He tilted his head to the side with a slight smile. “You know about it. Don’t pretend that you don’t.”
I smiled weakly, beginning to conjure up an excuse.
“No need. I’ll see you down there soon anyway,” he said. “Just wanted some time to connect with nature, you get me?”
“I guess,” I shrugged.
He chuckled. “You get me… but you don’t want to get me. And there, Charlie, is your problem.”
My gut shifted uncomfortably as the truth rang in his words. I wanted to believe him; I wanted to be able to sync with his unique brand of craziness. It was the same kind of comforting craziness that I felt with Hazel.
Everything that she was — everything that Crimson was, the way they talked, it promised that there was more to this world. That there was a layer underneath, working in the background of everything. Fate, destiny, some pattern that was constantly shifting like a kaleidoscope.
It was true — some part of me knew it was there. I just wouldn’t let myself — a boring, normal guy from Ohio — believe it.
His purple eyes were boring into me, promising to show me the door of this world.
Then I saw him living alone in a shack somewhere in a barren wilderness for a year. If the door led there, I had no interest in going.
“I’ll see you at the set,” I said as I turned to leave.
“Charlie, wait,” he said in a husky voice, grabbing my hand.
When he touched me, it was like an explosion went off in my soul. I was touching someone who already knew me somehow… who’d known me for a longer period of time than the length of my life.
He spun me around and pressed his lips onto mine.
Everything in me felt like it was enveloped in light, like every single particle that made me up as a person was being understood all at once. As he kissed me gently, warmth flooded my senses from my lips to my fingertips.
His kiss made me feel… it made me feel like I was more and less and greater and insignificant and as powerful as a god and as helpless as a baby all at once.
I was complete.
Then he pulled away and blinked rapidly, his red eyelashes fluttering over his purple eyes.
“See?” he whispered, smiling knowingly.
I swallowed, needing time alone to piece that together. I needed to make sense of it; to convert it into something I understood.
“See what?” I asked, my eyes flickering back and forth between his.
His expression didn’t falter. “You aren’t ready. You didn’t do it yet.”
On some level, I knew he meant to forgive myself, but I couldn’t let myself think that. It was just too weird — too creepy. Instead, I changed the subject.
“You’re gay?” I asked, wiping his saliva off my mouth.
“I don’t do labels. I like what I like,” he shrugged.
“I bet your publicist loves that,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
“They manage,” he said with a wink. “Now run along now and tell Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup that I’ll be down shortly.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I walked back down to the set on the beach with the sense that a hurricane was coming, and that hurricane’s name was Crimson Sin.
Reese was pacing back and forth near his trailer, talking on his phone in an agitated way as his silver tie flapped in the wind.
Inside my head, I was screaming. How was it possible that someone like Crim could… could be like that? I made a beeline for my trailer so I could hide.
Throughout the next few hours, I kept looking out the window to check for a swath of ruby red hair lurking around.
There was no sign of him — for now.
He made me feel certain things I wasn’t prepared to feel. I clung to everything I knew— the solid, surefire things that were around me. It was all I could do when everything was so uncertain.
As the day gave way to night, there was a knock on my door.
I stopped my mindless scrolling through Instagram and froze. Could it be him?
As I walked to the door, I pictured Crim standing there, forcing me to take part in his weirdness. But it could have easily been Mason, searching for secrets. Or Oliver, coming to make me feel inadequate again. It might’ve been Reese, stopping by my trailer to give me bad news about the phone call he was having earlier. Even Leo might choose to show up, though I knew he was completely emotionally shut off from me at this point.
I hoped it was Leo.
To my dismay, when I opened the door, pretty boy Oliver was standing there.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, my face falling.
“That’s no way to greet your costume designer,” he said with a scowl.
“Do you need something?” I asked impatiently, desperate to cling to my alone time.
“I’m working on costumes for Morocco. Since your character is new and you’re going to shoot most of your scenes there, I need you to come to my room for sizing.”
I scrunched up my face.
“Oh get over yourself,” he snapped. “This is part of the job.”
A half-hour later, I was following Oliver into his room at the Inn. He must have done some intense cleaning since last time I was here, because the room was immaculate. A rack filled with glittering costumes made of various fabrics hung near one side of the room, storage containers packed with rainbow-colored thread were neatly wedged against one of the walls, and several mannequins were lined up against the window. Each one was pinned with fabric and partially adorned with complicated beading.
“Wow, you actually got your house in order,” I said with genuine surprise.
“Oh shut it,” Oliver snapped, bustling around near the sewing machine.
“I was being honest,” I said.
“I’m sure you were,” he fired back.
I sat down on his perfectly made bed.
“Ah-ah-ah, don’t touch the place I sleep!” he snapped.
I didn’t move. Instead, I crossed my legs. “Why, you afraid you’re going to catch my gay?”
“I’m already gayer than you,” he said, rummaging through the drawers. “I just don’t like dirty farm boys touching my stuff.”
I scowled. “What’s your problem?”
