by Stacey Kade
The pressure explodes against the side of my face, and it feels like my eye is going to pop free.
Oh, yeah. This feeling. I know this feeling. I hate this feeling.
The urge to hit back is instant and reflexive, and when my fist connects with his stomach—because who the hell deliberately hits against a cheekbone unless you’re trying to show off?—Carter goes down, wheezing.
A furious Calista steps between the downed Carter, with his fast-approaching brothers, and me.
“What is wrong with you?” she shouts, pushing at my shoulder. “Get out!”
“Look at your shirt,” I say to Calista, touching the tender skin beneath my eye. Okay, yeah, Carter was right—I am a little sorry now. Fuck. It makes me miss the days when Chase, the third of our Starlight trio, was the one hitting and getting hit, and I just had to pay the bar tab.
She throws her hands up in frustration. “I know people are probably saying horrible stuff, but that doesn’t mean you can follow me around and go punching—”
“If you’ll recall, I didn’t start the punching,” I say tightly.
Calista rolls her eyes. “Eric—”
“Just look at your damn shirt.” My face is throbbing now, and I’m running out of patience. I twist it around so she can look at it. It stretches out the letters, making them muddled, but his initials are clear enough. As is the “By 11.”
“What the hell?” She lifts her arm to try to see it more clearly.
“It’s all over your back. These assholes marking you like territory, and then this guy”—I tip my head toward the glaring and gasping Carter, who’s being hauled to his feet by his friends—“the king of the assholes, crossing out their initials and putting his, along with a deadline.”
Calista goes very still, then she turns to stare at Carter.
“It’s just a tradition,” Carter says, between coughs. “To see if anyone can…” Even Carter is smart enough to stop then. “Nobody makes anybody do anything.”
Calista pivots away from him.
“You don’t belong here anyway!” one of the brothers shouts, a bigger guy. I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Callie. But he’s stepping up, like he wants to start something.
I grin at him. This is definitely going to hurt.
Calista grabs my arm. “We’re leaving. Now,” she says to me, pulling at me.
“Oh, come on, Calista. It’s just a game,” Carter says. “And I was protecting you.”
Callie raises her hand over her head, giving him the finger. “Protect this.”
And because I can’t leave anything alone … “Guess that means you lose.”
“Damnit, Eric!” Calista tugs harder at my arm, and I turn to follow her to the stairs and up. Beth is already ahead of us, and we are … not running, but moving quickly through the hall and out the front door.
As soon as we’re on the sidewalk and away from the front of the house, Calista stops and faces me. “What were you doing there?”
“I told you—”
“No, I mean how did you know?”
“Beth.” I jerk my chin toward where she’s paused, a couple of sidewalk squares ahead of us.
Callie turns to see Beth, who gives a sheepish wave and edges closer. “Hi.”
“She was worried about you. Thought that maybe some people wouldn’t like having you there,” I say.
“Not that people wouldn’t like you,” Beth says quickly. “It was more that the party gets kind of out of control sometimes, and with you being you…” she trails off, ducking her head.
Being an outsider, being different, is always a crapshoot. Maybe it makes you stand out, maybe it just makes you a target.
Callie’s shoulders slump.
It reminds me of the first time we met, in that audition room. She looked so worn down and defeated, and Lori just kept haranguing her. It roused protective instincts in me I didn’t even know I had, and it’s the same now.
I lean forward, over Callie’s defeated posture, deliberately invading her space, to annoy her, to provoke anger instead of sadness. Because angry is better than sad.
But Calista smells like vanilla still, and standing so close to her triggers a thousand memories at once. Sitting in Hair and Makeup, listening to her talk about this book, Fly Girl, with unfettered enthusiasm. Stupid card games in hotel rooms during press junkets, movie nights at my father’s house, the softness of her skin beneath my mouth …
In Season One, Lori worked hard to keep Calista away from Chase and me, the “bad influences.” Fair enough. But by Season Two, Lori was pregnant with Calista’s youngest sister, and she spent most of that year tired, sick and resting in Callie’s trailer. So the reins loosened a little.
