Page 48 of Never Date a Celebrity

“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” Piper whispered beside her—sentiments which mirrored Imogen’s own thoughts exactly.

Then Amy approached the bar slowly, looking very much like a deer caught in the headlights. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Imogen said quietly. Looking at her now, Imogen couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it sooner. Amy had always carried herself differently. Even standing in the doorway looking nervous as hell, she drew every inch of attention in the room. She had the very first day she walked into the Wishing Well too.

Imogen hated that her heart still fluttered at the sight of her despite knowing what she knew now. But in her defence, she had only found out five minutes ago. Her heart might take a bit longer to catch up with everything else.

Amy worried her lip before she spoke. “I came here because I had to tell you something, but from the look you’re giving me right now, I think I might be too late.”

“Too late for what, Amelia?” Imogen managed to reply without her voice shaking. The steadiness of it surprised even her given how rattled she felt.

“Yeah. I am too late,” Amy said quietly, more to herself than anyone else. She looked down at her feet, then back up at Imogen. “Can we talk for a minute? I’d really like a chance to explain if you’ll let me.”

“Oh, I really think you should,” Imogen said. Amy most certainly owed her that much. “Come on.” Ignoring the astonished faces of Piper and Niamh, she walked around the bar. If the situation wasn’t so dire, Imogen might have stopped to laugh at the pair of them, but now wasn’t the time. She led Amy over to a booth in the far corner so they could have a bit of privacy. At least one of the perks of running an unsuccessful pub was that this time there weren’t any witnesses to her latest personal humiliation.

“I’m so sorry,” Amy said before she even sat down. “Imogen, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Oh, come on. How can you not mean to lie to someone about who you are, Amy? Or is it Amelia? What do I even call you now?”

“You can still call me Amy. The people closest to me do.” Amy looked at her pleadingly. “And I swear, I didn’t intentionally go out of my way to mislead you, Imogen. It just kind of happened and I went with it.”

Imogen looked at her in disbelief. “How can something like that just happen?”

“Well, when we met here in the bar, you didn’t know who I was.”

“No, I didn’t,” Imogen replied. “And surely, the appropriate response to that would have been for you to tell me. Especially if it was your intention to spend more time with me.”

Amy covered her face with her hands. “Oh, I know. It sounds so bad when you say it like that. But you need to understand that when you didn’t know who I was, I felt so normal. That hardly ever happens to me anymore, and it was wonderful.”

“Wonderful?” Imogen asked. “Why?”

“Because we met, and I think it’s fair to say that we clicked, and I was just Amy. An ordinary girl in a bar. You didn’t talk to me because you wanted an autograph or a selfie. You didn’t agree to go out with me because I’m famous. It was just us interacting as two people who liked each other—Amy and Imogen.” She edged forward and leaned her elbows on the table. “Do you remember our conversation last night? When I told you that some of the people I meet don’t always have the purest intentions?”

Imogen thought back and nodded.

“That’s my life, Imogen. All of that stuff I told you is true. Can you understand how, when you didn’t recognise me, it was so much like a dream come true for me that I pounced on it?”

When Imogen seriously considered it, she could kind of understand. Reluctantly. “Maybe I can see why you wouldn’t correct me at first, but I can’t see why you would think it was okay to keep up the charade after we started dating.”

“But it wasn’t a charade,” Amy said softly. She rolled her eyes at herself. “Okay, it was. But it also wasn’t.” She reached forward like she was going to take Imogen’s hands, but then thought better of it and pulled back again, her expression tightening for just a second. She fidgeted with her bracelet instead. “Everything I’ve said and done since we’ve met has been me. That’s who I am. I kept who I am to the world a secret, yes, but I promise you that everything else has been real.”

“I don’t know. You still lied to me, Amy,” Imogen said, unable to shake the accusatory tone of her voice. It wasn’t like she could just forget about it. Brush it off and say everything was okay. It wasn’t.

“I did. And I hate myself for it because I never wanted to hurt you. I know it’s not okay, and nothing I say is going to make it okay either. All I can tell you is that I did it for my own selfish reasons because I wanted to be treated like a normal person for once in my adult life.” She paused. “And because I desperately wanted to keep you.”

“You knew that I wouldn’t want to be with you if I found out you were famous.”

Amy’s eyes started to fill. She nodded. “Exactly.” She brushed her fingertips beneath them and let out a shaky breath. “It still sounds awful because I kept it going for so long. But the truth is, I really like you, Imogen. If I didn’t, I would never have been so scared to tell you.”

Something in Imogen’s chest tightened painfully at that. Maybe it was seeing Amy upset. Maybe it was hearing that she cared. Maybe it was both.

“I like you too,” Imogen admitted quietly. “But you know that doesn’t make it okay to lie to me.”

“I do know. It’s not okay at all. I did it, it was wrong, and I have to live with that. But I wanted to come here and tell you myself. I didn’t want to keep pretending, especially after everything we talked about last night.” Amy leaned back in the booth like the fight had gone out of her. “How did you find out? Not that it matters.”

“A photograph on Piper’s phone. Literally a few minutes ago.”

Amy nodded slowly, like she’d always known this moment was coming eventually. “I wish I’d gotten here first.” Her voice cracked slightly. “So you could have heard it from me.”