Oh fuck. Oh fuck. What was he doing? His stomach heaved, but he forced himself not to be sick. This was something he had to do. He swallowed hard and looked directly at Christian—the entire reason he was doing this. Well, maybe not the entire reason, but a big part of it. No matter what happened, Christian loved him. He supported him.

The reporters were clamoring for attention, talking over each other, all trying to get their question in. That was okay. He could wait. Rather than picking any of them, he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. Eventually, they died down and he leaned forward again.

“Thank you all for your questions. I’ll answer them in due time. First, I’d like to put to rest a mystery that’s been circulating for the past month and a half.” Remarkably, his voice wasn’t shaking, even though everything inside of him was. “Everyone here has read Christian Miller’s blog post about his week with an A-lister. Hell, there are literal bets riding on who it is. I’m here to tell you today that A-lister is me.”

If Jonah had thought dropping a bombshell about his sexuality caused a stir, he most certainly wasn’t prepared for the reporters’ reactions to this news. He half expected them to rush the table in their excitement to ask him questions.

Christian’s eyes were wide, his face as pale as bone. ‘What are you doing?’ he mouthed to Jonah. Jonah just grinned. The move wasn’t entirely unplanned. He’d talked with Aspen about it some while Christian had been asleep, and she’d agreed this might be the best thing for him. Once she’d cleared it, all he needed to do was discuss it with the cast and Gavin.

Surprisingly, they had been equally as on board. Rather than seeing it as taking away from the press tour, it was just another way they could appeal to fans. Or as Gavin had put it, ‘we’re gonna get so many gay guys to come see the movie just for you.’ Jonah still didn’t know how he felt about that.

“Please, let me speak,” he said, and the room quieted. He’d prepared a statement, but as he looked at it, it sounded so fake. So contrived. He flipped over the paper. “Where I grew up, no one ever asks you who you’re interested in. If you’re a guy, you like girls. If you’re a girl, you like guys. If you’re a guy who likes guys, or a girl who likes girls, people automatically know you’re different. But no one ever tells you what to do if you’re a person who likes both.”

The words were nearly identical to the ones Christian had told him all those weeks ago in the cabin. Jonah had thought about them a lot after flying back to California, and they’d helped him come to terms with how he felt more than anything else.

“For twenty-eight years, I buried, avoided, or explained away the feelings I had for other men,” he continued. “And once I finally opened my eyes and realized I was bisexual, I tried to hide it. I used my career as an excuse, but in all honesty, it’s because I was afraid of how people would react. But I’m done being afraid. I’m going to love who I want, and no one is going to change that. Thank you.”

As soon as the last words were out of his mouth, he pushed his chair back and stood, hastily retreating to the holding room off to the side. Aspen was there waiting for him.

“You did good out there,” she said. “I’m glad Gavin took my advice and chose the guy from Out last.”

“Me too.”

Otherwise, he would have derailed the entire press tour. As it was, his costars were more than likely going to get bombarded with questions about his sexuality and working with him on set. And while he felt a bit bad about that, he couldn’t bring himself to wish he’d done it any differently.

It felt as though he’d finally set down a giant boulder he’d been carrying around for the past few weeks. He could finally breathe again. All the worrying and stress about people finding out before he was ready for them to disappeared.

The door opened again and Christian darted inside, locking it behind him. “What the hell was that?” he demanded.

Well that certainly wasn’t the reaction Jonah had anticipated. “I just came out,” he said calmly.

“Yeah, I saw. Everyone saw. I thought we’d agreed the best way to go about it was the interview I sent to Eden this morning.”

Right. Eden. The entire reason he’d had to come out in the first place. “Aspen and I talked about it, and we both agreed that it was important for me to come out on my own terms, not because someone else was threatening me.”

Christian turned to Aspen, his eyebrows raised. “You knew? When you came to say hi to me, you knew about this?”

Aspen nodded. “We talked about it one morning we were working on the interview. I told him it was ultimately his decision, but I didn’t see that it would hurt things to come out a day early.”

“I didn’t like how Eden used you to hurt me,” Jonah said. “I had a way to take away her power, so I did. Now, she has nothing.”

That wasn’t quite true. She still had the Instagram pictures, but those meant nothing now that he was out. Everyone knew he’d been to Kentucky.

“And you were ready to come out this way, were you?”

“No,” he said honestly. “If it were up to me, I would have stayed in the closet for a much longer time while I tried to figure things out. But I didn’t have that luxury. It was either be exposed or expose myself, and this way, at least I could speak directly to multiple reporters instead of trust that Eden wouldn’t alter anything in the interview.”

Christian shook his head, a slow smile spreading across his lips. “I cannot believe you. You’re absolutely crazy, I hope you know that.”

Jonah winked at him. “Yeah, crazy about you.”

