Noah

"I half expected reporters to come at us," he confessed.

"Nah. Had we been at home, then yeah." Traveling to Paris didn’t come that cheap, though. I wasn’t even on the radar in French media, and they'd only send paparazzi overseas or from the UK if I'd been more famous. "Like Tennyson said, it'll blow over fast—"

"Uh-oh." Julian was staring at his phone. "Sophie's PA texted me this." He showed me the display, and at first, I didn’t know what I was looking at. It'd been ages since I was on Twitter. "Your ex made a comment on Twitter, and Sophie responded."

"That fuckin' cunt." Emma's involvement was the last goddamn thing I needed. But I should've seen this coming. "Can I see what Emma wrote? Sophie had to have been enraged if she got in the middle of it."

Because of Sophie's past as a teenage diva, she'd learned her lesson and kept a low profile these days. She didn’t even use her official Twitter much. Her PA and publicist handled that.

Julian handed me his phone, and there was Emma's message with a link to one of the countless articles about him and me.

"This explains so much. No wonder I couldn’t save our relationship."

I rolled my eyes.

Was she fucking serious?

She didn’t have any particular status in Hollywood, but thanks to Sophie's response, each comment was going viral. There were a few, evidently.

"Where's Sophie's reply?" I asked. As soon as the words left me, I found the link, and I laughed.

"Followed the link, surprised to see it wasn’t a story about you cheating your ass off on the guy you wanted a ring from. #byefelicia."

"There's more." Julian updated Emma's page.

"One other person doesn’t equal 'cheating my ass off.' I guess he lied to you too! #notevenagoodactress"

"Mother of Christ, she just admitted the infidelity to hundreds of thousands of people." I shook my head. "I swear she wasn’t always so fucking stupid."

Sophie's only response to that was "Good grief." Now everything was getting screencapped and retweeted by her fanbase.

"I have a feeling Emma will regret this later." Julian made a face. "It's probably wrong that I enjoyed this. It angers me that she hurt you, though. Plus—jealousy is a nasty bitch."

I chuckled and turned my baseball cap around so the brim wouldn’t be in the way when I kissed him. "What do you have to be jealous for, huh?"

"It's irrational, I know." He twisted my nipple and leaned closer, resting his head on my shoulder. "You settled down with her. We'll have that too, right?"

That right there went straight to the heart. "Un-fucking-doubtedly." I gripped his chin and kissed him. "You wanna get a house together?"

I'd come a long way, hadn't I? It was amusing now. When I left Mendocino, I'd sworn, never again. Now, here I was. But everything was different with Julian.

"I love the loft."

I hummed, leaving a slow trail of kisses along his jaw. "We're not getting rid of it. We could always get a second place, though. Maybe a beach house?"

Having access to a pool where I could stare at Julian doing laps was appealing as fuck.

It kinda spiraled from there. Barbecues, runs along the beach, sunsets, poker nights—a new place to fill with memories that were only ours.

Fuckin' hell, I had it bad.

"I really like the sound of that," he murmured.

"Me too." What I didn’t like was the sound of my phone going off. "What now?"

Julian's vibrated at the same time, so we checked our messages.

I had one from Sophie, a miles-long apology about not thinking before speaking. Or tweeting, rather. She was apologizing for revealing Emma's infidelity on Twitter without permission, and now she was feeling awful. Truth be told, I hadn't given it a single thought.

"I got a text from Lucy." Julian snickered, referring to Sophie's PA. "Emma deleted her comments about you. But you know, once it's on the internet…"

I grinned faintly and replied to Sophie.

Don't worry about it, hon. I appreciate it, but I really don't care anymore. Emma's in the past. You did good. ;)

This time, I turned the phone off. "How about we take a lazy day at the hotel?" I suggested. "We could burn some calories in bed, order room service, and forget phones exist."

Julian practically purred with approval. "I only need to meet up with Tennyson first. We have some lyrics to discuss."

I huffed. "And I take it the fucking director's still not important enough to be there for those meetings?"

I was only half teasing. I was curious as fuck about what they were working on together, and the score would play a big part once we reached post-production. But I supposed I could wait, and I knew it mattered a lot to Julian to do this independently. He wanted to prove himself.

"Pretty much." He smirked and tucked thirty euros under the basket where the croissants had been. "Race ya back to the hotel?"