Page 50 of Shy Girls Can’t Date Celebrities (Shy Girls Sweet Romances #6)

“Whoa,” it breathes out of me as I take in the industrial-chic aesthetic of the loft apartment.

Wyatt grins, scuffing his way into the apartment. “This is my place?”

“Cool, huh?” I say, following him into the airy space.

The apartment is lined with exposed, weathered bricks giving it a dark yet romantic feel.

A mix of retro and contemporary furniture fill out the living space, and large warehouse-style windows bring excess light into the apartment.

Above the stainless steel kitchen, is the loft.

It’s lined with a glass wall and a black railing, which continues down the wooden stacked staircase.

Wyatt tilts his head, taking in the stairs. “Savanna would not be impressed with those steps.”

I gesture to the right hand side. “There’s a hallway. Maybe there’s a first floor bedroom.”

Wyatt wiggles his eyebrows. “But that loft does look pretty swanky.”

I giggle. “Yeah, it does.”

Wyatt takes my hand and shuffles toward the hallway on the right. “Let’s check downstairs first.”

We move through the hallway and find a guest bedroom, a bathroom, a home office, and a home gym.

“Okay, this has Savanna written all over it,” Wyatt says, smiling as he sighs with gratitude.

“She definitely wanted you to be supported with a good setup when you left the clinic.”

I fiddle with the strap of my handbag as we wander through the industrial-chic kitchen. The exposed brick and stainless steel mix has a very alluring, masculine vibe. Everything has a place and is well-organized. This leaves me to believe, Wyatt has someone who cooks for him.

We move back into the living area and Wyatt gazes up at the loft space. “I want to brave it and go upstairs.”

“Are you sure you want to exert the energy before leaving for the recording studio?”

He swings my hand. “Come on. Aren’t you curious?”

I melt, thinking back to all the videos I’ve watched on social media, filmed in this apartment. “Of course, I am.”

Wyatt tugs me toward the stairs. “Then let’s go.”

Despite his budding enthusiasm, I make Wyatt take every step up the timber-stacked staircase with caution.

The carefulness pays off when we’re awestruck by the open-planned space.

It’s a huge master bedroom, with a computer and recording equipment piled on a desk, and a walk-in closet that leads into the ensuite bathroom.

Unlike the spaces below, upstairs looks untouched by Circle 8’s health team.

“This must be exactly how you left it,” I say, edging my way through the space, feeling Wyatt’s authenticity highlighted in every aspect.

Wyatt gasps, moving past the cluttered desk. “It’s my guitar.”

Wyatt picks it up, and I’m goo. It’s his guitar he played back in Victoria Falls. At all the talent shows. All the times we spent in his basement. All the escapes in my treehouse.

Seeing him hold it against himself, this is the real-deal Wyatt Hayes.

“I knew you’d still have it,” I gush.

He strums the strings. “I’m so relieved I still have this.”

Wyatt places the guitar back on its stand and moves further around the space. We look at the books sitting on his nightstand, the large abstract painting on the wall, and the general untidiness of the space.

“Geez, Wyatt, I thought you’d have a housekeeper.”

Wyatt crooks an eyebrow. “Did you notice how insanely neat downstairs was? If I didn’t know better, I’d guess I told whoever cleans for me to leave this space alone.”

“It must be where you’re most creative.”

Wyatt moves his fingers and thumb in a snapping motion, but due to the numbness he’s still dealing with, he misses. His eyes still wander with purpose.

“What are you looking for?”

He intently takes in the large space. “Somewhere there has to be...” He zeros in on a shelving unit and plucks out a black vinyl notebook. “Got it.”

I move over to him. “Got what?”

He flicks through the pages. “If this is where I’m creative, there had to be someplace I was working out lyrics. ”

My heart skips a beat. “ Ooh . I wanna see.”

Wyatt moves over to the desk, leaning against it as he thumbs through the pages.

I stand close by, eyeing the hand drawn pictures and messy writing.

He’s written diagonally, in a spiral, and downwards against the edge of the page.