It was during the second season that everything changed. For me, at least. We were standing around, waiting for a set up, and Callie had her nose in that book again. I grabbed it from her, holding it over my head.
“Give it back!” she demanded, eyes snapping with outrage.
I tapped her nose gently with my fingertip. “Nope.” She was easy to provoke because she was so damn serious, so adult all the time. Because she had to be.
I took it as a personal challenge to make my “sister” lighten up.
But then instead of lecturing me, as I expected, she narrowed her eyes at me and wrapped her arms and legs around mine, climbing me like a tree to get to her book.
Instinctively, I reached out to grab her to keep her from falling.
Her shirt had ridden up, revealing smooth pale skin over her ribs. My fingers rested there, just an inch below the line of her bra, and suddenly, all I could think about was how close I was to touching her, really touching.
But she was seventeen, and I was twenty-one. Hell no.
“Here,” I said curtly, handing her the book.
She looked equal parts surprised and disappointed to have won so easily. But she took the book and slid down reluctantly. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
I knew I was in trouble then.
By the start of the third season, Calista was eighteen. She fired Lori—long overdue as far as I was concerned—and then suddenly had freedom to move around on her own. Which was a whole other world of danger and still possibly one of the best years of my life.
I clear my throat. “I have to admit, I think Beth’s right. The issue was more that some of them wanted you there a little too much.”
Calista stiffens and turns her head to give me an exasperated look. For a second, her mouth is much too close to mine.
And the moment catches, snagging in the mere inches between us as if time has slowed down enough to become material.
I lurch back, and it’s gone.
She faces Beth, her hair flying out to brush my face. “Thank you, Beth,” she says. “I appreciate it.”
Beth nods. “I could have told you. If you’d asked me.” The tone of her voice, a gentle scolding.
“I guess I was just hoping that it wouldn’t matter. That I could just be me, for a night,” Callie says.
“You’re still you, but it’s always going to matter,” Beth points out. “Even if you ignore it, other people won’t. Especially around here. You’re the most exciting thing to happen to us since they put in that other stoplight.”
I laugh. Beth looks startled at first, then pleased.
Callie glances over her shoulder to scowl at me, but the effect of it is diminished by the fact that she’s shivering so hard that her shoulder almost collides with her chin. I realize belatedly that she’s out here in just that short-sleeved T-shirt from the party.
“Where is your coat?” I demand, shrugging out of mine.
She sighs. “I left it on the couch.”
“Here.” I step up to wrap my coat around her, and she lets me without argument, which only goes to show exactly how cold she must be.
She tips her head up to look at me while I focus on buttoning her in. “That eye is going to be fantastic,” she says softly.
“Definitely goi
ng to leave a mark,” I agree. I can feel the area between my cheek and eye, hot and swelling already. But it’s not the first time and probably not the last.
“You need to put ice on it.” Callie reaches up with her fingertips but pulls away before touching my skin.
“I know,” I manage, my voice coming out gruff and gravelly. “Hasn’t been that long since the last time.”
“I suppose I owe you an apology,” she says, lowering her hand. “Or a thank you.”
“Not your fault,” I say, pushing the words out. She’s close, too close. And I can’t. I just can’t.
I back up a step. She’s buttoned enough to keep the coat from falling off. That will have to do. “Gotta protect my investment,” I say with a careless shrug. “Plus, you kind of have a track record of bad judgment when it comes to nearly sleeping with assholes.” The grin pulling at my mouth feels forced, empty.
But it has the desired effect. Her mouth falls open, then a flash of fury mixed with hurt lights her expression. Her jaw tightens until I swear I can hear her teeth grinding. “Good night, Eric.” She turns away from me and marches to where Beth is waiting.
