by Lux, Vivian
"Anything else?"
Condoms, lube, handcuffs, garters....
"Nah, just your smile."
"Rane. As friends, right?"
"Yup. As friends. I promised, didn't I?"
Chapter Fourteen
Madeline
I had been around long enough to not be surprised by the size and scale of Rane's enormous mansion. What was making me hesitate was the noise.
How many people were in there? One hundred? Two hundred? Five hundred? From the end of the winding drive, I could hear the voices bouncing all around me. It was like being inside of a stadium right after the home team scores.
I should go home. I'm not ready for this.
No, you can handle this, you're recovered. Besides, aren't you the least bit curious about what it looks like inside? Plus, you'll see Rane again.
Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of.
I hovered at the edge of the party in an agony of indecision, when out of nowhere, I heard a familiar voice.
"Hey there!" Harlow called, blowing her smoke straight up like a chimney. She had been crouched, texting and smoking with equal fervor, on the long front porch that overlooked a swooping lawn that ended in a rather sharp drop to the road below. The sun was setting behind me, lighting the white mansion so it glowed like a moon.
I waved to her, feeling myself tense and relax at the same time. When Rane had invited me, I didn't know what to think. As I left the shoot, the sounds of his brother haranguing him drifted over the parking lot, allowing me to hear every sarcastic word. "Have you lost your goddamned mind?" Keir had asked.
I was wondering the same thing. Had I lost my goddamned mind, coming here? But Harlow was clearly comfortable here. She was still dressed in her black crew attire, but I could see the strap of a teal bikini poking out from under her top. She tucked her phone into her pocket and ran up and hugged me like we were old friends, enveloping me in the toasty smell of her clove cigarettes. "I'm really glad you came!"
"Me too," I answered, startled into shyness. I stared at the blazing lights of the huge house up on the hill, lit up like a jack-o-lantern. Music and loud shouts of laughter spilled out from the inside to join the sounds of splashing and friendly insults wafting from the back lawn. "Sounds like a hell of a party."
"Drizzle always goes all out for these things," she explained, linking arms with me and dragging me in through the front door.
The huge front room was nearly bare of furniture, save a low, modern looking sectional and a few huge, drippy-spattery paintings on the wall. It was also bare of people, save for a few clumps of quiet wine drinkers I thought I recognized from the prop crew.
"Most everyone is already out back getting loaded by the pool." Harlow was leaning hard on my arm, sounding pretty loaded herself. "I'd change into your suit and hide your phone, because a few girls have already gotten tossed in."
"Did you get dunked?"
She scoffed, running her fingers through her perfect bangs. "They wouldn't dare." She pointed. "Bathroom's over there. Knock first. Last I saw, Twitch was trying to maneuver one of the craft services chicks into it."
"Thanks for the warning." I knocked once, twice, and hearing nothing except the echoes of laughter from the backyard, I summoned my bravery and pushed in to find it blessedly empty.
"Poor Twitch. He's got literally no game at all," Harlow slurred, shaking her head. "I'll stand guard for you."
"Appreciate it." I hurriedly stripped and tied on my swimsuit, glancing at my phone only four separate times. Studio heads were notorious for working late. It was still early enough that I could hear from them today. This music video had been a welcome distraction from waiting for news about Skyline Drive's casting, but now that it was over, I was back to biting my nails and hoping.
"Cute suit." Harlow smiled when I emerged, grabbing my arm. "Green suits you. Makes your hair pop. You should totally keep it short by the way. I was looking at old pictures of you—wait, sorry if that totally sounds stalkerish, but it was for work, I needed to find your colors—fuck, anyway, that long hair totally took everything over. You can actually see your eyes now and, bitch, those cheekbones! Don't you ever hide them again or I'll find you and cut your hair off with a beard trimmer myself."
She punctuated this rant by grabbing a bottle of vodka off and shoving it into my hands. "I'm drunk and you're not and it's awkward. Cheers!" She tipped the bottle back against my lips and nearly drowned me, then yanked it back, looking petrified. "Shit, wait, I'm an ass. Are you in recovery?"
