by Stacey Kade
“She broke into his place and told anyone who asked she was his girlfriend and moving in,” Karen says to Leon. “And studio security caught her hiding under his car on the lot once, waiting for him. I was there for that one.”
Leon’s overgrown eyebrows shoot up. “You have a restraining order against her?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I did. It’s probably expired by now. Fuck.” I run my hands through my hair again before I think to stop myself. “Are restraining orders even valid outside the state?” I ask. “The one I had was in California.” Jesus, did she drive all the way out here? Follow me? How did she get here so fast?
My mouth is so dry right now. It’s killing me.
Amanda touches my arm gently, her fingers ghosting over my shoulder before retreating.
I turn toward her. “I’m sorry,” I say, feeling helplessness and frustration rise up in me. “I used to have a whole team to handle this stuff. And now I’m on my own with no fucking clue what I’m doing.” And now—I look at Amanda, her dark eyes watching me so seriously—I have so much more to protect.
“This is my fault,” I choke out. “I should never have—”
“It’s okay,” she says, with a strained smile. “We’ll figure it out.”
We shouldn’t have to. She shouldn’t have to.
“Chase,” Emily says in a pleading tone from the door.
“You.” Karen spins toward her. “Tell Max there’s a delay in Makeup, and it’ll be a few minutes.”
My heart falls. “Karen, no. You shouldn’t have to cover—”
“You.” She points at me. “Shut up and sit.” She steps back to stand behind her chair, swiveling it in my direction. “I can work and you can talk.”
I glance at Amanda, and she seems okay. Well, not okay, still too pale and shaken looking, but better than she was. She nods at me, jerking her head toward Karen, so I take my seat again.
“Thanks,” I say reluctantly to Karen. I hate everything about this. Somehow even trying my best, I’m still managing to screw everything up.
“Shut up, I said,” Karen says easily.
“I’ll check on the RO, see if it’s still in force,” Leon says to me. He closes the folder and returns it under his arm. “In the meantime, you want to talk to me about this?” He points at the chain and flower petals on the floor.
“A PA brought the box…” Karen trails off, looking uncertain for the first time.
“Which one?” Leon asks. “Which PA?”
“I don’t know. Not the one that brings Chase around,” Karen says.
“Any chance it could have been her?” Leon points to his folder.
Karen stops, clutching one of her brushes so tightly in her hand that her knuckles are white. “It could have been,” she says slowly. “I was working on Jenna, so I wasn’t paying much attention. It was definitely a girl, a woman. She had a Coal City crew jacket on. I think. It was black, I know that. She might have had an ID tag on. I thought I saw it…”
“Anything else going on?” Leon asks. “Usually we see a pattern of escalation but—”
“The burned photo,” Amanda says.
And that’s when I fucking lose my mind. She’s right. Burned stuff—that’s Sera’s thing.
“It was outside Chase’s room yesterday morning when we left,” Amanda says, looking to me for confirmation. “Early.”
I nod, my neck muscles creaking with tension. Which means Sera has been in our hotel and also somehow knows which rooms are ours. It would only take one lax member of Housekeeping and she could be in our room waiting for us. Or worse, waiting for Amanda.
I can see Leon making the same connection, his expression troubled. “Don’t suppose you kept it?” he asks.
“No. We left it in the hall, and I think it was gone when we came back.” Amanda looks to me for confirmation again, but I’m too far gone because I’m realizing that Sera might have been in the hall, watching us the whole damn time.
“I’ll talk to the hotel. See if they caught anything on camera.” He glances at me. “We’ll get you new rooms or at the very least new keys in case she’s managed to bribe someone on staff. You might have to forgo room service or cleaning until we can get this woman’s location pinned down. Don’t let anyone you don’t know personally into your room, no matter what they say.”
It’s a solid first step, but it’s not enough. I can’t take the chance. The realization of what I have to do curdles in my gut, but it’s inescapable. If I want to keep Amanda safe, I only have one option.
