Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 43

Lily felt hungover, even though she’d barely drunk the night before. She had posted the video around eight o’clock, and for hours she’d come close to taking it down. After seeing it, Mikki had called her, praising her bravery, which helped. He also came over with a pizza, which they split, and a bottle of prosecco “to celebrate her recent epiphanies.” She sobbed on his shoulder at one point, and then they spent the rest of the night watching various adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, which Mikki did under duress. “I must love you,” he muttered, shaking his head.

He’d left around one o’clock in the morning, telling her he’d text and check in on her the next day and admonishing her to “leave the video up.” She’d shut down her computer and her phone, trying to avoid temptation. She’d tossed and turned, barely sleeping. She finally gave up and got up at seven and had spent the day torturing herself by watching old Tobin videos. Not theirs, though. That would hurt too much.

She didn’t have anything in her apartment to eat—or, if she was honest, nothing she wanted to eat—so she put in a big sushi order for delivery. It was one of her favorite comfort foods, one she didn’t indulge in often. Probably because she knew they were going to send four sets of chopsticks with her order. She’d just do what she always did: turn up her TV and pretend that there were other people in the apartment, rather than admit that one woman was eating all those rolls and sashimi. Although if ever there was a time to say “screw you” to convention, it’d be now, she thought obstinately. She was heartbroken. Hell, she should’ve ordered a sheet cake to go, as well.

The door knocked, and she looked down at herself. She was wearing a pair of fuzzy flannel pajama pants and a tank top, no makeup, her hair probably sticking out at all angles. Well, screw it. They’d probably seen worse, right? And what did she care if they thought she looked awful?

She opened the door, steeling herself . . . then paused, blinking in disbelief when she realized who was at the door.

Tobin was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and his red sneakers. His laptop bag was slung across his broad chest, and he was tugging a roller bag behind him. “Hey there,” he said, looking surprisingly uncertain and serious. “Can I come in?”

She nodded, mute, and stepped aside so he could walk in. She shut the door as he toed his shoes off.

“I know this is kind of without warning,” he said slowly. “Honestly, I didn’t expect to find myself here.”

She nodded again. She certainly didn’t expect to see him here at all, much less this soon. She took a deep breath. “I . . . did you see my video?”

He took off his laptop bag, putting his stuff off to one side. He looked at her, his whiskey-brown eyes alight. “Yeah. Everybody I know linked me to that thing.” He paused. “Except you.”

“You told me you needed time, and space,” Lily said, biting her lip. “I wasn’t sure if what I did was okay. I wasn’t trying to manipulate you or anything . . .”

“Lily, it’s okay,” he said, reaching out and rubbing her arms gently. She almost fainted with sheer relief.

“I know it could’ve looked fake,” she said. “I’m trying to be more . . . real. I want to be the Lily I was when I was with you,” she said. “Not this curated, crafted, plastic Lily. Even if it means sometimes I’m a mess, or I curse, or I do stuff that’s silly. I don’t want to keep trying to be perfect. I want to be me.”

He smiled, one of his hands coming up to cup the side of her face. She sighed, curving her cheek into his palm and enjoying the warmth. “You absolutely should be you,” he said.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “I never should’ve pushed you like that. You were telling me you were burned out, and all I could think of was your career and how successful you should be.”

“You were looking out for me,” he said. “I get that.”

“I was being pushy, and I wasn’t looking at how you were feeling,” she protested. “I was hurting you.”

“Not deliberately.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t ever want to hurt you, Tobin. And I especially don’t want you to feel like I don’t believe in you.” She sniffled a little.

He wrapped her in his arms, and she rubbed her face against his shirt, inhaling the scent of him. God, she’d missed this. How could she have gotten addicted to the way somebody smelled so damned quickly? “I’m sorry too,” he said. “It just . . . between my agents and my parents, I just felt like I really needed somebody in my corner. And I thought we were going somewhere . . .”