I sputtered and gagged before managing to find my voice. "No, it's cool." I coughed. "Booze wasn't my problem."
"What was your problem?"
I felt the vodka slide through my veins and felt a rush of affection for this girl and her complete lack of normal social graces. A kindred spirit. "My brain," I told her cheerfully. "My brain was my problem. Is still my problem. Anxiety, depression, manic episodes—you name it, my brain likes to do it. My brain is the ultimate joiner."
"You and half of this town," she sighed. "My boyfriend was supposed to be off the next three weeks, but the tour got extended. My brain's not doing so hot either. I need alcohol and hot shirtless rocker dudes to ogle."
"That sounds like a plan." This time, I was the one who linked our arms.
The night air kissed my bare skin, bringing goosebumps marching along my arms. Enormous spotlights lit the pool like daytime. I found a place to stash my phone over by the clump of chaises and took one more longing look at it. The producers said they'd let me know today. Today wasn't over quite yet.
Harlow was absorbed into a clump of crewmembers passing a joint. I suddenly felt that same acute shyness that had compelled my mother to pursue acting for me in the first place. She thought it would give me confidence.
I walked over and dipped my toe into the pool, trying to feign indifference. I bent down and scooped some water into my hands and patted my shoulders and my neck.
Then I heard it. A whispered, "Is that Madeline Cole?"
I stiffened and resisted the urge to look around. A disdainful voice replied, "Yeah."
"Yo, look, it's Princess Paisley!" The chorus grew louder.
"They let her out already?"
"Shit, at least her hair is growing."
"Why is she just standing there?"
"I know, right? You'd think she'd be used to being naked in public."
"Hey!"
The spotlights cast a long black shadow that stretched over the pool to land on me protectively. I glanced across the water to see him standing with his feet planted and his finger pointing accusingly behind me. Rane. "Blaze! Reno! Shut the fuck up. Don't be dicks," he snarled to my bullies.
"Yo. Sorry, man," Blaze muttered contritely as they shuffled away.
"Thanks for coming, Maddie," Rane called over the water.
"No problem," I said breezily. Acting. For some reason, with him watching, I felt safe. I held my breath and slid into the pool.
Chapter Fifteen
Rane
Blaze took his idiots and slunk away with his tail between his legs, but I still wanted to smash his fucking face in. I turned to Balzac. "Do me a favor?"
His eyes were already bloodshot and slitted, but he gave me an upward nod. "Whaddya need?
"That fucking waste of space over there."
"Lazy Blaze?"
"Yeah. Chuck him out."
Balzac raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Gotta say, I've been waiting for you to say that for three long years now. That guy's a putz."
I nodded, seething inwardly. Blaze had been making himself at home with the band, getting in the way, claiming he was our "deejay" since our debut, Blowback, first dropped. Oddly enough, it had never bothered me until right now. "Yeah, I guess we all have our limits and he hit mine."
"On it." Balzac smiled, clapping a meaty fist into his open palm. "Keir, wanna play?"
My brother gave me one of those penetrating glares that he seemed to have
perfected in the past three hours.
"Yeah. Sure," he said after a long, drawn out pause. He wanted me to meet his eyes.
But I was finding that I couldn't stop watching Maddie bobbing in my pool.
As friends. Fuck. I was having problems remembering what the fuck friends did with each other. Did they swim together? Because all I wanted to fucking do was be there in the same water, her nearly naked body maybe brushing past mine as we bobbed in the night. That didn't sound exactly friendly in my mind, but I couldn't summon another thought...besides, what would happen if the delicate emerald strap of her bikini slid down her freckled shoulder.
The blood rushing to my cock made my decision for me. I needed a cold shower.
Or maybe a jump into a cold pool.
"Incoming!" I shouted. She paddled in a circle and stared at me in mute horror as I dove over her head.
Too late, I realized I dove too shallowly. I hit the water with a resounding, boner-crushing splash.