“What do you mean? This is how I show affection.”
Affection? Did he… did he like me?
“You have a funny way of showing it,” I said bitterly.
“You’re not the first person to tell me that, hillbilly boy,” he said dryly.
I pursed my lips and leaned back on his bed so I was lying across it.
He heard the rustling as I moved and turned to see me spreading out. He wrinkled his nose. “Ugh, now I’m going to have to wash my sheets…”
“I’m not even touching your sheets,” I said, spreading out over the duvet. “But I will if you keep being rude to me.”
“Shush, I’m working,” he said as he rushed toward me with a tape measure.
Without even asking me to get up, he leaned over me and measured the distance between my shoulder blades.
Even from upside-down, I could see the hint of a smile on his face. He was enjoying this.
Maybe… maybe he was just bantering with me this whole time?
He clicked the tape measure and went over to one of the mannequins, comparing the length to the shoulders.
I sat up and watched him, fascinated by his flurry of work. There was this wild energy coming off of him in waves; energy that danced on my skin and made me excited.
“How are you doing, by the way?” I asked delicately. “I know it’s been a couple weeks since—”
“Hardly think about him,” he said shortly.
Though there was a stiffness in his shoulders that I couldn’t miss.
“I stay busy. I’m in an amazing Italian village, far away from all of that. It’s easy to immerse myself in my work,” he explained.
A few seconds passed in silence as I watched him pin fabric into the mannequin. His han
ds were shaking.
“Sometimes I think I hate him,” he said.
My eyebrows came together. This was a side of Oliver I hadn’t seen before.
“Are we back to bitching about our exes? We never really did get to go into detail in that bar…” I said.
“If you’re in the mood for bitching, then I guess I can fill you in,” he said with his lips pursed. “But only if you fill me in about Crimson Sin.”
I froze. How did he know I’d already met the guy? That strange, otherworldly man that shook my entire world with his… oddness.
“What do you mean?” I asked carefully.
“I know you met him. He told me.”
“Wait, you guys already met? What did you think of him?” I asked with my mouth dry. I had to know what Oliver’s reaction was; I wanted to know if someone else saw him too. Part of me had convinced myself that Crim was just a figment of my imagination.
“He’s fucking weird,” Oliver muttered.
A sense of validation washed over me. “Thank goodness— I thought I was the only one. Did he tell you he wants to go live in Iceland too?”
Oliver frowned and looked up from his pinning. “No, he told me he’s going to Prague.”
We shared a look for a few seconds and an understanding flickered between us.
“Did he… did he lie?” I asked.
“He had to,” Oliver said. “If he fed us both different stories…”
“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” came a voice from outside the door.
Me and Oliver shared a wide-eyed look, then we both looked at the door.
“Mind if I join? Reese’s Puffs was all up on my case, moaning about how I need to spend time with the cast…”
Oliver went to the door and opened it. Standing there, leaning against the door frame as if he owned the room was that enigmatic man.
“Hello again,” he said with a lazy smile.
“Reese said you need to spend time with us?” I asked, trying to ignore the fierce magnetism coming off of him. “Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, rolling his purple eyes and sauntering through the threshold. “Something something publicity.”
“That means he wants photos of us to go online,” Oliver said. “The production company probably wants to milk you for all you’re worth.”
“That’s no secret to me,” Crim said, pulling out his phone. “Say cheese.”
He craned his phone above us, smiled for the camera, and snapped a photo.
“Hey, I wasn’t ready!” Oliver cried.
“Candid is always better than posed,” Crim said simply. “Besides, you look cute no matter what.”
Oliver blushed fiercely and muttered to himself as he continued pinning curtains of fabric onto the mannequin.
Crim swaggered his way to the bed next to me, looked down and smiled. There was something… vampiric about that smile, like he couldn’t wait to get a taste of me.
“Charlie. Long time no see. I was hoping to get a chance to see you again before the day ran out. How serendipitous.”
Before I could reply, he sat down on the bed next to me.
Our hands were propped behind our backs, only a few centimeters from touching. Every single neuron in my brain was concentrated on the spot where our hands were almost together. It was like I could feel the electric charge coming off of him like a Tesla coil, the lightning dancing between us on that one square centimeter of skin on the side of my hand.
Crim held out his phone — which didn’t even have a case — and pulled up his photos app.
“This look okay to you, Charlie? I think we should put it on the ‘gram.”
“Wait, I want to see! I probably look disgusting,” Oliver said, bustling over and craning his neck behind us.
I could feel his breath on the back of my neck; the sensation sent shivers through me.
“Well, what do you think?” Crim asked, his voice full of amusement.
The photo showed me lounging on Oliver’s bed in a relaxed way. I was surprised how natural I looked there — like I had command of the room. Oliver was standing off to the side, casting an angry look at the camera, and only the top of Crim’s face was visible at the bottom of the screen. His purple eyes looked even more vivid than normal compared to the yellow tones of the room.