“I am! We are!” she said, the sound a little muffled against his chest. She pulled back to look at him, seeing him smiling at her, that lopsided smile she loved. “I believe in you, Tobin. That is part of why I was pushing, but . . . I was just so fixated on what being a success was, and what being a failure was, that I missed entirely whose opinions on both success and failure mattered. And . . . I want us to, um, be going somewhere. With you.” She paused. “Like . . . a relationship. That’s what we were talking about that night, right?”

He smiled. “You said you loved me, in your video,” he said softly. “I mean, I assume that was me.”

She smacked his arm. “Of course it was you,” she said, rolling her eyes. Then she softened. “And . . . yes. I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said, pressing a kiss against her lips. “It’s kind of sudden, but I’ve never been as sure of anything in my life.”

“It’s over twenty years coming. It’s not that sudden,” she pointed out with a grin. He smiled back, holding her tight.

“What does that mean for us from here?” More kisses. He kissed her temple, the space behind her ear. She felt herself squirming as heat rushed through her veins.

Her breathing went uneven, and she struggled to focus. “Yes. Talking. Important,” she said, causing him to laugh against the skin at her throat. “Um . . . when is your flight?”

“I changed it to tomorrow,” he said. “I thought, one way or another, we’d need to talk. I wanted to see where we were, and what we were going to do moving forward.”

She nudged him back. “If you want to talk, you need to stop kissing me like that,” she scolded him playfully. “Because I can’t think when you do that.”

He nodded, his eyes low lidded and heated. “Good point.”

“Do you still want me to come with you?”

He startled. “Would you?”

She bit her lip. She hadn’t thought this opportunity would come up, so she hadn’t decided, hadn’t planned. Still . . .

“I don’t want to abandon my channel altogether,” she said slowly. “I love you, but it is still important to me. I don’t think that’s unfair.”

“It’s not,” he reassured her, stroking her hair. He seemed eager to touch her, almost unable to help himself, and she found she felt the same. She kept stepping closer to him, feeling his body heat. “I’m not asking you to do what I do or feel the same way about your career that I do about mine. I’d love it if you could come with me, but that’s because I love being with you, and I do hate the idea of being away from you for a few months.”

“I don’t like the idea of that either,” she admitted, her mind whirring. “If I decided to go, it might not be for the whole trip.”

His eyes shone. “A few weeks, maybe?”

“And I would want to film at least a bit,” she said. “Not as much as I have been posting. But at least one or two.”

He nodded. “As long as I have . . . let’s say a week, where we can just hang out? Just us?”

“That sounds good, actually,” she said with a smile. “I can’t remember the last time I took a real vacation.”

“Then this might be exactly what you need,” Tobin said, framing her face in his hands. “You can go back to LA whenever you like. And then I’ll come back, and we can be together whenever we want.”

She nodded, then frowned. “There is the little fact that we live in different cities,” she pointed out.

“Just a few hours away,” he said. “I hate the commute, but you are more than worth it. I’d put up with eight hours of traffic if you were at the end of it.”

“That,” she said with a grin, “is possibly the biggest declaration of love I have ever heard. I know how much you hate traffic.”

“Hell, maybe I’ll move up here,” he mused.

Her eyes widened. “But you said LA was a cesspool!”

“I love you,” he said. “And I’m going to spend as much time as possible to show you just what that means.”

She smiled. She wasn’t sure that would be necessary—but then, she didn’t want to show all her cards just yet. They’d have plenty of time to discuss it, and make plans . . . and spend time not making plans, and seeing where things went.

She stood on tiptoes, kissing him thoroughly, thrilling in the feel of his arms wrapping tight and holding her flush against his rapidly hardening body. “God, I missed you,” she said against his lips and felt him smile.

The door knocked, and she jolted. Tobin’s eyebrow rose.

“That’s my lunch,” she said, quickly getting the door and grabbing the delivery. “Um . . . hope you like sushi?”

“Sushi in a minute,” he said, putting the order in the fridge. Then he tugged her to the bedroom, where he proceeded to show her just how much he missed her, and she returned the favor. And then some.