by April Fire
Back in the gym at my apartment building, I started lifting, pouring all my energy into my squats, dead-lifts and halo curls. The gym had always been my happy place, ever since I’d first walked into one when I was about fifteen. Fitness, strength, power – those were the things that mattered to me. It was why I’d gone into stunting for a living, making my money throwing myself around and pushing myself to limits that I didn’t even know I had. Well, that, and I kind of liked being on camera. So sue me. Whenever life got the better of me, I found that the best way to work out the kinks was to remind myself of everything that my body was capable of. And right then, I sincerely needed something to stop my brain running loops around what had happened between Dominic and I all those years ago.
Because he’d left me. Of course he had. Looking back, I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen it sooner. I was always just a fling to him, someone who’s adoring attention he enjoyed while it was convenient for him to indulge me in the delusion that we were actually together. That he felt for me the same way I did for him.
When I told people that I literally got up one morning in the apartment that we had all but moved into together and he was gone, they assumed I was exaggerating. But I wasn’t. I crawled out of bed, yawning, and made my way from the tiny bathroom to the kitchen to the living room, even out in the hallway to see if he’d wandered out there to pick up a package or something. But he was gone. Vanished. I furrowed my brow and returned to the apartment, and went to grab a cup of coffee – and that’s when I saw the note.
I still wasn’t completely sure what it actually said. I had read it a dozen times, maybe more, but the words slipped down and off my brain like drops of water on a windshield, refusing to sink in. All that mattered was that he was gone, to pursue a job with a studio across the country, and that he loved me and that he was grateful for all the time we’d spent together, kiss, kiss, kiss.
“Ah!” I let out a loud cry as I dropped the weights back on the ground below me, not realizing just how much my muscles were screaming as I did everything I could to wipe the memory of receiving that note from my brain. The barbell landed with a clang on the barely-padded ground below, loud enough that the maintenance man working at the end of the hall lifted his head and glanced over in my direction with a concerned furrow in his brow. I lifted a hand in acknowledgment and apology, and wiped the sweat off my brow and turned to get on the rowing machine. Maybe something a little quieter would do for now.
I sat down on the machine and started to work, my breath coming faster and that lump in my throat returning. I knew I should have slowed down and taken it easy considering all the stuff I’d already done that day, but this was the only foolproof way I knew of to work out all my stress. I needed to remind myself that I was good at this, that there was something in my life that I had excelled at, before I let the memory of Dominic and what a fucking asshole he was throw me off my game. It wasn’t my first blockbuster, but I wasn’t so far in to the game that I could rely on my credentials the way he did.
Because that was the most galling part about all of this. I would have felt something like triumph had he dumped me to chase a job that had wound up blowing up right in his face, but it hadn’t. He had soared, taking the industry by storm and making his name as one of the most relentlessly sought-after stunt-men in the business. Daring, wild, and hard-working, the stories I heard told me nothing had changed since we were training together. His eye for the ladies was just as intense as it had ever been, too, if the grainy paparazzi shots on the back of gossip rags showing him with a variety of assorted starlets was anything to go by. Not that I kept up with him, or found myself idly Googling his name once in a while. Nope. Because that would have been creepy and clingy and might indicate that I had never fully shaken him and that no-one since him had ever quite added up even if he had left me more heartbroken than I’d ever been in my life. Nothing like that.
I realized I was panting hard and sweating harder, and swung my feet off the rowing machine and glanced in the mirror. I offered myself a smile, and, for a second, the girl who had started training eight years ago was back. Hungry, nervous, passionate, and dead certain that this is what she was going to do no matter how often her parents told her that it wasn’t a suitable career path. I was still that girl, deep down, except now my parents called to ask about work instead of tentatively broaching the topic assuming that I was still unemployed. I was better than I had ever been right now, and there was no fucking way I was letting Dominic Callahan walk into my life and blow it up all over again.
I grabbed my coat and headed back up to the tiny apartment that was to be my home till the end of the shoot. I needed something to eat – something high-protein and something that I didn’t need to cook. And then I needed to spend the rest of the night doing everything in my power to keep Dominic out of my head. He wasn’t arriving till later in the week, and I had a few days to get my head together yet. And I was going to build up a wall so impenetrable that not even Dominic could leap over it.
Chapter Two
Tennessee
“Holy shit, Tennessee?”
It was a voice I recognized at once. How could I not? I had committed it to memory, every nuance of the vowels and consonants, and now here it was all over again. I took a deep breath, flexed my fingers, and turned around.
“Dominic,” I nodded, and tried to figure out why my voice sounded so strange. Did I always sound so mannered and bizarre? I forced myself to pull in a long breath, and finally lifted my gaze to meet his.
