A Beautiful Star (Beautiful Series, Book 5) Read Online Free Page B

He offers me the bottle of champagne, and I take it from him and tip it back, drinking a mouthful of overpriced alcohol in a way that would make my mother have a heart attack.
    “OK, let’s talk. Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Jonathan? Tell me about the guy you were before you became famous. Tell me about the man you thought you’d become before you became the one you are.”
    He lets out a chuckle and takes the bottle back from me. “I could ask you the same thing. But something tells me you were always going to be a reporter.”
    “I actually wanted to be a hairdresser,” I tell him, deciding that maybe I should drop my reporter’s hat for a while and try to talk like a normal person instead of always asking questions.
    “A hairdresser?”
    “Yeah. I have really thick hair and most hairdressers have always been pretty shit at cutting it. I wanted to be the person who learned how to do it well so all of the girls like me could have cool haircuts.”
    “I like your hair,” he says, glancing over at me, his blue eyes piercing as my cheeks produce an involuntary blush. I smile to hide it and look away.
    “It’s an acquired taste. Once you get past all the ‘blonde bimbo’ bullshit, it isn’t so bad.”
    “So you gave up your dream to cut hair and became a journo. What made that happen?”
    I shrug. “Life. When I was in high school, the universities came around and spoke to us all about careers that needed extra workers and journalism was one of them. I liked writing, and I liked knowing things about people, so I went for it.”
    “And the rest is history,” he adds, offering me the bottle again but I hold my hand up and shake my head.
    “Yes. I suppose it is.”
    He takes a mouthful and his lips cause a popping sound as they leave the neck of the bottle. “I wanted to be a mechanic,” he says after a while. “I was always helping my dad fix up cars and I liked it. But then I was at the beach with some mates and a scout gave me their card and next thing I knew, I was cast in Sunshine Cove. After that, everything went nuts and I haven’t really stopped.”
    “It’s a bit of a crazy life, huh?” I ask and he nods.
    “Fucking insane. Sometimes, I just crave quiet, you know? Just a dark room, a bottle of Jack and quiet.” He sits facing forward, and I turn toward him, leaning my head on my hand and my elbow on the back of the couch as I watch his profile in the dimly lit room.
    I feel as though if I just sit here, he’ll keep talking, and something tells me he needs to talk. So I wait quietly for him to continue.
    “And then, sometimes, I really want to talk. But I don’t really know who to talk to. It’s not like I’m going crazy and I need a shrink or anything. But I do need to talk. Because there’s so much fucking pressure. And I don’t know who I can tell that to and who I can trust. And then the people I can trust are people I pay, so I don’t know if they’re listening because they have to or because they want to. And then you have people like my agent who will just tell me that everything is fine and to just keep going. That this is what it’s like to be in this industry. But then I think that there are millions of people out there whose dream it is to have my life, and I wonder if they really understand what it’s like or if I’m just missing something. I mean, I’m supposed to be happy. I’m living the dream. But I spend half my time worrying that I’m going to wake up and the other half feeling like I don’t deserve it. I mean, I’ve had no training. I just fell into this work and I don’t think I’m that great of an artist...” he pauses and shakes his head, lifting the bottle to his lips but realising that it’s now empty. He glances at me, a weariness settling over the set of his shoulders and taking away some of the light in his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I shouldn’t even be telling you this stuff. For all I know, you’re going to tell