“Bullshit,” Mason said, tilting his head back.
“You don’t have to believe me,” Reese said, shooting silver daggers at Mason with his eyes.
“But you look so white—” Oliver said.
“I know. And for my entire career, I’ve pretended to be one-hundred-percent caucasian. Back when I was an actor just starting, my first production company advised me to change my name and pretend to be white.”
We were all leaning forward, shocked by this sudden realization.
“Wait, so your accent—” Leo asked, running his hands through his hair.
“That’s real. I was raised in London. Long story,” he said sharply.
The scowl was deepening on Mason’s face. I could tell he didn’t know that about Reese, even though they dated.
“My parents are immigrants. They spent time in the U.S. And had me, so I have citizenship. They do not — and none of my cousins do, either.”
The pieces were starting to fall into place. I was still picking at my thumb cuticle.
Reese pulled a barstool to the small living space and sat on it. He looked like a model — all long limbs and nice shoes and an expensive suit, posing on a mundane stool. “Those guys you saw in my basement, Mason… they were my cousins.”
“That’s what you said then, too!” Mason scowled. “You expect me to believe that — none of them look a thing like you!”
Reese sighed heavily and shrugged. “They were my family. I was doing a favor for my aunt and uncle — hosting my cousins. They were having visa issues, and ICE was looking for them. It turned into this whole legal thing…”
“So you hid them in your basement?” I asked softly.
Reese nodded. “They were staying with me for a few months, just until we could get their visa situation straightened out. Unfortunately, it only got worse and worse as the administration cracked down on illegal immigration. It got to the point where I told them if they heard someone come in the house, to hide in the secret closet I had in the cellar.”
“That’s when Mason found them,” Oliver said, glancing at him.
“Shut up, this is all bullshit,” Mason said through gritted teeth.
“Just because you’re sour about what happened with us doesn’t make this not true,” Reese said.
“Wait, so about the blackmail…” I said.
“Right, there’s that,” Reese said, rubbing his temples where the silver hair swirled. “As you can imagine, it’s… untoward for a relatively famous director to be harboring illegal immigrants in his home for as long as I did. And what it looks like to most people — that I have sex slaves in my basement or something. I can see the headlines now…”
I could easily close my eyes and picture the headlines, too. The media would have a field day with it.
“If this ever gets out, I’d be under multiple investigations,” he said. “Up until recently, I didn’t think there was any evidence—”
“Wait a minute!” I said, standing up. “You’re trying to brush this all under the rug, acting like it’s okay?!” I cried.
Five pairs of eyes in the room were all on me. I knew I was making a big deal out of this, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand for this kind of injustice.
“It was for family, Charlie,” Reese said carefully.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, pinning him with my stare. “It’s not right — you broke the law,”
“Laws can be bent,” Crim said gently.
I whipped around to stare him down. “Oh yeah? You sound like a freaking sociopath, you know that?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been called that,” Crim said, staring at his black nails.
He was about to say something else, but I cut him off. I wasn’t done yet. “Laws exist for a reason,” I said, wound up by an intense sense of justice. “And you broke it.”
“Charlie, you’re being obnoxious,” Oliver said, rolling his eyes. “We all know this immigration crap is a bunch of stupid shit designed to make brown people’s lives difficult—”
“Even if it’s stupid, the laws is the law,” I said, standing up a little taller. All of these guys staring at me was stirring up familiar feelings within me — this was just like that time in high school when I threatened to report a bully for breaking the rules. He was bragging about getting away with taking me to a party and getting me to do things. He dared the other students around him to tell on him. No one would; he had too much social power, and it was known that if he didn’t like someone, he could make their lives miserable.
So I did. And I paid for it for the rest of my high school days.
“Reese, you have to admit you did something wrong,” I said, mimicking my old self when I confronted the bully.
“I did what was best for my family,” Reese said cooly.
“No. You did what was best for you,” I said.
Reese narrowed his eyes at me, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling of being unwelcome in the trailer. All the guys’ eyes were on me, compelling me to leave.
Just like all those years ago, I was trying to stand up for what was right, and every person I thought was my friend turned against me.
“Do seriously none of you have a problem with this?!” I asked the room, making eye contact with each of them.
Five times, my eyes were avoided.
“I can’t believe this,” I said, turning around to leave.
I lingered there for a moment at the door, waiting for someone to stop me.
No one did.
And just like that, I left Reese’s trailer and walked off into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I went back to my trailer, the one place I could be alone to think.
One minute passed. Two minutes passed. Fifteen minutes went by, and no one came to my trailer.
I buried my face in my pillow. As my anger and old hurts ebbed away, I wondered if I was overreacting. When I closed my eyes, I could still see all of the guys’ eyes looking at me like I was a dog that started to speak.
Not even Mason, who was angry with Reese, was on my side about this. Reese was breaking the law for crying out loud! And he was acting like the law didn’t apply to him.