That fucking hurt.
I surfaced, coughing, only to be submerged under a sheet of water. "You ass!" Maddie shrieked, wiping the water from her face with one hand while she pummeled the water with her other.
"Sorry! Sorry!" I laughed, trying to fend off her watery assault. She flipped onto her back and scissor-kicked sheets of water into my face. "Okay! I give, I'm drowning!" I panted, swimming to the side.
"You cannonballed me," she shrieked. "My hair..."
"You're in a pool. You're supposed to get wet."
"I look like a drowned rat."
Sexiest rat I've ever seen. "Then that makes two of us." I wonder how her wet thighs would feel wrapped around mine.
She splashed me again. "That was not nice!"
"I'm not a nice guy." I could send everyone home, right now, and we could be alone.
"Oh, is that right?"
"Nah. Nice guys finish last." I slapped a small splash her way. "Though, I guess I am a pretty nice guy in bed." Subtle, Rane.
"Gross," she complained, splashing me again.
I don't know why I cared so much. But I felt like I kept wanting to work at her. Peel back another layer and let the real Maddie shine through again. I could see these glimmers through the cracks in her facade, and they fucking fascinated me. I wondered how long it would take for the real her to be finally revealed, polished and bright in the sun. And it was unnerving to realize that I wanted to be there the day that it happened.
Which meant I wanted to stick around.
Which meant I needed her to like me.
And to stop fucking trying to drown me with sheets of water.
When she aimed another splash at my head, I had enough. "You're in trouble," I sputtered, and dove underneath the water.
In the silence, I could hear her yelling something. She was kicking her bare feet, trying to ward me off, but I’d spent enough time breaking into pools as a juvenile delinquent that I swam like a shark. I shot underneath her and emerged behind her, grabbing her flailing arms and pulling her tight against my chest.
"Can't splash me from here, can you, Mads?"
She struggled a little, but not much. Her chest was heaving and mine was too, and I was aware of the fact that we were both essentially naked. The little slip of a thing she called a swimsuit was nothing more than a wisp.
"What are you doing, Rane?" Was that a groan? Or a moan? I wanted her to say my name again. This time scream it.
"Rane!" she screamed as I pulled us both under.
In the silence underwater, she slipped from my grasp and spun around. Her red hair, dark as blood in the water, fanned out from her face, swirling around her like some kind of mermaid.
I almost fucking kissed her right there.
She shot away from me as we surfaced.
"Yo, Maddie!" Harlow shouted across the pool. "Your phone is buzzing like crazy."
Maddie looked at me, floating there in front of me. I almost reached for her again.
Then she spun around and swam to the ladder, heaving herself away from me as quickly as she could.
Chapter Sixteen
Madeline
I shivered, dripping water all over Rane's kitchen floor. The house was eerily silent once I closed the door on the cacophony outside, which meant I could hear everything Jonathan Neil was saying to me right now.
I wished I couldn't.
"We looked again. And you were very good. Almost perfect, Madeline, if truth be told. But when we were watching, we just couldn't get past the idea that we were watching Madeline Cole." He spat my name like it was something gross on the heel of his shoe. "I'm sorry, we're going with someone else."
I was saying... something. I was walking... somewhere. But I had no connection to either of these motions until the phone slipped from my hand and fell to the floor.
I would not cry.
I knew I hadn't gotten it. I knew the second I walked out of there. I stared as hard as I could at the spattery picture, willing myself not to cry about it.
Why was I crying?
"We were watching.... Madeline Cole."
Well, who the fuck else would I be?
I could change my hair, my body, my posture. Fuck, give me contacts and false teeth and I could change my face. I could change my accent, my pitch, my mannerisms.
But I couldn't change being Madeline.
I was still...always...me.
It wasn't fucking fair.
"You okay?"
Rane blocked my view of the spattery picture and I stepped back involuntarily, blinking hard.
He extended a towel and I slung it around my shoulders, clutching it like a lifeline. "I'm fine."
