Breaking Stars (The Celebrity 2)

“Tatum, it’s so pretty! It looks like I’m flying through branches and with the trees!” I cried out in delight as he pushed me higher and higher, each forward movement sending me more and more into a state of bliss. My hair flew all around me, covering my face before blowing away again. I felt like I was soaring, and I wanted to thank the heavens for giving me the wings to fly.

Glancing back at him, I asked, “So, what did you want to do after school? I mean, did you want to play professional football for a living?”

“Not really. Playing football helped pay my tuition, and without that scholarship, my parents would have gone into serious debt to get me into school. Football was a means to an end, from my perspective.”

“But did you enjoy playing, at least?”

He laughed. “Oh, hell yeah! I loved it. I just didn’t want to do it forever.”

“Well, if you didn’t want to play football, then what did you want to do?” As the swing fell to where Tatum’s hands would normally reach for me, I braced for the contact, but it didn’t come. I turned to look at him and made the swing go crooked as it moved forward again, wobbling from side to side.

“I’ll tell you after you tell me more stuff about you,” he said.

“What do you want to know?” I offered, wondering what he would ask and if there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t honestly tell him.

He pulled the swing to a stop and leaned toward me like he was going to confess a secret before asking, “Why were you really driving across the country? Was it all because of Douchepants?” Reaching for my hand, he grabbed it, planted a kiss on the top, then pulled me back and sent me swinging again toward the trees.

“No,” I shouted immediately before pondering on where to start exactly. “I just needed to get away. I’d been telling my team that I wanted to go to college for a few years now, but they kept putting me off. It was always ‘Not now, Paige’ or ‘You can do that later,’ you know?”

Tatum nodded that he understood, and I continued. “But I finally realized that later was a day that was never gonna come. They were never gonna let me stop working to go to school. And then my little sister started applying to colleges and hearing back from them, and now she’s getting ready to move on with her life and move out.”

“And you were jealous?” he asked, his tone understanding and not judgmental.

“I was. I was totally jealous. Stupid, right?” I slowed my kicks and waved Tatum’s hands off as the swing came to a slow stop.

“Not at all. Most of us are raised as products of our environment. A lot of the kids here are raised to take over their family farms, or run a shop, or something. But I’m sure where you grew up, everyone planned on going to school and then going to college. We all follow these paths that are set before us, whether we realize we’re doing it or not.”

It felt like a light bulb clicked in my brain as I stared at Tatum. “You are so right. So, so right. I always assumed that that was what I would do. I would graduate from high school and go to college. I’d never planned on being an actress or anything like that. All that stuff came out of nowhere.”

Tatum nodded. “But the things you’d wanted back then, you still want now. It’s like having unfulfilled dreams. Or parts of your life you always thought you’d have and then they got taken away from you. The want doesn’t go away simply because the opportunity did.” He shrugged, obviously completely getting it. Maybe because he’d lived it too.

“How’d you get so smart?” I kicked playfully at his leg with my foot, and he grabbed on.

> “How’d you get so dumb?”

I opened my mouth to say something in response, but all I could do was laugh. And then I couldn’t stop.

“Your turn,” I told him through my laughing fit.

“For what?” He raised his eyebrows and smirked at me.

“To tell me what you wanted to do after college.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t tell me?” My stomach instantly tensed up. I had just shared so much of myself with him, and he didn’t want to share this with me?

“Not here. I’ll show you when we get back to the barn.”

Curious, I was practically dancing in my seat with impatience. “Let’s go back there now then.”

“Nah. Not yet. You’re not done flying through the trees.” He pushed at my back again and I sailed into the humid air.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been on a swing. How come we forget how fun they are?”

“We forget all kinds of things once we grow up. But I knew you’d like it.”

As I pumped my feet, my brown hair blowing all around me as I floated, I thought about how quickly my relationship with Tatum had changed. How all it took was one kiss in the middle of a bar to change everything between us.