He was only upset that there was evidence of his wrongdoing and that someone would find out.
My anger flared again, and I reached for my journal.
I couldn’t believe that I could associate with all these guys — guys that I thought were good people. None of them seemed to have a problem with any of it…
I turned to the pages where I’d written down all the qualities I wanted in my heartmate. The colored marks I’d made around each word pairing it with each guy — each starboy, as Crim described them — were bleeding across the page. The journal must have gotten water-damaged or something.
I gritted my teeth, cursing myself for being so naive. All of them were crooked — all of them had flexible morals. They had no trouble bending the truth to their will so long as they could come out on top.
Starboys, I thought angrily, crossing out each of their names in turn with a thick, black sharpie. I even grabbed a ruby red pen and wrote Crimson’s name down so I could cross it out too.
But by the time I was done, it wasn’t enough. I needed to purge all of these men from my heart. And the best way to do that was with fire.
I tore out the pages to my journal and stuffed them into my pockets. With any luck, the fire pit on the beach still had some embers in it from the crew’s bonfire earlier.
Just as I pushed open my trailer door to leave, I stopped in my tracks.
Alina stood before me, her arm outstretched and ready to know. Her roots were as black as the mascara running down her face.
We exchanged a look, her eyes shiny and filled with tears.
There were no words.
I pulled her into a hug as she began to sob. All of my anger melted away, and my heart welcomed this one, last friend.
“Shh, it’s okay,” I said, running my
hand through her hair.
“She… she left!” Alina cried, balling her hands into fists around the fabric of my shirt.
“What do you mean, honey?” I asked.
Alina pulled away from me, wiped her eyes, and said, “Rachel… she left with her husband.”
“From the set?” I asked. If I was remembering the script right, Princess Valentine still had at least seven more scenes to shoot here in Italy.
“From the show!” Alina cried.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That doesn’t make any sense… did she just… breach her contract?”
“There was another… scene today,” Alina said. “You weren’t there. But Leo and Rachel — Prince and Princess Valentine — they had a sex scene today.”
“Her husband saw? I thought he wasn’t allowed on the set.”
“He must have found out about it. I don’t think he even saw it… but he demanded that she leave with him.”
Alina closed her eyes. “She went. She left with him without question.”
I examined her face, which was now fixed in an expression of shock.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, guiding her into my trailer.
She sat down on the couch gingerly. “I know it’s not… I had nothing to do with it.”
I offered her a glass of water, trying to mask my disapproval. It was difficult to reserve my judgment, as Alina actually did play a role in all of this.
She was sleeping with Rachel — a married woman.
But now was not the time, nor was I the person to hold her accountable. Now, my job was to listen and console her. Especially now that our friendship got a new breath of life and was hanging by a thread.
I offered her a glass of water and a box of tissues.
“Thank you,” she said as she accepted them.
I sat next to her and put my hand on her shoulder, soothing her as she sniffled.
After a few moments, she said, “This makes things complicated.”
“More complicated than they already were?” I asked with a weak smile.
“We’re going to have to do another rewrite; write her out of the show or something,” she said flatly.
“How do you know she’s gone for good?” I asked.
“She told me,” Alina said with a hiccup and a sniffle.
“She can’t just walk out of her contract like that and disappear,” I said, thinking of Crim. He would do that no problem, with no hesitation or consideration about how it affected the rest of the cast.
“She can. Her husband has that tape on me, remember? And he’s got something on Reese, too.”
Now I knew what he had on Reese — it had to be some kind of evidence about him smuggling illegal immigrants into the country.
“Are you worried about the tape?” I asked.
She nodded, blowing her nose. “It could destroy me.”
“Is there any evidence of you being younger than eighteen in the video?” I asked.
“It wouldn’t take someone long to investigate the timestamp and find out,” she said tearfully.
I pulled her into a hug, my strict sense of justice ebbing. Perhaps it would be okay if, this one time, there was some sort of loophole. Even though she insisted that she was in her right mind at the time, she still made that decision as a child. It wasn’t her fault; she was the victim.
If I was honest with myself, I probably would have done anything for fame at that age, too. Anything to be liked.
“Do you know if he has the only copy of the video?” I asked.
“I don’t know… he could have sent it to anyone,” she said breathlessly.
I leaned back, thinking. Then, like lighting, an idea struck me. “You said this guy’s involved with film too, right?” I asked.
Alina nodded, her eyes glassy.
“So he probably has a reputation to uphold as well,” I said.
Her green eyes were flicking about, thinking. “He does.”
“Right. So, it would be terrible if word got around that he beats his wife,” I said. “He belongs in jail anyway for doing that.” I turned to Alina, looked her in the eye and said, “Do you have pictures?”
“What kind of pictures?” she asked.
“You know what kind of pictures.”
“Well… yes, I do,” she admitted sheepishly. “But they’re of us, together.”
“Together how?”