“Leon,” I ask, my tone gritty and harsh. “Can you take Amanda back to the hotel?”
He shrugs. “Sure.”
“I’m standing right here,” Amanda says, frowning at me in the mirror.
“I know, and it’s not safe here. Clearly.” I shove my hand in the direction of the chain and flower petals.
Amanda raises her eyebrows. “So you’re sending me to stay in the hotel alone.”
I steel myself against her reaction and the sense of loss already building in me. “No,” I say. “I’m sending you to gather up your stuff so you can go home. I’ll find someone to take you. Or I’ll hire a car. Something.”
Her mouth falls open in shock.
Karen sighs and mutters something unintelligible. I’m pretty sure one of the words might be “dumbass.”
I ignore her, focusing on Amanda. “It’s the only way I know for sure that you’ll be safe,” I say, pleading with her to understand. “You don’t know what it was like before. She would pop up everywhere. It was creepy as hell. She wanted to be with me. I have no idea what she might do to you.” Just the thought of it makes me want to pull Amanda into a corner and block the rest of the world with my body.
“No,” Amanda says.
I pause, flummoxed for a second. “No, what?”
“No, I’m not leaving.” She sets her jaw stubbornly. Color has returned to her face, but in the form of a flush in her cheeks.
“It’s not up to you,” I say, getting louder and my accent breaking through, much to my chagrin. “I can’t keep you safe here.”
Which is apparently the exactly wrong thing to say.
Amanda’s eyes flash anger. “That’s not your job,” she says, stepping closer to me.
“You don’t know what she could do, Amanda. She’s unstable. Jesus, she might have a gun. It happens,” I argue.
“And I could die tomorrow because a bus runs me over or because some nutjob kidnaps me off the street and I’m not as lucky the second time.”
Her words are a cold knife to my insides. “That’s not funny, Amanda.”
“I didn’t mean it to be,” she says evenly. As Karen swivels the chair to finish her work, Amanda steps around to maintain eye contact with me. “I know this is simple for you, but it’s not for me.”
I squeeze my hands into fists, the injured one sending dull pangs up to my elbow. “I don’t want you getting hurt,” I say through gritted teeth. “How is that complicated?”
“Because it’s about more than that,” she says, maintaining that infuriating calm. “I spent two years under the control of someone else. I lived literally at the whim of another person.” She gestures at the chain. “He decided if I lived or died, if I suffered.”
And everyone in hearing distance collectively sucks in a breath.
“That’s not … I don’t…” I struggle to find words, to put them in any kind of sentence that can follow that.
“Then I spent two more years hiding, being afraid, letting my fear control me,” Amanda continues. “I’m here trying to change that.” She levels a steady look at me. “You know that.”
“This is someone trying to hurt you; you’re supposed to be afraid!” I shout.
“This is someone trying to control me,” she corrects. “And I can’t let them.” She hesitates. “I can’t let you.”
I jerk back in the chair as if Amanda just took a physical swipe at me, and Karen makes a frustrated noise, coming after me wi
th a makeup sponge. “I’m the bad guy because I want to keep you safe?” I ask. “Are you saying I’m like…” I can’t even finish that sentence.
“Of course not!” Tears fill her eyes, and she wipes them with the edge of her fleece sleeve. “Never,” she says fiercely. “But what you’re asking me to do … I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Amanda, you aren’t listening—”
She throws her arms up in frustration. “You want to protect me, I get it, but how am I supposed to learn to trust myself, to feel safe with my decisions, if someone else is always making them for me? Whether it’s you, my parents, or my freaking anxiety?” She laughs bitterly. “Someone else is always in charge.”
Karen pulls the cape from around my neck, signaling that she’s finished.
I stand up, facing off with Amanda. “Okay, then tell me this: How am I supposed to live with myself if something happens to you on my watch?” I demand.
Her eyelids flutter down. “I’m not on your watch.”