He looked just as I’d remembered him and yet, at the same time, felt completely different. His dark hair was still cropped short around his head, showing off his sharp, angular features, and his deep brown eyes were tilted up slightly at the outside edges. His mouth, full and sweet with a slightly larger lower lip that fit perfectly under the press of my thumb, was slightly parted, and one eyebrow was cocked. He had that glint in his eye that told me he still had that attitude in him, the attitude that let him run head-first into danger and come out unscathed. His eyes flicked down over my body and I shifted uncomfortably; I was in a bulky harness and was glad for it. It didn’t seem to stop his appreciative glance.
“I didn’t know you were working here,” He shook his head in disbelief. “How long has it been? Five years?”
“Eight,” I replied coolly. He cocked an eyebrow.
“So, you’ve been counting?”
“Counting the years since I started working,” I shot back. I didn’t want him to think that he had, in any way, ever managed to truly get inside me head, but I knew I was failing. I felt as though the ground was shifting out from underneath me just standing here in front of him, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.
“First blockbuster?” he asked, and I shook my head. If I could hold one thing over him, it was that I had seen awesome success in my career since the last time we saw each other.
“Nope,” I replied. “I worked on City of Glazes, Dawn to Sunset…”
I waved my hand to make it seem like there were just too many to list, mainly because those were the only two movies I’d worked on that anyone seemed to have heard of. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Impressive,” he remarked, and I could feel the tension crackling between us like sparks flying from a flame, as though the air surrounding us would go up in smoke at any second. I wasn’t sure if it was romantic, sexual or just old fashioned loneliness, but the mix was making me practically dizzy. And still, despite it all, I had the urge to tuck myself under his arm, to plant a kiss on his jawline just like I had always done when we were seeing each other. It would have felt so natural, even after all these years apart, but I bit my lip and forced myself to keep my attention on the conversation at hand.
“I know,” I shrugged, and he laughed.
“You always were confident,” he conceded, shaking his head. “So, what are you doing here?”
“Stunting for Julia,” I nodded in the direction of the young star, who was d
iscussing something with the director, and he turned to give her a brief, appreciative glance.
“Done looking?” I threw at him, and his head snapped back around as though he’d been caught out.
“Hey, forgive me,” he held his hands up. “She’s cute.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You’re a jackass,” I shook my head at him, and turned to head down to set where I was needed.
“Good to see you again,” he called after me, and I briefly turned around to see him grinning widely as though he was stone-cold certain that he had come out of that conversation with the upper hand. God, he could be such an asshole. And I was stuck working with him for the next couple of months. These shoots tended to drag on, and that’s if there weren’t re-shoots on top of the regular filming schedule – the thought of being stuck around Dominic, who seemed intent on making me as uncomfortable as humanely possibly this entire time, was already starting to grate on me.
I leaned up against a pillar a few feet away from where they were setting up for my next scene, and Julia approached me. I turned and gave her an indulgent smile, feeling a lot better-willed towards her than normal; coming off a conversation with Dominic, anyone would have felt like an improvement.
“Hey,” I greeted her. “What’s up?”
“That guy you were talking to,” she glanced over her shoulder to nod at Dominic. “Who is he?”
“Just someone I trained with years ago,” I replied firmly, lifting my chin. I knew Dominic would be aware that Julia was checking him out. He always was when it came to cute girls like her.
“What’s he like?” She asked, and I noticed that Dominic had taken a step or two towards us, obviously attempting to earwig in on the conversation.
“He’s a complete and utter jack-off,” I replied loudly, loudly enough that he could hear. I snuck a look at him out of the corner of my eye, and saw that he was grinning with amusement at what I had just said. He probably just saw Julia as more of a challenge now. Either way, she took a step back from me as though surprised at what I was saying, and then glanced over at him and frowned.
“Come on,” the director called to both of us. “Scene. Now. You both know what you’re doing?”
The day was long and exhausting as I threw myself (sometimes literally) into the shooting I needed to get done that day, but at least I managed to avoid Dominic for the most part. I caught sight of him around, sure, but I could cope with that. It was talking to him, being around him, and having to consider once more everything that could have been between us that was getting under my skin. He didn’t come up again until Natalie was helping me take off my safety gear at the end of the day.
“So, I saw that Dominic started today,” she remarked, playing at being casual, but her interest practically bubbled up and over, giving her away.
“Yeah, he did,” I nodded, looking at myself in the mirror as Natalie unclipped the straps around my back. A grimace flickered over my expression at the sound of his name.
“Did you run into him yet?”
“Briefly,” I replied, telling the truth. “He’s still as much of a dick as I thought.”
