He turned his gaze to the floor. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t regret being so generous.
“Why didn’t you want to go out with me?”
I started to spout off, Why the hell did you want to go out with me? but stopped myself and calmly said, “Because you didn’t seem like my type.”
“What’s your type?” His eyes bored into mine as he waited for my answer.
“Not the guy in the tabloids with a different girl each night.”
His eyes grew wide. “So you just believed all of it? You don’t normally believe the things you read, but with me all bets are off? I’m just such a scumbag that of course whatever they print must be true. Right?”
“God, Walker, no,” I lied, although his words actually reflected how I felt. Or used to feel. “I mean, I don’t know. I had no reason to believe otherwise. Should I have?”
The outraged look on his face confused me as I wondered what the point could be to all of this.
“You didn’t stop to think for one second that there might be more to my story than what meets the eye?” he demanded, and my insides suddenly filled with guilt. Why the hell was I feeling guilty when Walker was the man-whore in this situation, not me?
“Why would I?” I shot back. “It seemed so obvious the type of guy you were. Not like it’s surprising in this town. Why would I question it?” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I didn’t want to lie either.
He twisted the cap from his water and tossed the cap on the coffee table, then took a small sip. “I guess you’re right. It probably does look really bad. My publicist keeps telling me to tone it down, but I’ve never seen anything wrong with it.”
I sighed, my hopes for Walker being decent plummeting more with each second that passed. “Most guys like sleeping around. I can see that you wouldn’t be the exception to that rule.”
Walker choked in mid-swallow and reached for a napkin. “You think I’m sleeping with all those girls they take my picture with?”
“Aren’t you?”
He coughed and pounded at his chest with his fist before taking another gulp of water to clear his throat. “No. Listen, Madison, what do you know about me?” He leaned his body forward to close the gap between us and I defensively leaned away, my skin pressing back against the cool leather of my couch.
“Not much.” I shrugged. “I know that you’ve been singing most of your life and that you grew up in Malibu.”
“Stop. That part.” He looked meaningfully into my eyes.
“The you-grew-up-in-Malibu part?” I scrunched my face, not understanding what he was getting at.
“I’m from here. I’ve lived here my whole life. I went to school and played music at the same time. Those girls that I’m always photographed with…” He blew out a breath and reached across the space between us to touch my cheek, and my eyes closed for a second at the warmth of his skin. “Those girls are my friends. They always have been and they keep me out of trouble. As long as I’m with them, I’m not going home with some groupie who wants to use me so they can sell a story. So yeah, you might see pictures of me leaving with a new girl every night, but I’ve known that person pretty much my whole life. I’m not some crazy player who has one-night stands anymore. Jesus, do you even listen to the lyrics of my songs?”
He sounded offended as my mind searched to not only recall some of Walker’s songs, but the lyrics as well. In this moment all I could think about was his fingers on my skin and that kiss in the elevator. But he was right. His music was romantic, the lyrics filled with sweet words and deep emotions. They were songs about lost loves, albeit sometimes sung in a rap god sort of way.
“So you’ve never slept around? Nothing they say about you is true?”
His gaze flicked away as he lowered his head and massaged the back of his neck with his fingers. “To be honest, after my mom died, I went a little off the rails.”
“I’m so sorry.”
The months after his mom passed away filtered into my memory. Gossip-laden headlines sprang to my mind as I recalled that period in Walker’s life. That was when he started making the news daily in a negative manner.
“She was really sick,” he said in a low voice, then looked up at me. “You remember?”
My eyebrows knitted together as I sat there perplexed. “Remember? What do you mean?”
Walker stared at me for a moment, and when I said nothing more, he said, “Sorry, I just figured you’d remember from the press or the news or something. Anyway, when she finally died, I was happy she wasn’t in pain anymore, but I’d also lost my best friend. She was my biggest fan, you know? So I drank too much, screwed too many girls, and almost blew it all. That’s when my friends stepped in. They told me I was out of control and that I was going to ruin everything I’d worked for my whole life. And they said my mom wouldn’t be happy. That practically fucking killed me.”
He grimaced before looking straight at me. “Don’t hate me for this.”
Touched by how vulnerable he was making himself, I said, “I won’t.”
“Promise,” he insisted.
I smacked him on the shoulder. “I can’t promise.”
“Then I’m not telling you.”
I groaned. “Okay, okay. I promise.”
“You promise what?” he prompted.
“I promise I won’t hate you.”
“My friends pretty much staged an intervention, but they called it a whore-vention.” He tried to smile but couldn’t, and I giggled at the name. “They made me promise that if I was going out, at least one of them had to be with me. And I didn’t have to stop drinking, but I had to stop giving all my money to strippers and the blackjack table, and I had to stop fighting strangers and stop sleeping with random girls. That’s basically it.”
He winced and asked tentatively, “So, do you hate me?”
I had already assumed that Walker was as typical as they came. After all, I’d been familiar with his antics before going out with him this evening. If I felt any emotion at all at this point, it was understanding. “No, I’m shocked actually. I can’t believe no one’s ever put it together that the girls are the same.”
His face relaxed and he nodded. “I know, right? I never go to a club alone and I always leave with the same friends I came with. It’s just that no one sees that part. They take their pictures, they angle them a certain way, edit them, crop them, do whatever they want and say whatever they want, and people believe them.”
The lack of bitterness or anger in his tone surprised me. He sounded completely at peace with it all.
“I wouldn’t be able to stand that,” I confessed.
“Which part?”
“The part where people thought things about me that weren’t true. I’d go nuts,” I said with a small laugh.
He reached out his hand and took mine in his. “You would go nuts trying to change everyone’s opinion of you. That in itself is a full-time job. There are some things you just have to let go of, and that’s one of them.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
He shrugged. “Depends on what they say.”
Glancing up at the clock on my wall, I noted how late it was. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to get to bed. I have to work in the morning.”
Walker glanced toward the clock as well, then frowned. “We haven’t talked about your work yet.”
“I really don’t want to. Not tonight. Can I tell you about it some other time?” Considering how my emotions had been so up and down from the events of the entire day and night, it was a wonder I hadn’t crashed already.
He cocked his head to one side. “You really weren’t going to go out with me?”
“I wasn’t even going to call you back,” I deadpanned.
“Ouch.” Pushing himself off the couch, he reached for my hands and pulled me to my feet. His lean frame towered over me, especially now that I was barefoot. Taking a step toward me, he tugged my body hard against his as sexual awareness zapped through me. When he kissed the top of my head, his breath warmed my hair.