Page 67 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

This feels like love , I thought, my heart galloping like something wild and free across the plains of my chest. This feels like what I always thought love should be.

One of the event volunteers ruined the moment by approaching to nudge us out of the photography line and into the gauntlet of reporters waiting with eager eyes to interview us as a couple for the first time.

Adam took my hand, threading our fingers together, and led me forward, giving me a moment to fix my lipstick before we made our way to the first interview.

“Adam,” a smartly dressed man with deep auburn hair and perfectly preserved features greeted my date with a warm clap on the back. Ellis Foster had been the host of Entertainment Extra since I was a girl but he didn’t look a day over thirty. “And the lovely Linnea Kai.”

“Hullo,” Adam said in a cheerful British way that drew my skeptical gaze.

Why the hell was he so happy?

Of course, we had started the day with a brilliant play that I could still feel in my swollen pussy and the peaks of my sore breasts, but I was surprised it buoyed him enough to enjoy the event. He had been his usual curmudgeon self at the CCA unless I was teasing him.

“I’m honored to be the first to interview you two,” Ellis continued. “First, tell me who you’re wearing.”

“Tom Ford,” Adam said, pulling me into his side. “But only because Linnea did not have time to create something for me herself.”

Ellis’s grey eyes widened comically as he took in my dress. “Are you implying she made this gown herself?”

“She did,” I quipped, smoothing a hand over the ruffled edges of the handsewn silk. “I’ve been making my own clothes since I was a girl.”

“It’s exquisite,” Ellis declared, still a little shocked. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen an actress wear one of her own creations on the red carpet.”

“Linnea is one of a kind,” Adam said proudly.

Warmth suffused my chest and stained my skin pink. “I have to be in order to beguile the Great Adam Meyers.”

Adam chuckled. “You could beguile me in a paper sack, and you know it.”

I shrugged one shoulder, winking at Ellis who watched the exchange with the eagerness of a reporter who knows he’s captured gold.

“How did you two meet?”

“Believe it or not, we’ve known each other for a long time. Her mother is an old family friend. But it was my good mate Sebastian Lombardi who set us up. I owe him an extravagant gift for that, remind me, will you, Sunbeam?”

I blinked at the intimate use of my nickname. “I think he mentioned wanting the original Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle from Marlon Brando’s The Wild One the other day.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Why that man feels the need to collect cinema paraphernalia is beyond me.”

“You are both obviously good friends with the Italian,” Ellis said, probing for more information. Adam and Seb hadn’t been seen together in the media since gossip stirred in the tabloids ten years ago, leading to their break-up. “I think I saw a photo of you and Seb on surfboards recently.”

“He’s more like family,” I said firmly, raising my brow like Adam to level Ellis with a cool look.

“I see,” he said, nodding slowly. “And do you think he has a chance to sweep award season by clinching the ultimate prize of Best Actor tonight?”

“Unequivocally,” Adam stated on top of my, “Of course.”

“Well then, I hope you’re right. I happened to love Waking Nightmare even though it gave me nightmares.” Ellis mock shivered and then turned over his shoulder to hold his hand out for something from one of his aides. “Before you move on, I believe Adam wanted to give you these.”

I frowned as Ellis handed me a huge bouquet of golden orchids. My gaze snapped up to Adam, who watched me with a self-satisfied smile.

“What are these?” I asked softly, sticking my nose in the petals.

“I simply wanted to surprise the love of my life with flowers,” he told me imperiously.

I had to grin at him. “So you had Ellis Foster deliver them on the red carpet.”

“When will you understand, Nea, that with me anything is possible,” he teased, leaning forward to brush his mouth over mine.

Even Sebastian’s impossible universe? I thought but didn’t say.

Instead, I followed him to the next reporter, a stunning woman in a vibrant fuchsia dress that made her dark skin glow. She asked us some standard questions before she got derailed by Adam’s unusually flirtatious banter with me.

“You seem happy, Adam,” she said, a little gently as if she couldn’t believe it.

It hurt to know that his pain had been so obvious for so long.

“I am,” he told Imani. “For a long time, the only thing that brought me joy was acting. Now, I have someone who reminds me how to live for myself instead of my characters.”

Imani and I both swooned in tandem.

At the end of the interview, Imani handed me another bouquet, this one a massive array of daisies.

“How did you know I love daisies?” I murmured as I accepted the flowers and tucked them into one arm along with the orchids. “Miranda tried to shame me out of loving them. She said they’re cheap and they smell bad.”

Adam shook his head at her antics as we walked to the next interview. “You have daisy designs on that white sundress you’ve worn a few times and on that lingerie I peeled you out of on Thursday. Not to mention, they suit you. They’re happy flowers.”

After the next interview, the reporter asked, “Is Adam romantic, Linnea?”

I laughed as I tipped my head at the flowers. “Wildly so, yes. Not just by giving me flowers but by showing up for me whenever I need him.”

Adam turned his head to kiss my hair, his arm secure around my waist where it had settled most of the evening.

“What is the most romantic thing he has ever done for you?” Amy Liu asked, a mischievous look in her eye.