“Why did you date him if you thought he was such a dick?” She cocked her head at me curiously.
“I didn’t always think that,” I muttered, and she opened her mouth to speak again – but before she could, we were interrupted.
The door to the trailer opened, and I heard a voice outside that made my heart sink.
“…so, later, yeah?” Dominic asked, and I glanced in the mirror to see that he was, unsurprisingly, talking to a young make-up artist who I’d seen around the set a few times. He was in his harness as well, and was here, same as I was, to get it removed. He stood there for a moment, hanging halfway in the door, and I raised my eyebrows at Natalie in the mirror as though to say see, I told you he was an ass. Eventually, he seemed to make up his mind and ducked into the trailer to join us. He came to a halt just past the threshold when he saw me standing there.
“Oh, Tennessee,” he greeted me. “Good to see you again.”
I shot him a look that told him everything he needed to know, and he shrugged and turned to Natalie. He flashed her a smile, one so deadly I was surprised she didn’t drop to the ground on the spot. Instead, she smiled back shyly.
“You here for… to take your stuff off?” she asked, and instantly flushed bright red. “Your gear, I mean.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he nodded, focusing all his attention in on her. I remembered vividly how that felt, to be the only thing in the room that he was paying notice to, and knowing that it would likely never be aimed at me again made my heart sink.
“Well, if you just want to-”
“You haven’t finished with Tennessee yet,” he reminded her, nodding over in my direction. Natalie blinked for a moment then looked back over at me, as though she’d forgotten that I was even in the room. Every time Dominic said my name, he lingered over every single syllable: Ten-nes-see, like he was spelling it phonetically for someone. He’d always done that, and he always told me it was because he was savoring the taste of my name. That was the kind of shit he came up with then – the kind of shit that would have been beautifully romantic had it not been for the fact that he’d dumped me with no warning or explanation.
“Oh, right,” Natalie made her way back over to me, wrinkling her nose in apology, but I kept my face impassive and turned to let her undo me. My back was to Dominic, but I could tell that he was still staring at me. Probably with that cocky grin on his face, the one that underlined the fact that our wardrobe assistant had basically just forgotten I existed after he walked into the room. As if I needed reminding.
Natalie sheepishly finished getting my gear off, and I gathered it into my arms to take it back to the department that held on to all of our stuff for us. I brushed by Dominic as I did so – the trailer was small so it wasn’t like I could avoid coming right up next to him.
“Nice work today, by the way,” he remarked, right as I was next to him, as our shoulders were touching. It was the closest I’d been to him all day, and the tension between us was so thick you could have cut it into slices.
“Huh?” I managed in response, fighting the urge to look up into his eyes. Because I knew if I did, something in me would give, and I couldn’t give this guy an inch when it came to getting close to me again. Because he would take a mile. He would take the whole goddamn highway.
“I was watching you out there,” he nodded to the set I’d come from. “You’re good, Tennessee. You’re so good.”
His voice lowered as he finished up, and I could tell he was expecting me to melt right there, to thank him and admit that all of this was just an act and I still cared about him and forgave him for everything. And yeah, that was tempting – more tempting than I’d have cared to admit to. But instead, I rolled my shoulders back, met his gaze, and raised my eyebrows.
“You think I didn’t already know that?” I shot back, a grin curling onto my lips. He wasn’t the only one with an ego now. A smile cracked over his face, and I went for the door before I could say or do anything else to ruin my perfect exit.
As soon as I was outside, I felt more battered than I had the whole time I was filming today. Only this time, it wasn’t my body getting knocked around. No, that was easy. I might come away with bruises, but I could handle that. But getting the shit kicked out of my emotions was far harder to keep a lid on. Seeing him flirting with that make-up artist, the easy way he got Natalie under his thumb with just a few words and a smile; it was a reminder that he was over me, that I was part of his past. And I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could – or anything I wanted to do – to change that.
Chapter Three
Dominic
New set, new job, new side of the country. There was nothing better than this feeling, the feeling of getting to start over again. It was one of the reasons why I’d become so addicted to the industry in the first place; I loved the fact that I could pick
up and start over pretty much whenever I felt like it, find myself a new bunch of friends and colleagues and flirts to pass the time. It was just that this time around, there were some old ones, too.
One in particular. I had only bumped into Tennessee once since I’d arrived on set, but our one encounter had been enough to tell me exactly what she thought of me. I wasn’t surprised; I’d been an asshole when I’d dumped her with no warning to take off across the country, but what did she expect me to do? We were young and I was sure that we were just having some fun. I’d convinced myself that you didn’t meet the love of your life at twenty and that both of us would be better off exploring what else the world had to offer in the meantime. Now, though, I wasn’t quite so sure of that.