Damnit. Even though she has my coat, it’s still cold out here, and dark. “Let me give you guys a ride back to the dorm,” I call after her. The car—and driver—is waiting around the corner.
But Calista ignores me and keeps walking. Beth gives me a wave and a helpless shrug before following her.
5
CALISTA
Eric’s coat smells like him. His cologne, his skin, the scent of new fabric, even the faint hint of tobacco from the shredded cigarette—what was up with that?—that I found in the pocket.
When Beth and I get back to Ryland, I hang his coat on the desk chair, all the way on the other side of the room. It’s as far from me as it can be in the tiny single that is mine to call home.
But I’m still too aware of it, even with my back turned. As if there’s a string running between it and my shoulder blades. As if the man himself is sitting there, long legs stretched out in front of him, daring me to try to figure him out.
See, this is the problem with Eric. If he were a jerk all the time, I could—and so very happily would—ignore him. But he’s smart and funny and fiercely protective of me at the same time, one of the only people to believe in me as something more than a generically pretty face spewing lines at the behest of her mother.
So he’ll defend me to the death against my mother, going head-to-head with her. Until he decides to use her against me.
He’ll rush in to save me, even taking a hit to do so, but then he makes fun of my former feelings for him?
It’s infuriating and impossible to understand.
My phone buzzes on the desk, and a quick look reveals yet another text from my mother, this one questioning my water intake and whether I need to have an emergency facial scheduled. I should have known that the radio silence of the last month or so was too good to last. Now, I have to wonder if Eric had made that part of the deal—no money if she didn’t keep quiet.
It makes me feel ill to think about it. My relationship with my mother, bought and sold—or shut off and turned back on—as soon as the check cleared.
I power down my phone, ignoring her barrage of queries, and get ready for bed.
My plan, such as it is, is to present this as a temporary move. The money coming in from this job will just have to last her until I graduate and get a new career. Period. I’m coming back here on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, whether Eric is done with me or not. Though, right now, the thought of returning to Blake is almost as unappealing as leaving tomorrow.
But tomorrow, appealing or not, I go back. The girl in the mirror, wiping off her makeup in the dim overhead light, does not look thrilled at this idea. She’s also developing two parallel lines on her forehead—the dreaded “11”—that will have her mother bringing up Botox again and lecturing on the perils of squinting.
Shit. I rub at the lines, but they refuse to vanish.
I don’t have a choice about going or taking this job. Eric saw to that, I just don’t know why other than out of pure selfishness. But he’s the one who argued the loudest for me to fire my mom in the first place.
So which Eric is the real one? I thought I knew once. I thought I was seeing glimpses of the true him beneath the surface, the Eric who kept me company late into the night when we were on set and my mom had long since crashed in my trailer. The Eric who paid attention and brought me a bagel, telling me to eat, because I was dizzy and my stomach was growling thanks to my mom insisting on yet another cleanse. The Eric who encouraged me to take charge of my own life when I was eighteen.
I miss that Eric.
I brush my teeth and wipe my mouth. The girl in the mirror is now flushed and agitated-looking, which does not bode well for sleep. I snap off the light and climb into bed, my brain still racing.
Maybe I’m the one who screwed it up, by being naïve and dumb all those years ago. Everything was fine between us until that stupid alternate-universe episode late in Season Three. It was pure fan service, an effort to raise dramatically slouching ratings. In this version of the Starlight world, Skye had never been adopted, so she and Byron were not raised as siblings. And thus Skyron was born.
Actually, that’s not true. Skyron existed from pretty much the beginning—people seeing what wasn’t supposed to be there between Skye and her brother and writing fan fiction, so much fan fiction, about it—but this was the first time the ’ship was openly acknowledged by the show itself. So more like Skyron taking its first steps instead, I guess.
In this universe, the world was already ending. Brody was the enemy instead of Skye’s guardian angel, and Byron was the love of her life, whom she was trying to protect.