“I haven’t done it quite yet,” Adam stepped in to say before I could. “But now seems as good a time as ever.”

“What?” I whispered as Adam led me to the right where a tall stage at the edge of the carpet obstructed my view of what perched on top. “What are you doing?”

“Going against my own orders,” he said mildly as he helped me up the stairs, “and begging you to fall in love with me.”

I stopped dead at the top of the treads, blinking madly at the small white stage arranged with dozens and dozens of flower arrangements of the same florals I held in my arms. Petals scattered over the glossy floor, and a trio of string musicians started to softly play “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone.

Until that moment, I never realized how fitting the childhood song was for my relationship with both Adam and Sebastian.

Speaking of the Italian, he stepped forward from where he had waited with the musicians to take the flowers from my arms.

“You knew about this?” I whispered in a hiss as he leaned close.

His grin was a quick flash, like the green light as the sun sets over the horizon. “You think he could plan something this romantic himself?”

He stepped away, giving Adam the floor.

I had only a moment to wish he could be at the center of this with us before Adam captured my entire attention, the axis of gravity for my whole universe.

He took my hand to lead me to the center of the small stage, then pulled me into his loose embrace.

Vaguely, I was aware of cameras flashing, but the stage was tall enough that they couldn’t get a good angle on what was happening between us.

A public moment, a bold declaration, but still somehow intimate.

“Adam,” I said, a question and trembling plea.

“You make me love the sound of my name,” he murmured, pushing his hand into the side of my hair to cup my face. “You make me love a lot of things again. Before you, I think I’d entirely forgotten how to dream and desire. I only knew yearning and angst.”

“What are you doing?” I asked because hope and love were threatening to burst through my skin like a supernova, and I wasn’t sure I could contain it.

I needed to know if this was really what it seemed to be and why he was doing it in this manner.

We had spoken about simply going down to the courthouse to get married, done between one day and the next for the press to find out after the fact even though Mi Cha and Rachel wanted a big white wedding for us.

What we had was a business arrangement, so why was Adam looking at me like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time?

“I’m asking you to be my wife,” he murmured, bringing his other hand up to my face so that I was framed by him. His long-lashed eyes were as serious and intent as I’ve ever seen them, filled with something I had never witnessed before.

I thought it might have been hope.

“I’m asking you for permanence because I think, in both our lives, that has been lacking. I don’t want to marry you for three years, Linnea, I want to marry you for however long you’ll consent to have this old curmudgeon in your life and, maybe one day, in your heart.”

“Are you serious?” I breathed on a giddy, almost panicked laugh.

I brought my hands up to secure his wrists, needing an anchor.

“Deadly,” he said. “You happened to me like a sunrise, casting light and warmth over the dark, cold shadows of my heart. I have been lonely for a very long time, and I think you have, too. I don’t want that for either of us ever again.

I want you, Linnea, without a contract, without an expiration date, until the end of time if you’ll have me. ”

A sob fell from my mouth, and I caught it with one hand as Adam dropped to his knees slowly before me and reached into his blazer pocket.

The ring he brandished was the colour of sunlight, an enormous oval that glowed like he had managed to harness the sun from the sky and pour it into a diamond for me.

“You know I don’t get on my knees for just anyone,” he said playfully, but I could see how it masked the terror in his eyes. “But I would spend my life on my knees in front of your altar, worshipping you. Linnea Kai, my sunbeam, will you do me the incredible honor of being my wife?”

“Yes!” The word tumbled out of me as I fell forward inelegantly into Adam’s waiting arms.

He laughed as I pressed my mouth to his and ate the sound of his tongue until it turned into a groan. When he lifted a leg to brace himself better, he sat me on his thigh, and I gave myself over to kissing him.

My future husband.

For the first time, the idea of marrying Adam didn’t feel like some surreal plot twist in a Hallmark film.

It felt real, something I could hold in my hands and my heart.

I pulled away only when I felt his fingers sliding the ring along my skin. When I blinked down at my hand, the yellow diamond winked at me.

“It’s stunning,” I breathed.

“Sebastian helped me design it and the wedding ring,” he said quietly, pushing my rumpled hair back from my face. “It’s as much from him as from me.”

Hope bloomed so large in my heart that it threatened to choke me.

“Really?” I whispered through my tight throat.

“Really,” he repeated. “I am not the only man enamored with the girl with ocean eyes and a sunrise soul.”

“I wish we could go to him,” I said, even as I pressed closer to him.

“Later,” Adam promised. “I have a very private after-party planned for us all.”

“Adam,” I said, gathering breath to tell him the truth crushing my heart. “I l—”

His hand muffled my mouth, and he smiled at my wide eyes.

“Hold that thought for later,” he requested. “I want to be inside you after you tell me those words for the first time.”

I laughed, tipping my head back so his hand released my mouth and I could express my joy to the heavens. My gaze caught Sebastian’s, who stood with a cluster of actors and reporters on the stairs of the stage watching us. He winked and raised his hand to press it over his heart.

And I wondered if it was possible to die of happiness.