Page 51 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Chris

W hen my doorbell rings that night, I’m shocked to see everyone I texted is there.

Like, every single one of them and more.

Mac and Shelby have brought Nathan and Jess, and Lana and Raph are with their girls Nova and Aurora.

I squeal and dance around with the girls because I haven’t seen them since they came back from down under.

To my shock, Annie’s here too, back from New York, and I give her a huge, teary squeeze because I haven’t seen her in even longer.

But the best part? They brought Dolly. Without me even asking.

She smiles, looking so genuinely happy to be included I feel my eyes growing wet.

“Thank you so much for coming, guys,” I say, definitely crying now.

“We would have come back from Australia early for this,” Raph says, tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth as he settles in my easy chair, pulling Lana onto his lap .

“Ew,” Nova says, yanking the popcorn out of his reach. He grins. They have a great relationship; she’s just being her perfect teenage self.

“Speak for yourself,” Lana says. “They have TVs down there.” She winks at me.

I laugh, because Lana would have 100 percent come back early if I’d asked her to.

Nate announces he’s going to be putting on an animated movie in my spare room.

It’s much too young for him, so I smile gratefully as all the kids follow him in there like he’s the Pied Piper.

Which he is. He’s the sweetest young man I’ve ever met, and I’m honored he’s here.

I’m sure twenty-year-old boys have much better things to do.

When the show finally comes on, I’m sweating. Like quite literally gushing sweat. It’s still January, but I have to strip down to a t-shirt and pajama shorts I’m so overheated.

“I’m not sure I can watch,” I say at the last minute. Lana and Dolly exchange a look, then plop themselves down on either side of me, hooking their arms through mine.

“You’re watching,” Lana says decisively.

“But you’re not alone,” Dolly assures me.

Shelby squeezes my cheeks and kisses me on the forehead like a mom. “Ever,” she says. Then she settles herself on the floor at my knees, opening her arms for baby Jess, who toddled back out of the other room almost immediately.

The music for the show comes on, and we all watch, rapt, as the familiar opening music plays and Rob Vancy’s silver swoop of hair dominates the screen.

“Folks, we have got a show for you tonight. This evening, I’m welcoming a guest who has never once done an interview of this nature.

A man who’s been consistently evasive when asked about his personal life, both past and present.

Who, I daresay, has turned on the press in the past for daring to want to know more about his life. Hopper Donnach, folks.”

The live audience goes wild. So do my insides.

“He looks nervous,” I whisper. Hopper’s got his hands flat on his gray suit pants, which fit him like a dream, of course.

He looks handsome, as always. But when his eyes—those ice blue eyes that looked into mine and told me “ I’ve got you ” lock with the camera, I feel him.

It’s like everything and everyone falls away, and he’s looking directly at me.

Maybe every woman in the world feels like that.

When the din finally dies down, Rob Vancy leans forward, setting down the cards in his hands like this is all going to be entirely off script. “What made you decide to tell your story, Hopper?”

Hopper clears his throat. “There’s this girl,” he says.

The crowd laughs and hoots, but my skin tingles all over. Because I know he’s not joking. Dolly squeezes my right arm. On my left, Lana puts her hand to her mouth.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” Raph asks.

“Shh!” everyone says.

Rob asks him to tell him about what it was like growing up in the spotlight.

And for the first time in Hopper’s career, he does.

He tells him everything. He talks about how close he was with his mom as a kid, how he used to ride BMX bikes in the woods behind his house.

How his dad tricked him into going to his first audition.

How awful the conditions were on set for him, how his father would vanish for days at a time, and how he was cut off from his mom, who was told all was well.

He says none of this with malice. Just as if stating the facts.

But the emotion is present in his eyes. In the way his hands are tight on his lap.

How he drinks water like a man in a desert whenever Rob talks.

“He’s torturing himself,” Shelby says, her voice tight with empathy.

“I don’t think so,” Lana says. “I think it would be torture to hold all that in.”

“Why have you never told this to anyone before?” Rob asks on screen.

“Because I never wanted people’s sympathy. Or their pity. I’m very fortunate to be where I am. To get to do what I do. And in a way, I’m grateful, since I do love making movies. I just don’t always get to make the ones that call to me.”

“But why now ?” Rob presses. “You contacted us. You urgently wanted to do this interview. We happily cleared our schedule for you, of course. You’re our biggest scoop, and you scooped yourself.”

The audience laughs. But for the first time in the interview, Hopper seems to relax. He looks right into the camera and says, “I wasn’t lying before. There’s this girl. My dream girl. A woman who came into my life a year ago and changed everything, without even knowing it.”

My heart thuds in my chest as Hopper looks into the camera and tells quite literally millions of people that he’s met the love of his life.

“You know, in this life,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how many people surround you; it’s still so easy to feel completely alone.

But it was this person who showed me I’m not alone.

She showed me that to not be alone, you have to open yourself up completely, showing your most vulnerable sides.

Especially if you’ve been hiding them. That’s why I’m here, Rob.

And that’s why I’m going to share some things your audience might hate me for.

This could cost me my career, but to me, it doesn’t matter.

Because, in my eyes, the only person who needs to know this is her.

And I’d burn the world down for her if it meant I got to keep her. ”

Of course they cut to a commercial break then.

Everyone around me is freaking out, speculating about what he’s going to talk about. I want to tell him it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to do this on TV. But I realize this show’s not live. He’s already done this interview. He’s probably sitting at home right now, waiting for me to watch it.

Wondering if I’m still going to be his when it’s done.

I pull out my phone.

CHRIS: I’m watching. Where are you?

He writes back right away .