Every page is like a work of art I would happily frame and hang on my wall.

Every pen stroke was a piece of his heart, forming a permanent mark.

I sigh, wrapping an arm around him. “Wow. This is so cool.” I then pluck his glasses out of my handbag. “Do you want to take a closer look?”

Wyatt takes the glasses and the journal and moves over to the bed, sitting on the edge.

The large OJ from the plane hits me, and I excuse myself for the bathroom. I leave Wyatt to read his journal, moving through the closet and into the black and white tiled bathroom. Thankfully, a housekeeper has cleaned this space.

When I move to the sink, I take a while cooling down with the running water. Melancholy washes over me as I realize my last moments with Wyatt are here. I get to see the recording studio with him, but then I return to the airport.

And that’s it.

The storybook is over.

Time for my regular life to resume.

After too long alone in the bathroom, I leave before Wyatt starts asking if I’ve collapsed or something. I moved back into the bedroom and find him pacing the carpet.

“What’s wrong?”

He rubs his forehead. “I need a pill.”

I swiftly retrieve the pill container from my handbag and give it to him. “Here.”

Wyatt takes the container and breezes past me and into the bathroom.

That didn’t seem like a usual headache. I’ve seen them hit him enough times over the past week. If anything, that seemed almost like an anxiety attack.

Before second-hand anxiety pulls me under, I force myself to take a seat on the bed.

Beside me, Wyatt’s journal lies open on his bed and his glasses sit beside it.

I can’t help becoming entranced by the page, littered with Wyatt’s handwriting.

It’s not like the random scribbles of song lyrics or doodles that we flipped through earlier.

This is an emotional dump onto the page.

I don’t mean to read it, but when I catch my name, my heart skips a beat.

He wrote about me?

While he was famous, and we hadn’t spoken in years, he was still thinking about me?

I gingerly sit on the edge of the bed and lift the notebook onto my lap. I take a deep breath, and read the journal entry.

‘The worst part is that Josie isn’t part of my life anymore. Who am I kidding? She’d probably hate the guy I’ve become. What even am I? A sellout? A pushover? A product to sell?

I don’t know. I just know I’m not the guy she used to know.

Dang, I wish I could just be that guy again.

That I could just hit rewind and never step foot into this circus.

I don’t even know how everything spiraled this badly.

How did I get here? Why do I keep letting them force me into being seen with certain people?

My stomach hurts at the thought of Josie seeing me with Portia.

I don’t know how Portia does it. She doesn’t even bat an eye when we’re told to act like a couple at some event.

How could someone be so comfortable being so fake?

I tell her I’m okay with it. I play along, because heck, we’re both stuck in this mess.

It makes me sick, but what can I do? There’s this stupid contract hanging over my head. I’m trapped .

I JUST WANT OUT.’

The bathroom door opens and I put the journal down as Wyatt walks into the bedroom.

“You read this?” I ask, my heart straining to pump blood.

He clutches his elbows. “Mm-hmm.”

I stand from the bed and move over to him. “You know, I never thought anything bad about you.”

He nods at the journal, left open on his bed. “B-but you didn’t... Wh-what I wrote... Sounds like you don’t know who I became.”

I caress the sides of his face, rising on the balls of my feet in an attempt to meet his melancholy eyes. “That journal entry sounds like you were struggling. You were giving yourself a hard time. Outside of your team, people love you. I don’t think you ever became fake.”

His jaw flexes. “But we can’t know.”

“Yes, we can. There was the salesperson at the boutique, the server at the restaurant, and Claire on the Learjet. They all had such wonderful things to say about you. They only knew the famous version of you.”

He looks away, struggling to believe my words.

I turn his head back to face me. “Wyatt, you are loved. You’re a good person, and that’s why you were struggling. The Circle 8 management is already asking too much of you. They were most likely too intense when you were well.”

Wyatt gestures at the journal. “It confirmed my worst fears. I had this bad feeling I was some kind of sellout. And, that’s exactly what I called myself.”

