Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (23 page)

I examined the tortured look on her face as she’d promised me we could weather the PR nightmare this movie was fast becoming, how she explained with tears shimmering in her eyes that if we endured the discomfort of this situation for a few months now, the rest of our lives could be exactly what we wanted them to be. I recalled the vice grip on my heart when she’d promised me red-haired babies with my eyes and her dimples. I thought back over the hopeful looks she’d shared with me while we discussed our days over dinner as inwardly I’d tuned her out and I felt shame for having reduced her to someone who silently begged for scraps of my affection while I stubbornly withheld them.

I pictured her face as I’d seen it most recently, completely devoid of hope or confidence. Her spirit had been broken, her heart shattered. Yeah, I’d had my reasons for doing the things I’d done but they seemed petty and insignificant in the face of everything else. All that mattered to me now was that I’d done this to her –
to us
– and … I’d been wrong. I was overcome with immense guilt at having been the instrument of Sarah’s pain. Twice now I’d distanced myself from her and both times it had hurt her worse than anything she’d ever known. This pattern I’d developed – both fight
and
flight – likely proved Sarah was better off without me, but I couldn’t imagine my life without her.

I tried to recapture and hold on to the feelings I’d had when I first thought about our future together. How wonderful it’d be to get back to Ohio and be surrounded by a stable, loving family, how beautiful she’d look round with my child, what a wonderful mother she’d make, and how blessed I’d be if I was fortunate enough to grow old alongside her.

A warm heat infused my heart as that organ seemed to snap in two and meld itself back together again, Sarah and I two parts of my whole. I held tight to that warmth and vowed to never let it fade. She was my other half and I needed her as much as I needed air to breathe.

I was beginning to rethink my trust in Broderick. When we’d gone over my new job description, he’d said my duties wouldn’t change that drastically since so much of what I already did went above and beyond what I’d initially been hired to handle. He’d explained that with the exception of taking on new responsibility with other facets of the business, I probably wouldn’t see much of a difference in how I spent my day. What a crock of shit that had been!

For the past two weeks I’d woken up every day with the sun and then fell into bed well after midnight. It seemed no matter how many hours I put in, how many items I checked off my to-do list, my work was never done. Yesterday I’d been thrilled to run a big black line through the last item on the bottom of my to-list only to flip the page over and see twenty additional things I’d added over the last 48 hours.

I wish work had been my only problem. In the last handful of weeks, Cameron and I had practically become strangers. Between our schedules, I forced him to carve out for me was miniscule at best. We’d managed to have dinner together two Sundays ago, but more and more it felt like we were two ships passing in the night instead of two people madly in love. It wasn’t hard to keep our relationship a secret because we didn’t actually have a relationship anymore to speak of. I often wondered if we could even call each other friends anymore. I had a roommate now, not a lover. We hadn’t had sex in over three weeks and I’d barely seen him at all the last five days.

I sat at my desk, spinning Cameron’s grandmother’s ring on my finger. I’d lost about fifteen pounds over the last few months and my fingers had thinned out making the band that had been slightly snug incredibly loose. I’d actually had to tie a piece of rubber band around it to keep it on my finger. Now I wondered why I even bothered. I stared down at the ring again and fought my instincts to keep it on. Then I fought my instinct to take it off. In the end, I decided to give it back to Cameron the next time I saw him, whenever that would be. If after a week I still hadn’t seen him, I’d box it up and leave it in his drawer. I’d checked it the day before yesterday and saw he’d removed the top two shirts so I knew he still lived with me … or at least was using my house for clothing storage.

As if my dark thoughts had conjured him, when I glanced up from my bony fingers, my nails chipped and ragged, Cameron was standing in the doorway of my office, his large, trim body leaning against the doorjamb. As my eyes scanned him from head to toe, my heart jumped and butterflies fluttered furiously in the pit of my stomach. No matter how many times I saw him, no matter what was going on in my life, no matter how much I hated him, Cameron Scott still had the power to take my breath away.  

“You busy?” he asked, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him.

“I always have time for you,” I responded, my tone light. A strange look passed over his features and I wondered if he thought our lack of time spent together lately was
my
fault.

“What’s up?” I decided not to read too much into something I might have only imagined. I didn’t need to go looking for problems between us. Lord knew we had enough already without adding to the pile.

Cameron propped himself against my desk, his feet crossed at the ankles in front of him. His pose casual, the tension I’d witnessed every time our paths had crossed recently was no longer evident.
Or maybe this is Actor Cameron
, the angry devil on my shoulder sneered,
and you’re about to get your ass handed to you
. As much as I was considering giving his ring back to him now, I’d been worried sick that he’d tell me that he’d made a mistake in asking me to marry him. I didn’t think our relationship stood a snowball’s chance in hell, but I needed to be the one to end it if I ever wanted to recover from my heartache. His presence in my office now made me worry that he’d beat me to the punch.

He looked down at me as I looked up at him and for those few seconds I remembered how easy everything used to be between us. Even when I’d been overwhelmed with my feelings, ones I hadn’t known he reciprocated, I’d never felt anything but happiness in his presence, even if it had been a cautious gladness. I wanted to be happy again. I wanted
him
to be happy again. But I feared we’d never find that happiness together. Too often lately though I’d felt tense and expectant, as I waited for the other shoe to drop, knowing when it did, I might not survive the fall out. I’d lost faith in us and it broke my heart, a physical pain taking root in my chest.

I couldn’t say how long we stared at one another, and I couldn’t tell you what was going through Cameron’s mind since he’d been using that blank fucking mask more and more in my presence, the one that wouldn’t let me see where his true thoughts lay, or understand what he was feeling. And still, I wanted to comfort him, to share my love with him.

