Page 74 of His Girl Hollywood
He shook his head. “No. But he killed her career. He robbed her of the life she wanted and deserved.” His eyes welled with tears and he closed them. Arlene dusted his eyelashes with kisses, tasting the salt pooling there. Her heart hurt. For Don and everything he’d lost because of Frankie.
“He sent one of his boys after us. Threw lye in her face. It scarred her permanently. She still wanted to be with me, to marry me. Clung to me the whole cab ride to the hospital, while I knew that this was the end. How could I go on seeing her, knowing that next time Frankie might send something worse? I brought her to the hospital and then went out and got so drunk I didn’t know who or where I was for three days. I wanted to protect her. So, I left her alone. Frankie sent one of his goons to the hospital to tell her I’d broken things off because of her face. Because it repulsed me.
“When I’d sobered up enough to realize what he’d done, I tried to contact her, to explain it wasn’t true. That I couldn’t see her again because I’d already ruined her life. But she didn’t answer a single phone call. I went to her apartment even, knowing it was a risk. But it was empty. Frankie had bought her a ticket back to her hometownin Pennsylvania. The last time I ever saw her was that terrible night, her face blistering over as the acid ate through it.”
He buried his face in his hands and broke down. Arlene wrapped her arm around his shoulders and held him, letting him cry until there were no tears left. She suspected he’d never let himself feel the weight of this so fully. When he was through, he wrapped her in a tight embrace and pulled them down to the mattress together. She brushed a kiss to Don’s lips.
She understood now. Why Don had never told her about Frankie. Why he’d completely disappeared, never writing, never calling. “Is that why you didn’t reach out about the funeral?”
Don bit his lip and nodded. “I wasn’t lying when I said that Frankie hid your telegram from me. That I found out too late to do anything about it. But even if I had, I don’t think I would’ve come. Probably wouldn’t have even called. I would’ve been too afraid. To give Frankie proof that there was somebody else I cared about. Someone else he could hurt or abuse to make me fall in line.”
Arlene laid her head against his bare chest and snuggled in to him. They lay in silence for a moment, his hand absentmindedly caressing her back, wandering up and down her spine. She’d thought that Don had forgotten her, had left her to grieve alone. When he’d been trying to protect her. “The other night, I thought you’d abandoned me again. That you’d tucked me into a taxi and gone off to make whoopee with Eleanor. When I called you at the hotel, to come because my mother was sick—”
A look of concern flashed across his face. “She’s fine. Took a spill, bruised her hip pretty bad, but she’s okay.” Don swallowed and then looked at her, waiting for her to continue. “When I called and you weren’t there, I felt—” Her voice broke. He squeezed her hand, urging her to continue. “I felt like I’d been a prize idiot. Trusting you. Thinking you’d changed. That our date meant something.”
She looked at him and his eyes were closed, a mask of guilt obscuring his face. “Of course you thought that. I hadn’t given you any reason not to think the worst of me.”
She reached out and gently cupped his cheek, turning his face toward hers. “Hey, hey, no, look at me. Don, that’s not true. I just, I was so hurt when you left before, so caught up in my schoolgirl crush, that I was determined not to let you break my heart again. When you never wrote, never so much as sent a Christmas card, I thought that maybe you’d never been the man I thought you were.”
He hissed. “God, I’ve been an ass.”
“So have I. It was wrong of me to be so cold to you when you arrived here. To try to hold you at arm’s length. To doubt you when you told me there had never been anything between you and Eleanor. To make you sneak out of my house in the middle of the night. I made you feel like I was ashamed of you.” She reached out and clasped his face between her hands, looking into his eyes. “Don, I could never be ashamed of you. I’m prouder of you than anyone I’ve ever known. Proud that you escaped this house and your father and chased your dream. That you achieved it. It was all I ever wanted for you.”
His eyes glistened, and it broke her heart a little. “And all I ever wanted for you was this—to direct, to write. Listening to you win that Oscar over the radio was one of the best moments of my life. I was so damn happy for you. You had what you always desired most in this world.”
She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself. This old secret would haunt her forever if she didn’t release it. “That wasn’t what I desired most in the world.” She couldn’t look at him and spoke the words toward the bed, while she picked at a stray thread in the quilt.
He extended his arm and pulled her back against him. Shecould never get enough of the feeling of him, warm and solid, pressed against her. “No?” he asked, whispering in her ear and kissing at the spot behind it on her neck.
She looked at him then, finally ready to confess. “You were,” she said as she exhaled, the words coming out in a rush of breath. He grabbed her hands and clasped them together between his, kissing her fingers. He looked slightly stunned.
“I never knew,” he whispered, dotting her hands with kisses. “I was sure you thought of me as a brother, some punk kid you grew up with.” He looked up at her and there were real tears in his eyes. “I would’ve never, ever hurt you on purpose.”
She was crying now too, tears streaming down her face. But she couldn’t repress a smile. “I know that now.” She lifted their hands, still interlocked, and kissed them. A ray of moonlight hit the penny lying on the nightstand next to the bed. It brought back the memory of that day, as fresh as it were yesterday. “Do you remember what I said the day that I gave you that penny?”
He got a bemused look on his face. “That it was for luck. It’s why I’d held onto it all this time.” But a flash of recognition appeared in his eyes. “Wait, no, there was something else. You said it wasn’t just for luck. But the train left the station before you could tell me.”
She bit her lip, worrying it with anxiety. “I wanted to tell you…that you were my dream. That I gave that to you so you wouldn’t forget me. That it was how I wanted you to know—and to remember—that I loved you.”
He nodded and reached for the penny, pressing it to his lips before setting it back on the nightstand. “I think some part of me must have sensed that. As long as I had it with me, I felt like you were there. Reminding me that you were rooting for me. When I was in a tough spot or nervous or on the verge of something big, I’d touch it and be instantly reassured.”
The words made her heart swell. He had never forgotten her, never abandoned her. He’d carried her with him every day, touching the penny like a talisman when he needed her most. “I wanted to be there for you so badly,” she confessed.
“You were.” She dusted his face with kisses. His cheeks were covered in a layer of scruff, a result of his having not shaved for two days, and it burned her lips with a blend of pleasure and pain. She sighed with happiness and leaned her head against her pillow, placing a kiss on his shoulder. She didn’t want to pop the bubble of contentment that filled this room. But there was still one thing she had to know.
“At the cannery, before you went down the chute, you told me something, I don’t know if you remember or—”
He stopped her mouth with a kiss, exploring her with a leisurely passion that made her hungry for him anew. When he came up for air, he murmured against her lips, “Do you think I would forget telling you that I love you?”
She laughed, a mixture of relief and joy, against his mouth. “I was afraid that—”
He held her face between his hands and looked in her eyes, pressing a kiss to her open mouth once more. “I’m tired of being afraid. I don’t want you or me or anyone I love to be afraid anymore. And I especially don’t want you to doubt me. Arlene Morgan, I love you. With all of my heart and soul and my dancing feet, I love you.”
She smiled and nudged her nose to his, kissing him gently. “And I love you. I always have.”
“Well.” He smirked, his hand finding its way back to her breast. “I’ve got some catching up to do, but for all the days you’ve loved me, I promise you a hundred, no, a thousand more.”
He slid his hands down her back and gripped her bottom, rolling her onto her back, and sucked at her neck. This was bliss. Thiswas better than the night she had won the Oscar. This was everything she’d ever dreamed of and never imagined could really be hers. But he stopped all of a sudden and sat up. “Shit.”