Both Aspen and Christian groaned, but Jonah just laughed. Sure, it was a bad pickup line, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, he was free to say it now. He didn’t have to worry about who overheard him or what they might spread around. He could tell Christian exactly how he felt about him.

“Hey Aspen, can you give us a few minutes?” he asked.

She arched an eyebrow. “You want me to go out there in the middle of dozens of bloodthirsty reporters who’ll want a statement from you through me?”

“They’re all at lunch,” Christian said. “One of the reporters told me they were breaking for lunch after this.”

“See?”

“Fine,” Aspen said in mock-exasperation. “I swear, I need a raise.”

“I’ll let you have two weeks’ vacation.”

“Seriously?” She snorted. “You wouldn’t know what to do without me for two weeks.”

She was probably right. At the very least, she would need to leave a detailed schedule of what he was supposed to be doing and who he was supposed to be interviewed by during those two weeks.

As soon as she closed the door behind her, Christian crossed the room and pulled him into a hug so tight Jonah thought he felt his ribs crack.

“I cannot believe you did that,” he said, a smile in his voice. “You got up there in front of all those people and you just… did it. What was that thing you did with the paper? Did you write out what you were going to say?”

Jonah nodded against Christian’s shoulder. “Aspen helped me write it. We used a lot of stuff from the interview you turned in to Eden, actually. But it just… it didn’t feel right. It was too stiff. I wanted to say how I felt. How you made me see things.”

“I thought I recognized some of what you were saying. It was what I told you at the cabin.”

“Yeah. You have no idea how helpful it was for me. It’s what I needed to hear.”

“What about your parents? Everyone back home?” Christian asked.

“They’re taking it well, all things considered. Mason knew, obviously, but coming out to Mom and Dad and telling them I was seeing ‘little Christian Miller’ was interesting.”

He’d called his parents as soon as he’d made the decision to come out at the press tour. Predictably, they’d been surprised. After all, he’d only ever dated women and he’d never given any outward indication of being interested in men. But they hadn’t judged him and they’d wished him well in the relationship. It helped, too, that they’d met Christian before and knew he was a good guy.

“Oh god,” Christian said with a groan. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to face them again.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Mom gave me a fifteen-minute lecture on treating you right. So I think she approves of you.”

His dad hadn’t had much to say, but he was a man of few words. What mattered was that he’d told Jonah nothing had changed. He was still their only son and they would never disown him.

His grandmother’s reaction had been remarkably different, but he’d expected that. And while he didn’t think she’d ever change her thinking, she at least ended the conversation by saying she loved him. That was a start.

“I can’t believe you told them.” Christian let out a disbelieving laugh.

“Well what was I supposed to do? Wait for them to find out in the news?”

Now that his secret was out, it was going to be everywhere. Not just among entertainment magazines and websites. It would make the nightly news. Every household in America would know that Jonah McGreggor liked men and women. And Jonah found he didn’t actually care. None of them knew him. Sure, they thought they did. People ran fan blogs dedicated to him and Twitter accounts that discussed his career and personal life. They knew how tall he was and his favorite Christmas gift he’d ever gotten. But they didn’t know him. And they certainly didn’t know a thing about his relationship with Christian.

“Well, I’m proud of you,” Christian said. He pulled back just enough to kiss Jonah on the lips. “What you did was hard. Coming out is never easy, but at least I only have to come out with the people I meet. You just came out to everyone who knows your name.”

“I know. And if they don’t want to watch my movies because of it, okay. There’ll be other people to watch it for them.”

“See? This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m glad someone finally got through to you.”

Jonah grinned. “Where would I be without you?”

“Still in the closet.”

“Don’t get smart with me or you’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight.” Christian’s expression sobered immediately, and Jonah frowned. “That was a joke. You know that, right? I’m not actually going to make you sleep on the couch. Although it does make a pretty decent b—”

“No, I know it was a joke. It’s just… Eden said she wouldn’t keep paying for my AirBnb since I’m not working for her anymore. She gave me two weeks to find somewhere else to live and I don’t really know where I’m going to move. All the apartments I could find are studios or like… a room in a shared house, but I don’t have a job lined up and I don’t know if I can afford the rent here.”

That was his concern? Jonah cupped Christian’s cheek and drew him in for a tender kiss, grazing Christian’s bottom lip with his teeth. He held him against his chest, praying Christian could understand exactly how he felt through his touch. When he finally pulled away, Christian chased him, and Jonah gave him another peck.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “You’re moving in with me.”

Christian looked startled. “Really? I mean, thank you. I promise I didn’t tell you just so you would offer me a place to stay.”

“I know.” Jonah took his hand and squeezed it. “I love you. I know I should have said it before, but I do. So you don’t ever have to worry about where you’re going to stay. You’re going to stay with me. Right where you belong.”