“Yes, you are,” I say, frustrated. “That’s what loving someone means.” The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’m going to say them. It’s something I haven’t even acknowledged to myself, let alone shared with Amanda. But I know in this moment it’s true, as clearly as I know my own name. And I don’t care who hears it.
Amanda’s mouth falls open slightly in surprise.
“I meant it,” I say to her. “And I’m not taking it back,” I add.
“Chase?” Emily is back at the door, hopping from foot to foot like a kid who waited too long to find a bathroom.
“Go,” Karen says to me with a softer expression than I’ve seen from her in a while. “I’ll finish in here while she answers whatever questions Leon has.”
The big man looks up from taking pictures of the petals and chain with his phone, unfazed by the drama unfolding around him, and just nods.
“I’ll bring her over when I come to set,” Karen says.
“I don’t need a babysitter.” Amanda gives Karen a hostile look, which means she has more balls than I do.
I wait for the explosion.
But Karen just shrugs. “Then don’t call it that,” she says. “Think of me more like an anti-stalker solution. Because I will cut a bitch if she thinks she’s coming near any of us again. Especially my trailer.”
We all stare at her.
“What? She ruined my favorite set of brushes.” Karen snaps the cape I was wearing in the air with ruthless efficiency and then hangs it on a hook on the wall.
A snort of laughter escapes from Amanda, and she clamps a hand over her mouth to stop it. And, to my surprise, Karen winks at her.
“You guys are crazy,” I say in disbelief. I have no idea how this conversation derailed so badly and so quickly. I blame Karen. I glare at her, which only makes her shake her head at me mockingly.
“We’re not done talking,” I warn Amanda as I head for the door and Emily impatiently waiting for me.
“I am,” Amanda says.
And with Emily practically pulling me down the stairs and Max and the others waiting on me, there’s nothing more I can say or do.
29
Amanda
“You know they’re not really hurting him,” Karen whispers in my ear as the actor playing Carl, the arresting officer, slams Chase against the trunk of the police car. There’s a pad on the car, beneath the camera’s line of sight, to protect Chase, and another on the ground. But it doesn’t seem like enough.
“Well, not much,” she says as Max calls, “Cut!” and yells for the medic to look at Chase’s hand again.
Evidently, Max wasn’t too upset about the injury—something I hadn’t thought of until Karen mentioned it on our way over. Or at least, Max wasn’t upset enough not to use it in the scene. Now Chase’s bruised knuckles appear to be the result of being shoved to the ground before he can catch himself.
It’s Smitty’s big redemption scene. He’s not fighting back. Instead, he’s taking the fall for Keller, who got caught in a drug buy—the kind of fun Smitty has spent the entire movie/day trying to talk Keller into—so Keller can leave town, go to college, and have a future. It hurts to see the pain on Smitty/Chase’s face when he realizes that he’s losing his dream of the future and the only true friend he has left, even as he’s doing the right thing.
“I know,” I say to Karen. But it doesn’t feel that way. I feel like they’re busy beating up the outside of him while I took my shots at his feelings earlier today, making him the total damaged package.
“You did what you needed to do for you. He’ll figure it out. He’s just scared.” She shrugs, one arm wrapped over her waist in the rapidly cooling evening air. I can see my breath now. They’ve been at this scene a dozen different ways, and we’re about to lose the light, apparently. So the tension is running high, a silent, thick cloud choking out any of the conversations and laughter I’ve witnessed on previous days.
“It’s partially our fault,” Karen says conversationally as everybody resets, including the gloved medic, wiping Chase’s blood off the spotless white paint of the squad car.
“What?” I ask, distracted as I watch Chase shake out his hand, stretching his fingers like they hurt. I hope they’re not broken. He hit that wall so hard.
“His friends, his agent, his manager … his former manager. His assistant, Evan. All of us,” Karen says. “He’s messed up so many times before, his head is full of voices, including mine, shouting at him that he’s going to fail, that he’s going to fuck up. So he’s not going to leave you alone about going home. He doesn’t want to make another mistake.”
