone’s ass,” he added. “Just to forewarn you for dinner tonight.”
“I don’t expect you to. I just hope you’re not entirely appalled by the other half of my parental configuration.”
“I’ve never even met your dad, so technically she’ll be the first half.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I just kind of consider my dad to be out of the picture. I was talking more my grandpa and uncle, even though they were far too busy the other night to talk to you much.”
“No skin off my back. I did spend some time with Max, though.”
“Yeah I saw that,” she replied, her curiosity piquing. “And how did that go?”
He gave her a mysterious smile and said, “Went well, I suppose. We get along.”
She was happy to hear that, but her curiosity was still messing with her. “And?”
He chuckled and stood, holding his hand out for her to get up. “And nothing. He’s a cool guy. Let’s go for one more walk on the beach and then go visit Gram.”
She let him tug her upward and very eagerly replied, “Yes, sounds perfect!”