“Posting it,” Crim said before I could respond.
“Wait—!” I said, panicking. I didn’t know that much about social media, or what would happen to my reputation once I was seen in a bedroom with Crimson Sin and Oliver Reza. I knew once Crim pushed that post button, things were going to change.
“Wait for what?” Crim said, a smile lurking on his face. “You’re going to be famous, Charlie. Might as well get a jump start on it now.”
“I don’t think I’m ready for that…” I said, picking at my thumb again.
“No one is ever ready,” Oliver said softly.
There was a heaviness to his voice, and I wondered if he was thinking of how quickly he rose to fame; how quickly his life changed.
“Fame changes your life. It prunes everything you thought was solid away,” he said cryptically as he began stitching on the mannequin.
“Yes! Oliver gets it,” Crim exclaimed, clapping his hands. “This is what this world is like, Charlie. Welcome to the shit show.”
I watched as his black thumbnail pressed the post button, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. There was a part of me that knew on some level that my life was about to change big time — I just didn’t know how much.
Crim didn’t even select a filter or write a caption for the photo; he just posted it.
“Aren’t you going to tell your fans why you’re here…?” I asked, an eyebrow rising.
“No,” he said simply. “If my PR team cares enough, they’ll go in and edit it.”
“Everyone’s going to think we’re all having a threesome,” Oliver muttered from the mannequin.
As soon as those words were out in the air, the feeling in the room changed; it shifted to something heavy and dark. Something forbidden.
“Why not?” Crim asked, a smile spreading across his face.
I was dumbfounded. “Guys, are we seriously discussing this right now?”
There was part of me that wanted to do everything by the book, keep to myself. Keep out of all the drama, as Leo advised.
But there was a larger part of me that took control, and that part was a ravenous beast that overrode my judgment. The beast that hadn’t been laid in a couple weeks…
“I’m one-hundred-percent serious. I would bone both of your brains out right now. All you’d have to do is say the word,” Crim said, his purple eyes jumping between me and Oliver excitedly.
There was a giddy tingling in my gut. I knew that if Oliver was down for it, I wouldn’t be able to resist.
“No way,” Oliver said, wrinkling his nose.
Disappointment crippled me.
“When are you going to get another chance to sleep with a rock star and a movie star?” Crim reasoned, unaffected by the rejection. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I’m only here for this season and then I’ll be gone.”
“Gone where, exactly?” Oliver asked, turning toward him and putting him on the spot with his bright green gaze. “You told Charlie you were going to Iceland. You told me it was Prague.” He cocked his head to the side. “Where are you going, Crimson?”
“Call me Crim,” he said, crossing one of his legs over the other. “And I’m going wherever I damn well please. I might change my mind tomorrow to go to Vancouver for all I know.”
“Why, are you running from something?” Oliver asked, his eyes shimmering with emerald fire as he took a step closer to Crim.
I couldn’t help but watch the exchange with a salacious excitement. There was something so… so hot about watching Oliver stand up to Crimson Sin like this. Oliver had an overpowering, celebrity-like energy of his own.
Crim didn’t back down. He didn’t even s
hift where he was sitting next to me.
He did, however, move his hand almost imperceptibly an inch to the right, touching his skin to mine.
Electricity sprang through me as blush rose into my cheeks. Was this really happening?
“I don’t run,” Crim said, that vampiric smile spreading across his face. “I explore. I’m always down to try something new, even if it’s uncomfortable for most people to even think about…”
He began stroking his thumb gently along the side of my hand.
All of my attention was focused on that spot. If the tension got any stronger, I didn’t know if I’d be able to contain myself…
A glance up at Oliver told me that he was experiencing much the same thing. He was trying to resist, but the swelling of his pupils and the pulsing vein in his neck gave him away.
“Don’t fight it,” Crim said to him softly.
That was all it took, and suddenly Oliver’s lips were crashing onto Crim’s.
I could barely wrap my mind around what was happening in front of me before Crim pulled away from Oliver and kissed me.
The force of his kiss knocked me backward, and suddenly Crim was straddling me, kissing me voraciously.
Oliver pulled apart his buttons with trembling fingertips and disappeared behind Crim as his lips crashed onto mine.
It was like he was undoing me with that kiss; everything that I’d felt in the meadow came rushing back to me: I felt powerful and insignificant all at once.
Then Oliver appeared on the bed to my left. My eyes were closed, so I could only feel as his hands trembled, roving over my sides with a ravenous want.
Suddenly, everything became clear. Oliver was faking drunk that night, just as I suspected. The way he was touching me right now was like an addict getting a hit of his drug.
He wanted me. He’d always wanted me.
Crim must have sensed it too, because he pulled back from my lips and crashed into Oliver’s neck.
Watching him plant voracious, quick kisses beneath Oliver’s ear made my cock pulse even harder.
There was a faint question forming in the back of my mind, an inkling of doubt that asked me over and over, Do you really want this? Is this really happening? But it was quickly smothered by a red-hot desire.
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