“On a bed. On dates together, us kissing.”
“Are bruises visible on her?” I asked.
Alina nodded.
“Would you be willing to turn that in to the cops or something?” I asked.
“What?! No! If the cops come after him, he’ll take it out on her…”
“There’s got to be a way to do this. We’ve got to put him away; that’ll solve a lot of the problems here,” I reasoned. “Is there any way we can… get him arrested?”
Alina leaned back, thinking. “Well, there is one thing…”
I sat up, attuned to the undoubtedly juicy gossip that was about to come out of her mouth.
“Something about defamation… Rachel mentioned something about it. Her husband was sued for defamation once and lost; that’s why he agreed to let her do season 2 of this show. They’re out of money.”
“We can use that,” I said, thinking. “If he’s already seen as someone unreliable, then that automatically takes credibility from him. No one will believe him if he doesn’t have evidence anymore.”
“Well, it’s not like we can just get rid of it,” she said.
“Does Rachel know about all of this — all of the dirt he gathers on people? Does she know where it’s kept?” I stared at her and raised my eyebrow, waiting for her to put it together.
Alina stiffened, then smiled. “I think she does!”
“Great. Then all you have to do is convince her to destroy it.”
“She’d never do that; she’s too scared of him,” she said, staring off into the distance. “Plus, she just left with him. It’s clear where her loyalties lie.”
“Just because she’s scared doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you,” I reasoned. Then suddenly I thought of Leo and that kiss; how he was afraid to come out of the closet. “Sometimes people choose fear over love,” I quoted, thinking of Hazel.
Alina softened, but she was still quiet. Then finally she asked, “What do you know about love?”
I hesitated, but then knew what I had to do to win her trust back. Plunging my hand into my pocket, I pulled out the crumped up pages.
Alina took one and unfurled it. “Charlie… what is this?”
“It’s everything I wanted — remember our conversation when we first got here, the one about heartmates? I was trying to track down mine. I stupidly thought that he had to be one of these guys here on the set…” I said, sweeping my hand over my face.
“These are… wow, I’d love to meet someone who had all of this,” she said, looking through all of the qualities outlined in different pens. “What are the colors for?”
“They represent the guys. I was trying to link these traits to the guys. But none of this matters anymore; they all turned out to be scoundrels.”
“What do you mean?” Alina asked, smoothing out another balled up wad of paper and reading.
“Reese did something illegal,” I said, puffing out my chest. “And all of the guys are just… they’re just okay with it!”
“Oh, you mean that thing about him standing up for his family?” she asked, her green eyes boring into mine.
“Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t tell the whole story—”
“Charlie, when are you going to learn that life isn’t all black and white? It’s not just good and bad — there’s lots of gray area too.”
“I don’t want a lecture,” I snapped, snatching one of my pages from her. To avoid her eyes, I looked down at my stupid writing. The first quality I’d listed on this page was “forgiving.”
I stiffened.
“It wasn’t int
ended to be a lecture,” Alina said gently. “When did you get so caught up on upholding rules, anyway?”
My shoulders sagged as I thought. Finally, I arrived at the reason. “Rules have been the only thing that have ever protected me,” I admitted.
“Protected from what?” She asked patiently.
“From— from wrongdoers! If anyone can just avert rules whenever they feel like it, people end up getting hurt!” I said, tears beading in the corners of my eyes.
“I guess that’s true,” Alina said. “But some rules are just dumb. Can we agree on that?”
“Every rule and law exists for a reason,” I maintained.
“What if the reason it exists is stupid?” she asked. “It used to be illegal for gays to get married. Remember?”
“…yes,” I admitted.
She raised one of her black eyebrows at me.
“Well, okay, fine, lots of laws are stupid. But most laws are there to protect people.”
“You’re so stubborn, Charlie,” Alina exasperated. “What happens when the laws don’t protect people?”
I thought about the high school me — how I was putting faith in the system to discipline my bully, and they did. But the retaliation I got was far from worth it. It just led to more teasing and destroying my already shaky reputation.
“Haven’t you ever broken or bent a rule to protect someone you cared about?” she asked hopefully. “I did. I’ve been doing this the whole time.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“With Rachel. It’s cheating if I sleep with her, right? It’s adultery if I have a relationship with her. But I couldn’t just leave her alone with that asshole… I fell in love with her. And I’d do anything to protect her.”
I turned to her with wide eyes. “You’re really in love with her?”
Alina paused, then looked down and whispered, “Yes.”
“Do you think she’s in love with you too?” I asked.
“I think so. She says she is,” Alina said, the shadow of doubt crossing her face.
“You should ask her to destroy the evidence, then,” I reasoned. “She’s the only one who can at this point.”
Alina scrunched up her face. “I thought you wanted Reese to get caught?”
I sighed, trying to come to terms with the dissociation that was forming within me. It was like a part of who I fundamentally was as a person was being cracked and split apart, like tectonic plates.
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