by Stacey Kade
“Relax,” Eric said. “All the angelic bastards are on the other side of town, investigating an explosion at the old power plant.”
Okay, so we were going with this, apparently.
“An explosion you set off,” I said, injecting my voice with suspicion.
“I wanted to celebrate,” he said, arching an eyebrow in that cocky expression I was all-too-familiar with.
“By getting us killed?” I asked, but I helped him spread out the blanket on the fake grass.
“There are some things worth taking a chance on,” he said, his gaze fixed on me. His tone was mild enough, but I felt it, like a tug on the inside, pulling me toward him.
Oh. My foot caught on the edge of the blanket, and I nearly fell instead of sitting down gracefully, like the warrior this Skye was supposed to be.
But Eric caught my arm, keeping me from face-planting, and no one shouted cut, so we kept going.
“Here,” he said, handing me a white cloth-wrapped bundle. “Eat.”
I opened it between us, spreading the cloth to reveal a couple of lumpy, misshapen loaves of bread.
“Where did you get these?” I asked, trying to sound awed and enthusiastic about the possibility of eating them. In truth, previous experience told me they tasted like moldy paste. Or what I imagine moldy paste tasted like. But they apparently looked like bread made from scavenged ingredients and baked over a fire made of tires and whatever other toxic but burnable things one used in the apocalypse to stay warm, and that was good enough for our props department.
“I don’t have to tell you all of my secrets,” Eric said with a playful wink that stole my breath. And that internal tug grew stronger.
I cracked open one of the loaves and handed him half, mentally preparing to make my “oh yum, this is delicious” face.
But then Eric chucked the bread at me, unscripted. It missed me, veering off to my side.
My mouth fell open in shock, and he laughed.
What are you doing? I barely kept the question in check. Again, no one had called cut, so we were still rolling.
I dove after the bread, reclaiming it from the “grass.” Food was supposed to be a precious commodity in this world—Skye would never let that go.
And when I returned to my upright—and scripted—position, Eric was holding up a thin gold necklace with a four-leaf clover charm dangling at the center of it.
“I got this for you,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
It was Skye’s mother’s, abandoned in their home months ago when the angels attacked. In the regular universe, it was Skye’s only reminder of a mother she never knew. In this alternate world, it was a reminder of the mother she’d lost.
It was in the script—a soft, sweet moment to establish their relationship and feelings for each other. And to make ’shippers’ heads explode.
But until that moment, I’d never really felt the emotions that were supposed to accompany the exchange.
And when I did, as it turned out, my feelings were neither soft nor sweet. In the least.
“You went into the restricted zone for this?” I demanded, refusing to take the necklace as I was supposed to. “That’s dangerous, Byron. They would have killed you if they’d seen you.”
“But they didn’t,” he argued, his dark eyes flashing. “And it’s not fair that you should lose everything just because they—”
“But I haven’t lost everything. Not unless you make me lose you, too!” My voice cracked, and to my surprise, my eyes were welling.
In theory, we were supposed to be saying these same words to each other but without this anger and heat. I was supposed to accept the necklace, and my sweet kiss of gratitude and love was to evolve into a lovely and gentle make-out scene, carefully choreographed to be swoonworthy. But the emotions were all off-kilter now, and there was this delicious tension in the air that wrapped around us. That certainly hadn’t existed in the previous take.
Eric stared at me for a long moment, and I swiped the back of my hand across my cheeks to eliminate tears I wasn’t supposed to be crying. Not yet.
You won’t. That was Eric’s next line, an idea proved false by the end of the episode when Brody kills Byron in an effort to make Skye surrender herself.
Remembering that, though, only made me cry harder.
Instead, Eric said nothing. Just reached over, the necklace still wound around his fingers, and pulled me toward him by the ragged collar of my sweater, until I was half in his lap.
His warm mouth covered mine, but this was no stage kiss. When his tongue brushed over my lower lip, I completely forgot about his coverage, my coverage, the fact that dozens of people were watching.
I chased that kiss and his tongue with my own, until his breath caught audibly in his throat. I’d had a little more practice with kissing since our audition, and the pleasure of hearing that noise from him was heady confirmation.
I wiggled around until I was fully in his lap, my knees on either side of him, and his hands gripped my hips tightly.
Above him like that, it was easy to sink my fingers into his dark curls, my thumbs lightly resting against his cheekbones, and change the angle of our kiss. Deepen it until we were both panting.
And he let me take control. For a minute.
Then his arm slid up my back, holding me close and safe, and I felt gravity shift. He was moving us to lie on the blanket. That wasn’t a surprise, but the swiftness and the ease with which he accomplished it caught me off guard. And eagerness sent tremors through my arms and legs.
Breaking the kiss, he rocked back on his knees, pausing only a moment to whip off his shirt and toss it away from us. I didn’t bother tracking where it went, my attention fully caught by the view before me.
I’d seen Eric shirtless before. The writers’ room seemed to have been tasked with squeezing plot in around scenes featuring Chase or Eric half-naked.