I laid my hand on his forearm. “I’ve missed you Cameron. So, so much.”

There, I’d said it. No more polite utterances in the hallways at work, no more cordial but cold hellos and goodbyes in the morning or at night. I was willing to lay my cards on the table, but was he? Would he willingly discuss the distance between us, confront his feelings? If he now questioned his love for me, his commitment to us – if it meant I was going to lose him – it was better he tell me now. I deserved that much at least.

When he didn’t respond right away, I dragged my hand from Cameron’s arm to rub at the sore spot in the middle of my sternum, a tight hard knot that threatened to collapse my bones in on themselves.

Breaking the heavy, expectant silence, he finally spoke. “I’ve missed you too baby.” The accompanying smile was a sad one. Even so, with those words I felt the tight, ugly grip on my heart lessen just a fraction. “I have so much I want to say to you, explain, but I don’t want us to be distracted by all this.” He looked around my office as if to indicate
every goddamn thing associated with this god forsaken movie
. “I was thinking, I’ve got a few days off and if you can swing it, we should go away. I want to fix us.”

Those words, so sincerely spoken, were the the olive branch I’d been begging for all this time. Could I swing it? Cameron wanted to fix us. Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. Broderick would give me the time off.

“I can definitely swing it.” I stood from my chair and tentatively wrapped my arms around him, something I hadn’t been able to do in many weeks. His arms flexed against my body and soon they were wrapped around me as well. I rested my head against his chest and savored the feel of being in his arms again after such a long absence.

“I was thinking we could drive up the coast, get a room somewhere. Just spend a few days reading, relaxing …”

His words trailed off but the unspoken came through loud and clear.

“Having you all to myself for more than a few minutes at a time is going to be such a luxury. I have no intention of spending that time reading or doing much of anything except talking and enjoying your body.” His chest went tight and his breathing altered beneath my cheek. He squeezed me just a little bit tighter.

“Yeah, I’ve definitely missed you.” He placed a kiss on the top of my head and then rested his head there.

Savoring the closeness, we stood locked together for a few moments in silence, just listening to our breaths mingle and our hearts tangle in a syncopated rhythm.

“I read about a bed and breakfast near Mendocino overlooking the Pacific. The exterior shower wall is made completely of glass giving you an uninterrupted view over the ocean. They leave breakfast at your door each morning so you never have to leave the room if you don’t want to.”

Without missing a beat, “Book it,” he said, his voice gone gruff. I wondered if, like me, he was picturing pressing me up against that glass as he entered me from behind.

I heard the clink of metal giving way and the slide of my door being opened. I jumped out of Cameron’s embrace before whoever was entering my office
without knocking
caught me wrapped in his arms.

“What the hell?” Cameron sputtered as I jumped away.

Broderick stood in the doorway, shrewdly assessing the scene before him – me looking guilty, Cameron confused – and then leaned out into the hallway to make sure no one else was in the vicinity. Finding the coast clear, he quickly closed the door behind him.

“You’re going to have to be more careful,” Broderick scolded, a censorious note in his voice as he chastised us like children. “We can’t have any more people here catching on to the fact you two are together. Folks are finally starting to buy Cameron and Jillian as a couple.”

I looked down at my feet lest he see the mutinous look cross my face. I wondered how much more of this I could endure without going ballistic and toppling the whole precarious scheme to the ground. 

“Listen Broderick.” Cameron’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Every one knows Sarah and I were friends before this movie came about. It’s not unheard of for friends to hug one another. Besides, the door was closed.” He sidled up to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me flush against him. “I said I’d go along with this farce and I will. But if I want to hug my fiancé in private then I damn well will.”

My head shot up fast enough to give me a bad case of whiplash. This was the first time he’d countermanded Broderick about the subterfuge we were all engaged in. He’d never, to my knowledge, defended our relationship. It was an admittedly small show of defiance, and if I had been in a less forgiving frame of mind, might have been a case of too little too late, but it was a moment for me to cling to during those nights he was out with a woman who wasn’t me.

“You’ll get your pictures. I’ll drop sly innuendoes about Jillian in interviews and I’ll continue to push your stupid lies, but around friends I’m not hiding my relationship anymore. It’s exhausting, not to mention it’s not fair to Sarah.”

Hearing him defend me to Broderick repaired some of the ache I’d felt so keenly. I took a long, cleansing breath and willed the waterworks away. I could fall apart at home, but I would
not
cry at work.

“And I assume we’re among friends here?” There was a threat implied in Cameron’s tone, but not being fluent in the language of Silent Man Speak, I couldn’t be sure what else passed, unspoken, between he and Broderick just now.

“Of course,” Broderick mumbled, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger, deep in thought. After a few tense moments he added, “But I’m thinking it’d be good for you two to have some quiet time away for awhile.”

“That’s what we were discussing when we were interrupted,” Cameron responded.

His body was coiled, tense with fury. I rubbed his back in soft, calming circles. As pissed off as he might be now, it wouldn’t do us any good for his temper to get the best of him and attack our boss, verbally or physically. That ship had long since sailed.

“We were going to head up to Mendocino for a few days and lay low at a bed and breakfast,” I interjected before either man said something they might regret.

“Right.” Broderick notched his chin and then, walking over to my desk, plopped down and spun my chair in fast circles that would have made me nauseated after the second rotation. “I’m thinking perhaps a bit further north. We need to be in Vancouver in a handful of weeks anyhow and we’re done with Cameron for now.” He stopped spinning and scanned my desk for a piece of paper. Finding it, he grabbed a pen and scratched out some words before sending the chair spinning again. “Rory still has a bunch of scouting to be done and not enough time to get to each location before we begin principle shooting.” He stopped spinning and came to rest facing us. “You should go. Both of you.”