“But I’m the one arguing to take the risk,” I point out.
“I know. I’m just telling you, no matter what you say, you’re swimming upstream against all of that.”
Great.
“So you’re in love with him, huh?” she says without looking at me.
I open my mouth and close it without speaking. I’m not ready to talk about that yet.
Karen snorts. “Please—I’ve been watching you watching him for hours. You flinch every time he hits the ground.”
“It looks like it hurts,” I argue.
She ignores my weak attempt at rationalizing. “Just be careful with him, okay? There aren’t many people in his life.”
I wait for her to finish that sentence. There aren’t many people in his life looking out for him, people who care about him, who love him?
But she doesn’t. There aren’t many people in his life. The words hang in the air, making me unbearably sad. That this guy who took the time to teach me to punch, to make me feel good, to research pancake places with a bizarre number of syrups doesn’t have anyone else to share that with. It seems like a loss for the world.
My throat swells with a lump, and I want to cry for him.
“His family cut him off when he came out here instead of staying in Texas to help at the ranch. Most of the ass kissers fell off when he couldn’t get steady visible work. The rest of us got fed up with his bullshit when he was drinking.” Her mouth tightens. “I stand by that decision, but that doesn’t mean it was easy to watch him hit the bottom all by himself.”
My heart sends up a sharp pang. “Yes, I love him,” I say quietly, even as I realize it should be something I say to Chase.
“Good,” she says, whether for the sentiment or that I voiced it aloud, I’m not sure. “Life is too short to hold yourself back.” A sad expression flickers on her face before vanishing into the smooth, hard look she wears so well. I don’t know what caused it, other than a broken heart in her past—Karen holding herself back or someone else holding back from Karen. It doesn’t matter in the end. It’s true either way.
Life is too short to hold yourself back. From love, from happiness, from the fear of falling when you could have the joy of jumping.
And I, of all people, should know that.
* * *
Chase doesn’t say much in the van on the way home. He has a cold pack
bound to his sore hand with an ACE bandage, but as soon as I slide in next to him, he lifts his arm so I can curl up next to him.
I hesitate for a second, just long enough for the wounded expression to flash across his face. He looks away from me to stare out the side window and starts to lower his arm.
Catching him in mid-motion, I duck beneath his arm, moving so quickly that my shoulder connects with the side of his body harder than I meant.
But he doesn’t protest, beyond the surprised grunt.
He wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer, as the van starts off. All I can think of is what Karen said earlier: that he’s trying to save himself by saving me, trying to not be the failure everyone has told him he is, in one way or another.
I’m bracing myself for round two of our earlier argument. I can practically feel him gearing up to talk to me again, but he’s evidently waiting for his moment, which is not now.
Emily makes quiet, idle chitchat with the driver, who murmurs replies that I can’t quite hear.
It’s dim and warm in here, a cozy cocoon of safety.
I snuggle into Chase, moving past his open jacket to rest my head on his chest, feeling the heat of his skin beneath the soft cotton of his T-shirt, the steady rise and fall of his breathing, and the more distant thump-thump of his heart.
I could stay like this forever.
But the van arrives at the hotel in what seems like seconds, dropping us off at the service entrance in the rear of the building without any discussion.
The night manager, a woman this time in a blue suit coat, is waiting at the kitchen to hand us new keys to our existing rooms, per arrangements made with Leon.
I remain glued to Chase’s side through this, my arm wrapped around his waist, inside his jacket. I want to soak up every moment of him, of this temporary peace between us and the idea of what we could be. Before he tries again to send me home for my own good and shatters the moment.
Upstairs, we nod hello to the security guard, one of Leon’s contacts, stationed a few feet away from our door. I didn’t like the idea of a stranger being so close when Leon first suggested it to me in the makeup trailer, but now, I find the presence of someone who is definitively on our side, paid to be there, reassuring.