But seeing Chase never affected me that way, and seeing Eric on a screen or even standing next to me was totally different than witnessing him directly above me, than feeling him above me. The scars and tattoos weren’t his, except for the infinity symbol on his shoulder. Just part of this version of Byron. But all that glorious warm skin, and the muscles flexing as he moved—that was all him. The sight set off a craving in me that had me clenching my hands into fists to keep from reaching out to touch him everywhere at once. I wanted to make it—him—mine.
He never took his eyes off me, settling his weight on me carefully, bracing most of it on his elbows. But the heat of his body, so close, made me want to curl into him and never leave.
It was instinct, then, that made me part my legs, giving him access to be ever closer.
He dropped his head against my collarbone with a defeated-sounding moan, but then his mouth was moving against the exposed skin at the unraveling neck of my sweater, just inches above my breasts.
Never in my life have I so fervently wished for one or two already-loose stitches to give way and give me what I wanted.
I slid my hands around his back. Urging in silent gesture for him to let go and press against me fully.
He lifted his head with a wicked smile. “Your hands are cold,” he whispered to me.
That might have broken the moment, made me remember what we were doing … or what we were supposed to be doing.
But his words held an intimacy within them, like it was just the two of us, like it was only ever the two of us.
“So warm me up.” The response came easily, automatically, even though it wasn’t in the script and didn’t feel like anything I would normally have been bold enough to say. But I could taste the truth of those syllables coming from a core desire that I couldn’t ignore any longer.
Heat flashed in his expression. And before I could respond, he pressed his mouth against the side of my neck in a trail of kisses that had me gasping and arching toward him.
And I was melting. I was a pool of Calista. I didn’t care wh
ere we were or what was happening, as long as he kept touching me. As long as I could keep the heat and weight of him pressed against me.
Please, I begged silently. I locked one leg around his, as if to ensure that he wasn’t going anywhere. It felt right in a way that I’d never experienced.
But then—
Background noise from somewhere, loud and repetitive, began to break through the haze.
It took my heat-fogged brain a moment to identify the sound. Clapping. Someone—lots of someones, actually—were clapping. And whistling.
Awareness returned in a sudden and cold rush.
My sweater had ridden up, the prickly fake grass was scratching my skin. The cool breeze of the air-conditioning units overhead cut through the heat of the lights and made me shiver.
I went still, awkwardness flooding me like blood returning to previously numb limbs. I wanted to curl into myself. Even though I wasn’t wearing any fewer clothes than I had been before, I felt more naked.
Eric lifted up, his lips, puffy and reddened from kissing me. From kissing me.
“Welcome back!” someone shouted with a laugh. I couldn’t identify the voice, and no way was I looking over there. “They called cut, like, five minutes ago.”
I focused instead on the catwalk far above us. If I could be up there right now, or just invisible, that would be so much better. How hard was it to spontaneously combust when you actually wanted to?
“I told you to turn up the heat, not burn down the kitchen.” That voice I recognized. Our director this week. He was trying to sound grumpy, but glee was leaking through. He knew what he’d gotten was good.
Eric straightened up slightly, pulling his weight from me, and lifted one hand off the blanket by my head to toss a salute at the director. “I aim to please,” he said with a grin.
Oh, God. He did it on purpose.
The realization struck me belatedly, like pain flooding in only after you see the long stripe of blood on your flesh.
It paralyzed me momentarily. I wanted to run, to hide, to do both at the same time, but I couldn’t make my body move.
“Calista seemed to agree!” someone called, and the catcalls and whistling grew louder.
Damnit. My face was on fire, so much so that my eyes were watering from it. And when a single tear trickled down the side of my face and into my hair, it released something inside me, giving me my motion back.
I shoved at Eric and twisted onto my side, turning away from everyone else.
He backed off, moving to his knees.
“Callie…” he began softly, reaching a hand toward me.
I ignored him, pushing myself to my feet and fighting the urge to run back to my trailer.
Running away would be the worst. But breaking down in front of everyone would be the next worst. I would not let them see me cry. I would not let Eric see me cry. How could he do that to me? Just … make me forget everything else? How could he use me like that?
In retrospect, it’s now perfectly clear that he knew how I felt about him, how I’d felt about him for years. And he hadn’t hesitated to take advantage of it. Maybe that’s why he’d blown the first take—maybe he was trying to get me to work that much harder, to care more when it counted. It was clever, manipulative. Exactly like Eric.
I took a deep breath, opening my eyes as wide as possible to keep the tears in, and stared off at the point on the green screen that would be our fake horizon once the visual effects guys were done.
“Why…” I swallowed hard, trying to push the words out. “Why would you do that?” It was like having a superpower and not using it responsibly. So, yeah, I was the dumb one, the young one who’d gotten lost in the moment, who’d taken playacting for reality. But he was the cruel one, the world-wise one who’d known exactly what he was doing.
“Calista, it’s not…” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t mean to…” He made a frustrated noise. “I told them this scene was a bad idea.”