And there was one scene. Just one, but it was more than enough.
Skye and Byron were taking a risk, having a picnic outside their underground shelter to celebrate a victory against Brody and the other angels who were trying to punish the surviving humans. But this Skye and Byron weren’t awkward with each other; they’d been in a relationship for months, according to this timeline. This wasn’t new to them, so it didn’t have to be for us either.
It was just a grotty patch of fake grass on set beneath an apocalypse-dimmed sky (thank you, green screen), a small tattered blanket, and stale bread. But it changed everything. I’d had a crush on Eric for years before that, been half in love with him since our audition together and throughout our ensuing friendship, but this … when I’m ninety, I’ll still remember this moment.
“Okay, let’s try it again from Calista’s first line,” the director shouted, sounding weary. “And Jesus, can you two pretend like you like each other this time? Every other episode, you guys are practically eye-fucking, and the one time we need that…” He shook his head in disgust.
My face burned. And beneath my ragged and unraveling sweater—post-apocalypse chic—my heart was thumping so hard, I was pretty sure the boom was picking it up.
“Okay,” I said. “Not a problem.”
Eric, right next to me, said nothing, and I wanted to curl up and die. He’d been avoiding me all week, ever since we got the script for this episode. At first, I thought maybe it was because of his dad. Whenever Rawley Stone came by the set—which happened relatively frequently because he had an office at the same studio—Eric got super moody and crabby.
But then, at the table read, I’d finally figured it out. Eric had brusquely moved past this scene, refusing to run through even the few lines in it.
So it was the script that was bugging him—more specifically this scene. And me.
What, like I asked the writers to make up this scene? Okay, I might have wished for it—pretty much every day since the day Eric and I auditioned together—but I never said anything.
But now, it didn’t even matter. His obvious irritation was draining away any anticipation I might have felt. And amping up my nerves a thousandfold.
For a moment,
I longed for Chase. He wasn’t even on set today, but at least he didn’t make me feel stupid, childish and homely, like it was such a burden when we had to do stuff like this. He made me laugh by joking about the ridiculous flesh-colored nylon pieces we had to wear to look naked or about the unlikely placement of sheets.
People fluttered around us, making adjustments to hair, makeup and lighting, but Eric, at my side, was pretending I didn’t exist. Great.
“Is everything all right?” I whispered to Eric, which was ridiculous, as we were both miked. But it didn’t feel like a conversation to have at full volume. “I know this is awkward and weird, but—”
“Callie, it’s fine,” Eric said tersely. “Just … leave it alone, okay?”
Stung, I took a step away from him. Only to realize that I had to move back to be on my mark.
How exactly was I supposed to leave this alone? Our first take had been so horrible we hadn’t even made it all the way through. Eric was stiff and wooden, and I was overacting in response, trying to pull emotions from him.
And it wasn’t like we could skip it. The scene had to be done, whether we liked it or not. At this point, I would have been willing to forget my earlier fantasies and go back to a moment when he would actually look me in the eye.
As soon as the director called for action, I tried to shut my feelings away, to become Skye, with the guy she loves and fears losing. Which was not as hard as it should have been.
We tromped toward the patch of fake grass. “What are we doing out here?” I-as-Skye asked warily, hoping my nerves would read as her fears of being attacked from above. Only the audience was supposed to be aware that Hell had belched up zombies in response to losses the angels had suffered and that threats were now on the ground—and beneath it as well.
There was no response.
Uh-oh. I looked to Eric, half-expecting him to be looking past me for a prompt on his line.
Instead, he was watching me, hesitation flickering across his face, before it vanished and he seemed to come to a decision.
He grinned at me, all dash and charm.
My responding smile was reflexive—it was impossible not to smile back at Eric—and confused. It wouldn’t be a consistency issue, as this version of Byron wasn’t supposed to be the same as the other, but still. What was he up to? Because this was definitely Eric as Eric, not Eric as Byron.