"Yeah?" He looked over his shoulder at where I was staring. "Does that picture piss you off or something? You look like you want to smash it."
"It...reminds me of something."
Rane grinned. "It's a party, Maddie. This is rock and roll. Smash my picture, I've got more."
I gaped at him. What the hell was he talking about? "It's probably some priceless piece of art, you idiot."
"Probably," he sighed. "I actually have no idea. Never really liked it. Go on." He leaped up on the couch, oddly graceful for such a big man. "Get it out."
I was stuck somewhere between irritation and amusement. I just wanted to go and hide and console myself with a vodka gimlet, but Rane was perched like a mountain goat on the back of his pristine white sofa and I kind of wanted to see what he would do next.
What he did next was wrench the moody red painting from the wall with a triumphant karate yell. "Hi-YAH!"
An unplanned giggle escaped my lips. He heard me and grinned back, jumping down and trotting over like a proud dog retrieves a ball.
"Here. You want to punch it, Mads?"
I kind of did. "No, it's okay."
He set it down on the floor in front of me. It really was godawful ugly up close. "Kick it then. Don't ruin your manicure."
I held up my ragged nails and reddened cuticles. "And what manicure might that be?"
"Weren't your nails painted yesterday?"
"You...noticed my nails?"
"I noticed a lot of things." The way he dipped his chin down after saying that made my stomach clench with an emotion I dared not let rise to the surface.
"It was for the video," I explained. "Fake nails. They ripped the shit out of my nailbeds, too."
"All the better reason to kick my painting instead."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because it's a party and you look pissed off and sad." He touched my wet head. "And like a drowned rat, too, though I suppose that's my fault." I scowled at him. "I'm a legend-host. I can't have this kind of moody, broody shit in my house during a party."
"Oh, so you're not just being nice?"
"I'm never just being nice. I always have an ulterior motive." Acid dripped from his words.
"Okay, well, I am only doing this to help you preserve your reputation."
"Good." His lopsided grin said more than I could p
ossibly understand right now.
I stared down at the ugly painting. The red, angry swirls formed and reformed into the faces of the directors, the producers, the tabloid photographers and grasping ex-boyfriends. The shrinks, the group therapy leaders, the robotic meeting attendees with their judging faces and red, weepy eyes and willingness to let others define them. I saw the fans, the fickle fucking fans who loved me until the moment they cast me aside, and then hated me with a vitriol I could never understand. Once I was America's princess, and now I couldn't even find a job and....
"Fuck!"
I hopped on one foot, startled tears collecting in my eyes. That fucking painting was stronger than I had expected.
Rane looked from my plaster-dusted foot and back to the dented painting. The canvas had peeled back in a perfect toe hole. "Nicely done," he said mildly, as if he hadn't just watched me disintegrate in front of him. "Now I'm gonna go get you a drink. Have a seat."
"I'm going to get your couch all wet."
He cocked his head. "Water is hardly the worst liquid that has hit that thing."
I wrinkled my nose, but my toes were starting to throb. I hopped over to the couch to elevate them and wonder what the fuck I had just done. Since the...incident— the hair on the floor, the wind on my skin—oh fuck it, since I shaved my head and ran out of my old house naked into the nighttime. Yeah. That. Since that happened, I had kept myself deliberately in check. The second I felt that anger start to rise, I always squelched it.
Except...with Rane. I had let it out with him...twice now. Twice today, even.
I cowered into the couch, afraid to meet his eye when he came back into the room. Mad Maddie had reared her ugly, bald head again, and this time, I didn't have a camera trained on me to give me an excuse.
"I didn't know what you drank. So I brought them all." Rane stood directly in front of me, forcing me to look up.
Then I laughed. "You look like you robbed a liquor store."
"All bought and paid for, I assure you." He deftly untangled himself and lined up the bottles. Whiskey, vodka, rum, a can of Bud and a bottle of expensive looking Chardonnay. I looked at each one of them, then back up to him, confused.