My heart sinks. “Oh, Wyatt.”

He plonks on the bed, lifting the journal onto his lap. He flips through it and lands on a two-page spread of his handwriting. He gulps and hands me the journal. “You gotta read it to me.”

I take the journal and my stomach cramps. “You sure?”

“Looks like I wrote it in a rush. It’s all slanty.” He rubs the space between his eyebrows. “My headache’s burrowing, but I gotta know what it says.”

“Okay, I’ll decipher your crooked writing,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.

I sit beside him and read the journal entry aloud. “‘ I never thought the second album sales would tank this badly. ’” I gulp and look up at him. “Are you sure I should read this?”

He rests his chin on my shoulder and kisses my jaw. “Please.”

I exhale and continue. “‘ I guess I should be grateful they’re making enough money that the team still wants to work with me. I’m not being shoved aside like they did to Marcus. ’”

“Marcus?” Wyatt questions. “Who was Marcus?”

“Maybe Marcus McGregor?” I suggest. “He used to do the kind of movies you do.”

Wyatt furrows his brow. “Wait, that sounds familiar.”

“Yeah, he was in...”

“Oh, is that guy from ‘ Love Switch ’?” Wyatt says with recognition. “I remember you making me watch that movie. Ugh. Are my movies as lame as that one?”

I smirk. “‘ Love Switch ’ isn’t lame. And I love your movies.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Wyatt mutters.

“I guess you replaced Marcus when you joined Circle 8.” I continue reading. “‘ All I want to do is play music, but they keep forcing me into movie roles. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable. I hate playing a role and having a director tell me to be more believable. None of this is believable. ’”

Wyatt sighs. “Dang it. I’m already sick to my stomach at the thought of acting. Now it says I didn’t even like it at the time?”

“Should I continue?”

“Yeah, go on.”

“‘ Plus, they’re low budget, streaming movies, so what happens when they run out of appeal? Will I just be out anyway? Do I even want to stay in at this point?

‘ The only future I see is playing romantic leads in teen movies until I age out. Who knows if I’ll be believable as I grow older?

There’s no way I could stomach making a bedroom scene.

I gotta get out of this before it comes to that.

’ ” I drop the journal and turn to him with an open mouth. “Oh my gosh. You really wanted out.”

Wyatt turns ghostly pale and taps the page. “There’s one more paragraph. What does it say?”

I swallow the sickness swirling in my gut and look down at Wyatt’s messy handwriting.

“‘ Playing along with Portia is the only shot I’ve got. We can be seen at parties and all that stuff because it gets me into the recording studio with her. She’s a bankable star.

Movies, modeling campaigns, and albums. Anything she touches is gold.

If this duet can get me back on the charts, it’s worth the shot. ’”

Wyatt recoils. “Am I using Portia?”

I pull back. “No, you wouldn’t do that.”

Wyatt winces. “Sounds like I am.”

I shake my head, placing the journal on the bed cover. “No. You Circle 8 kids always collaborate. That’s what this duet is. A collaboration. Mutually beneficial.”

Wyatt’s lip upturns. “I guess that’s a better spin on it.”

“Portia genuinely seems excited to be singing with you.”

Wyatt shrugs. “Yeah.”

“And everyone lit up back at the hotel when you two sang together. You need to stay positive about this opportunity.”

“The me-I-don’t-remember really wanted to record this duet with her,” Wyatt says tentatively. “Like, this is my last big shot at making my music work.”

I squeeze his shoulder. “Remember the fun we had last night, working on the lyrics? You’ve gotta focus on that energy when you go into the recording booth.”

Wyatt presses a hand into his stomach, his expression growing queasy. “Okay. We’d better get downstairs and back in the car.”

I brighten, hoping his mood is lifted. I can’t leave him slumping into anxiety. “You’re okay, right?”

He nods, forcing a smile. “I can play the guitar, and I can sing. Everything has to be okay.”

I help him down the stairs, my confidence in his words at an all-time low.