Page 66 of Wild Card

“What do you mean?”

“Just fucking hard to trust people in general. Now knowing it was her. Just so she could make some money? Fuck… I doubt she even once considered what it would mean for me. Probably just figured I wouldn’t care 'cause I’m a fuck up anyway.”

I walk over, hugging him as I sit down next to him on the couch and curling my feet under me after I take my shoes off.

“You deserve to be treated better than that. Period. No matter who you are or what’s happened to you in the past. It doesn’t give her or the tabloid or anyone for that matter the right to use you in that way. I hate them for it to be honest.”

He turns and grins at me. “Yeah? Feeling protective, Spitfire?”

“Oh, hush.” I poke him in the side when his grin widens. He kisses me on the tip of the nose.

“Protective Scarlett is pretty fucking hot.”

“Don’t start. I have stuff I want to show you. But before that… did your agent say anything else?”

“Just that I need to talk to my lawyers and publicist. Figure out what we want to do with the information.”

“Do you know what you want to do?”

“I need to think about it, I guess. I’d rather never have to think about it again, but I don’t think that’s an option. For right now though… what did you want to show me?”

“Your great-grandparents' letters.”

“Find something interesting?”

“I mean… yes? I think you should read them. They’re love letters mostly. He talks about how much he loves her and can’t wait to be home. She tells him she’s counting down the days until he returns.”

“I think this might be more of a you thing than a me thing, Spitfire. I’m not into the sappy stuff.”

“Well, they’re not my grandparents, so it’s not quite as meaningful.”

“Great-grandparents. I didn’t know either of them. He obviously passed away during the war, and she died when I was young.”

“Still. They’re your great-grandparents.”

“Also if you knew my family—like my dad—you’d have a hard time buying any of it. Probably just what they felt they had to say to each other in case anyone opened the letters someday. Like you. Right now.” Tobias’s lip tugs up at the corner as he looks between me and the letters on the table.

“Just read them, please? If not today, sometime? They’re really beautiful. I can understand keeping them private if you want, but some of the things in them… I’d frame them if it was my family.”

“I’ll read them sometime, Spitfire. I promise. But right now I’m starving. You want to get some dinner to celebrate our sex tape not going viral?”

“Yeah, I suppose that sounds like a plan.”

* * *

After dinner,we sit on the couch watching TV for a while. We’ve gone down a rabbit hole of archaeology and history shows on television as well as a few about mysteries in space, and we’ve started watching them occasionally during his downtime. He’s been lying back against the arm of the couch, looking at things on his phone and typing away. I assume texting someone but after a while, he looks up from it and smirks at me.

“Check your texts.”

I raise a brow at him, but he just shrugs and nods toward my phone that’s sitting on the coffee table. I pick it up and open the text from him. It’s just one long stream of dots and dashes.

“You sit on your phone?” I give him a confused look.

“No. It’s Morse Code.”

“Morse Code?”

“My list of desired bonus content in the format you requested. You know, if you plan to keep researching and filming during the day while you’re on the clock, and I’m at PT.”