If I’d thought I’d been frozen in place before, now it was worse, like my lungs had locked up, refusing to move in or out.
“What?” I managed after a second. He’d talked to the writers about this? About me? He thought I couldn’t handle it?
“Not like that,” he said quickly.
“Then what was it like?” I asked through gritted teeth, but that didn’t stop the hitch in my voice.
“I just thought…” He shook his head. “I thought it would be too much is all,” he said. “And I was right.”
I laughed, but it came out bitter and throaty from the tears I was working very hard not to cry. “I appreciate the concern, Eric. But you don’t have to worry about me. Not ever again.”
I started to stomp off, but Eric, still on his knees in front of me, caught at the side of my frayed cargo pants. (Apparently the apocalypse not only unravels sweaters, but it also throws fashion back a decade.)
“Wait. Please.” His grip was tight enough to pull the fabric against my skin. I could have jerked away, but it was clear this wasn’t a half-assed attempt to get my attention.
“Why?” I couldn’t even look directly at him.
He gave a weary-sounding laugh. “Can you just stand there for a second, okay? Cal, please?” He flashed me a pleading smile.
Exasperated and humiliated and with my protective skin worn too thin already, I couldn’t stop my temper from sparking to life. I glared down at him. “If you think I’m just going to stand here so you can keep the laughs going…” I began. But then I looked at him, really looked.
Like me, he was dressed in the latest post-apocalyptic wear. His worn black T-shirt with the artful tears and rips was still on the floor somewhere, so he was wearing just a pair of ragged cargo pants.
And the zipper at the front of those cargo pants was straining forward at the moment.
He was … oh.
Eric met my gaze defiantly for a moment, color staining his cheekbones. “Like I said, bad idea.”
So, it wasn’t just me. I’d lost myself a little—okay, a lot—but he had, too.
Relief and—weirdly enough, a shadow of the lust from a few moments ago—battled within me.
No one else seemed to have noticed. They were all going about their business to set up for close-ups. But at the moment, I was hiding him mostly from view. If I moved away, it would look weird if he didn’t stand, and then it would be very obvious.
One might even say “hugely obvious.”
Curiosity kept my attention focused on Eric and his … problem. It looked uncomfortable—for him—but positively intriguing to me. My experience with, well, anything was pretty limited. There were high school freshmen who’d rounded more bases than I had. I had more freedom now without my mom watching over my every move, but it wasn’t like I’d thrown all caution to the wind and started riding around topless in limos and searching out guys in clubs to bring home.
Not unless it was the right guy.
“Not helping, Calista,” Eric said under his breath, raising his eyebrows at me.
With a blush heating my face, I tore my gaze away, focusing once more on the metal latticework above.
Another few moments passed, and he finally got to his feet. “Thanks,” he said gruffly, bumping my elbow with his as he passed.
When the episode aired—with our version of that scene instead of the scripted one—the internet exploded with joy … for about a day and a half before getting obsessed with something else, a kitten in a bowl or a doppelgänger for a young Leonardo DiCaprio in Canada or something.
The effects on us were more far-reaching. On a day-to-day basis, everything went back to a slightly strained version of normal between Eric and me. We never talked about what had happened that day, but it hung in the air between us for weeks afterward, especially when we were alone together. Which didn’t seem to happen much after that. It wasn’t like he was avoiding me exactly. But he stopped visiting my trailer to hang out, and whenev
er I went by his, he always had other people in there.
But that scene, it gave me ideas. It gave me hope that I shouldn’t have had.
If that scene had never happened, I would never have asked him to …
I roll over in bed, pulling the cool side of the pillow over my heated face.
Well, I never would have gone to the party, either, and that’s where things really went to shit.
In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. The scene did happen. So did everything that followed. And Eric is not the person I thought he was. He doesn’t care about anyone else besides himself and what he wants. I understand it; he didn’t exactly have the best examples in his life. His mom dumped him off with his father when he was practically still a baby. And his father’s version of caring is alternately ignoring Eric or condemning him for not living up to expectations. So, why should Eric take the risk? He’d learned early on that looking out for number one was his best—and only—option.
It just kills me because I see flashes of who he could be.
And that’s the hardest thing to accept. I want Eric to be the better version of himself, the one I fell in love with when I was sixteen. Even the one who lost control that day on the set and was kissing me for real, for those few minutes. But I’m not sure that guy exists outside of my head. And I’m tired of looking for him.
So maybe I just won’t anymore. Sometimes you have to let people—and old ideas—go. I can be done with Eric. It can be my choice.
The idea sends relief cascading through me like a series of small boulders finally rolling off my back.
I was young and foolish and in love once, and that left me open for hurt and spiraling disaster. But I don’t have to do that again. I may have to work with him—or for him, in this case—but I don’t have to love it.
Or him.
6
ERIC
Calista is waiting, right on time, at the glass doors of her dorm when my driver, Jimmy, pulls the car to the edge of the curb. Her backpack is slung over her good shoulder—I hate that there’s a distinction now—and my coat is folded neatly over her arm.