I stomp into the house, my heels clacking on the marble tile of the foyer.

“What did I do this time, Kara?” Dean sighs behind me, loosening his tie when I whirl around, fury in my veins.

“You had to embarrass me like that? I was having a good time, for once, at one of your industry parties. You made me look like some kind of owned woman, like you were peeing all over me!” I point my finger into his chest, the champagne fueling my anger.

He throws his hands up, raking them through the straw blond hair that I want to wrap around my fingers. “I’m sorry, really I am, for protecting you from a monster who has the reputation of drugging women and having his way with them!”

The stubble on his jaw tics as he grinds his teeth together. I can see the protectiveness and anger roll off him, and for the first time tonight, I stumble backward in my thinking. I didn’t know that man, other than the times I’d seen him on the silver screen, and he had been very interested in putting his hands anywhere he could on me. Logic comes through my hazy mind, drunk on anger and expensive wine.

“Well, I didn’t know … but you didn’t have to attack him like that.” I sound like an idiot, and I know it.

“Whatever, Kara, you’re only saying that because it’s the opposite of what I’m saying. Once again, you take whoever’s side is not mine.” Dean walks past me, into the kitchen where he grabs a beer out of the fridge.

I feel like a child, a stubborn, selfish child who has just been proven wrong in an argument. My cheeks burn from his dismissal, and I shouldn’t, but I move into the kitchen because I don’t want to walk out on this fight.

Those blue pools track me as he swallows multiple sips of beer, the house dark with nothing but the sound of the ocean filtering in every so often. The skylights in the ceiling cast spotlights of moon throughout the kitchen, illuminating us.

“If you hate me so much, why don’t you just leave?” He says it quietly as he sets his beer down, bracing both hands on the counter in front of him like he’s about to push off and start a sprint away from me.

My heart convulses, panic suffusing my body. I’ve pushed him to the point of wanting to make me leave … something I strived for at the beginning of my stay but now dreaded like death.

So, I snap, all of the repressed feelings bubbling to the surface.

“Because I don’t hate you, you fucking asshole. I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen, and my fucked-up heart can’t seem to stop it. Don’t you think it would be easier if I hated you? Or if I just didn’t care about you at all? Ignorance or nonchalance would be my bliss, but instead I hear your voice in one of those Goddamn songs and my brain plays our love story on a loop. I obsess over it, it brings me back to some of the best times and some of the darkest times in my life. I wish I could loathe you. It would be easier.”

I throw my hands up, walking away as the tears begin to spill down my cheeks. I rub my arms, the goose bumps making me feel out of my element and alone.

“Then don’t.” Dean’s voice is barely above a whisper.

I can’t face him, but I don’t want to run away. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t hate me. Don’t loathe me. Give in already, Kara. Let’s do this, for real. Try to make it work, be together. No more of this back and forth shit, being mad and then having hot makeup sex. Be with me. By my girlfriend, Jesus, be my fiancée, for real.”

“We can’t.” I’m such a coward.

“Why not?” He grabs me, spinning me toward him and pinning me to his chest. “We’re talking ourselves in circles. You haven’t left, even though you could and we both know it. You feel this. You want it, too.”

I search his eyes, my heart falling and soaring as if it were on a carnival ride. “I’m scared.”

There. I said it. The one truth that has been following me around like a big ape sitting on my back for the past seven years. If I let him in, will he hurt me again? Will I have the courage to state my desires? Will I be able to find both strength and love in a relationship with Dean?

“I am too. You scare the shit out of me. But I know that any second of a life with you is better than no time at all. Be with me, Kara.”

His eyes plead, and the last wall I’d constructed around my heart completely falls. I allow myself to fall, to trust him to catch me this time. Everything I’ve seen of this Dean reminds me of the boy I once fell in love with. He isn’t the superficial, egotistical man I’d built up in my head … he’s still the down to earth musician who occasionally lands himself in hot water. He is kind, funny, and has shown that he has my best interests at heart over and over again in the time I’ve been out here.

Pushing up on my toes, I initiate a kiss between us for the first time in seven years. All of the other moments we’ve had in LA, it was him coming for me. But it’s a symbol of my trust, me bridging the distance between us.

Dean stays still, his hands not coming up to greet my body, and his mouth unyielding under mine. He wants me to prove it, to show that I mean it. And between us, words were never enough. Even though he majored in them, made his fortune off of them, action had always been louder.

I use my lips, teeth, tongue to coax him out, to show him that I’m agreeing to be with him, and not just because I signed on a dotted line. Finally, after what feels like eons of unrequited kissing, he folds to me.

His hands come up to cup my cheeks, our kiss turning from one-sided to gentle and filled with love and soft passion. Emotion fills my throat, my last dam of resistance to him flooded by the need to give us a real chance.

When Dean reaches down, grabbing my hips and lifting me to straddle his body, I don’t protest. When he walks to the stairs, his hot mouth landing on my neck, I can’t utter a word. And when he takes me to his room, laying me down and making love to me for the first time in his bed, I can’t think.

I’m surrounded, body and soul, by this man. And finally, finally, I let it just happen.