What You Don't Know (Sequel to "Secret Love")(Hunter Hayes/James Marsden)

Sticky

God, I miss Hunter.

She knew why she had the dream. Soon, and far too soon for her sanity of mind, Hunter would be in New York. He only had a few weeks left on his tour, and one of those would be spent in New York. How she was to endure an entire week in the same city as Hunter Hayes when she was not able to visit him, she did not know. Jeremy Willakers must never have been separated from his wife, or he would know how heart-breaking it was to handle.

Bethany needed to see him. She needed to have him hold her, to remind her that she loved him. Bethany loved Hunter Hayes. Not Trenton McDermott. Why was that so hard to convince herself of? She had never looked at Trenton the way she looked at Hunter, even now that she was beginning to have feelings towards the man she knew now.

Truth be known, she was still extremely confused. After Trent had revealed his disguise to her, she had taken a few days away from him to come to a conclusion, but had yet to be successful.

She did not trust the reason Trenton had given her. The story he had told her that had supposedly led to the necessity of his disguise just did not add up with anything he had told her or anything that she had known about him, past or present. He was obviously deceiving her in that, but her newfound affection for him was trying to excuse his deception with tale after imagined tale of wrongdoing toward Trent, not by him.

Jeremy Willakers had been annoyed with her at their last meeting. He was definitely getting frustrated with her lack of progress in revealing Trenton.

She climbed out of bed and into the shower. Her disgruntlement with her situation stuck to her through her shower, then hid itself in the skirt and blouse she chose to wear. A knock interrupted her inner monologue just before she could turn the hairdryer on, so she groaned and padded to the door.

"Oh, hey, Trent," she said, rubbing a bit of sleep from her eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"I think you need to see this," he answered. His gruffness had returned, and he shoved a magazine into her hands like a drug dealer in a back alley.

"What is it?" she asked, but looked at the front page and gasped. Not this again.

She did not bother to read what the headline said; it was nothing to do with her. The part that worried her was the blurb she had earned in a bubble on the lower left hand corner.

"How did they get this picture?" She looked up at Trenton blankly, her body too full of emotions to choose just one for her face.

"They must have been following me."

Or me.

"What is the article about?"

Trenton shrugged. "It's about you, mostly. Speculation over what you've been doing since you and that Hunter guy broke up." He scoffed, and Bethany raised a brow at him. That 'Hunter guy' happens to be my fiancé, numbskull.

"So, it's an article about me?"

Trenton nodded. "They don't even know who I am."

Bethany rolled her eyes. "Of course they don't, Trent. I don't know what you're freaking out about. This was when you took off your disguise. Nobody will know you from Adam."

She threw the magazine on her bed and bent to grab a pair of shoes from under it.

Trenton grabbed her arm, his face a mere inch from hers as his voice became urgent.

"You don't understand. I can't have this kind of exposure. There are people watching me, Bethany! This could blow my cover!"

Bethany sobered. She had to play along. Right? Ugh, I don't want to play along! I want to point my finger at him and scream that he's evil! But I don't know if he is or not yet, do I?

"Then why did you show me, Trenton?"

He shook his head in amazement. "You are the silliest woman I've ever met, Bethany."

He released her and ran a hand through his hair.

"I showed you because I want to be with you. I want to be with you! No more of this "taking it slow" or any of this secrecy that stands between us. I want you to be mine, Bethany James."

He sighed heavily, looked over her stunned face as if she was missing something totally obviously.

"I love you!" he fairly shouted.

Bethany gaped. This was not the declaration she had desired. How was she to react?

Before she had the chance, Trenton's phone rang, and he groaned. Rubbing his eyes underneath his phony gold glasses, he answered with a curt greeting.

"All right, fine. We'll be there in five." He snapped his phone off and gestured to Beth.

"They need us at work. We'll talk about this later," he promised, planting a kiss on her cheek as he handed her the shoes she had dropped and grabbing her purse off the chair by her bed.

The rest of the day was a daze, and all Bethany could remember from that morning was those three words. I love you! I love you! I love you!

Nothing made sense anymore, and she was ready to tear her hair out! Only one person could help her to make sense of all this.

She needed to see Hunter.