HOPPER: I’m on a clifftop, looking out at the ocean.

I know he’s in our spot, that lookout where we sat that day, where we had our first kiss. Where he learned who I really was.

CHRIS: Fitting that you’re going to show me all of yourself while you’re there.

HOPPER: I thought so.

CHRIS: Tell me what you see.

HOPPER: The sky is the color of your cheeks when I kiss you.

CHRIS: Cornball.

HOPPER: It’s true. The sunset’s almost as beautiful as you.

“It’s back on,” Lana says, squeezing my hand.

I pocket my phone, my wet eyes back on the screen.

“So this is the moment,” Rob says dramatically, “where Hopper claims we may love him less. But in an interview like this, you only get one side of the story. So we thought we’d do something different.

This time, we’re going to bring in someone with another perspective.

A person who’s known Hopper his entire life and might have different views on the memories Hopper’s shared. ”

My stomach plummets. They’re going to bring out his dad. They’ve done this before. Had a surprise guest who contradicts what the main guest says. Who creates drama in the studio. Everyone eats it up.

“No,” I say, my heart clenching.

Hopper’s face is pale. He wasn’t told about the guest. No one ever is.

I remind myself we were just texting, that he survived this interview, and I will too.

But when the second guest walks out, it’s not Hopper’s father. It’s Mabel.

Mabel, who Hopper fired and probably has an axe to grind with. Mabel, who sabotaged Hopper’s happiness—even when she thought she was doing the right thing.

I close my eyes, unable to watch, but knowing my ears will stay open.

And what happens next is a revelation. Mabel introduces herself and says she’s a former member of Hopper’s team. But more than that, she thinks of Hopper as her son.

“And like any mother,” she says, “I made some grave mistakes.”

It’s Mabel who tells the story of what happened that day with the so-called thugs.

“Hopper was young and in pain. His mother had received a diagnosis that limited their time together to an uncertain period—months or years, they weren’t sure.

And in the meantime, his father was harassing him.

Worse, he was harassing her. Constantly.

Relentlessly. Hopper saw him trying to put his beloved mother in an early grave. ”

As Mabel tells it, Hopper hired a group of bodyguards for her only. He gave them explicit instructions— there are records—to do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

It was his error in wording, surely, but Mabel says she’ll swear to all authorities that it was with the intention of protecting his mother.

Not going after his dad. She tells about the night it happened, saying his father violated a restraining order and, drunk, broke into his mother’s home.

He refused to leave, and one of the men had to forcibly remove him. Still, he came back.

“The men took their jobs seriously,” Mabel says.

“They put him in the hospital. Nearly killed him, truth be told, though Hopper doesn’t know that part.

And I made the decision not to tell anyone how bad it was.

Not his mother, not the authorities, no one.

I told Hopper,” Mabel says with a grimace, “to pay his father off.”

“Mabel, you realize you’re speaking on national television,” Rob says, sounding very serious. “You’re not under oath, but we’re pretty damn close here.”

“I understand that,” Mabel says. “My sole purpose in being here is to tell the world the truth. To relieve the burden from this man’s shoulders.

Who, you should all know, is not the bad-tempered man the world knows him to be.

But the kindest, biggest-hearted man I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.

While I may have brought him shame, I know his mother would have been beyond proud of who he’s become despite what I’ve done. ”

There’s more. Lots more. Hopper talks about meeting me and the accident at the dirt track, though he calls it a vehicular accident, which I know is to protect my identity.

Mabel says she also covered that up. Lied about the extent of my injuries.

Wouldn’t let him visit the hospital on his own.

Had all but a few of the flowers he sent every day diverted so the sheer volume of them wouldn’t alarm the staff.

Hopper says he fell in love with me before he ever saw my face. He doesn’t say it, but it’s clear he never wished his father harm, at least not in the way that it happened. He wanted to protect who he loved. He wanted to love me.

Rob moves on to lighter things toward the end, asking about the Muffin Man incident and then later showing a photo someone snapped of him reading the latest Duke book just the other day in the airport.

“Is that a casual airport read? Or are the rumors of you reprising your Duke role true?”

Screams abound.

“No comment on the movie,” Hopper says when they calm down. “But I didn’t buy that book at the airport. I bought it at this great little store in Redbeard Cove, BC, where I’m filming right now. It’s called Pink Cheeks , and they take online orders of all your favorite romance books.”

Lana screams.

“That’s you!” Shelby yells at Lana, startling Jess on her lap enough that she starts to cry.

“He plugged your store, baby!” Raph hoots at her before picking up the baby and swinging her around, making her instantly forget her startling.

He’s a magic man with kids. He even finds a way to swoop down and kiss Lana square on the lips while Jess still giggles.

Mac, upstaged, growls and pulls Shelby, who’s laughing, onto his lap. Then his baby girl .

“Hopper,” Rob says on screen, bringing us all back. I wipe the now happy tears from my eyes, feeling giddy. And in love. And like I want to pick up the phone and tell Hopper I love him.

I will. But I need to know how this ends.

“This has been your story,” Rob says, “and your life. We thank you for your candid telling of it.”

The camera pans to the audience, zooming in on a group of women in tears. One of them calls, “We love you, Hop!”

I don’t even think about being jealous. The world is finally seeing Hopper the way I do. As a good man under all that pain. As a man as beautiful on the inside as out.

“So now’s your chance to have your final say,” Rob says.

He does this during every interview, and the room collectively holds its breath. None so hard as me.

“Any last words?” Rob asks.

“Yes,” Hopper says. He looks directly at the screen, his eyes right on me, and says, “Over and Out, sweetheart.”