Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story

by Rebecca Norinne Caudill

  “I’d sacrifice everything for Sarah, but you’re missing the point.” I glanced at the clock. I’d been on the phone for a little over ten minutes. If Sarah stuck to her twenty-minute time table, I still had plenty of time to wrap up the call and get her phone back to its spot on the nightstand.

  “Sarah’s relationship with her mom is already broken and it’s your wife’s fault. She acts like she hates Sarah. I can’t say if that’s true or not, but if it is, she needs to stop calling because all she’s doing is messing with Sarah’s head. I’ve heard some of these conversations Gerald, and they’re ugly. Your wife can be mean and vile which is pretty fucking shocking seeing as how she’s talking to her own daughter.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  Christ! No wonder Jane had gotten away with degrading and demeaning Sarah all these years. Sarah’s dad was completely oblivious to how thoroughly damaging his wife could be.

  “Yes, it is. If you love your daughter, you have to reign in your wife. If you don’t … like I said, I’ll be forced to tell her about Christmas.”

  “It’ll just make you look bad,” he countered angrily.

  “No, I don’t think that’s true. At one time, I might have thought so. But not now.”

  “Why do you have to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong? Our family is fine. It might not be perfect like yours, but it works for us.”

  I gritted my teeth and counted to three. I’d always liked Sarah’s dad, but I was beginning to understand it her father was a weak man who cared more about keeping the peace with his overbearing wife than he did protecting his daughter. I couldn’t imagine growing up in that house.

  “I’m going to marry your daughter, and whether you like it or not, Sarah’s well-being is my first and only concern. Your wife’s feelings, such as they are, are not my concern. If I have to destroy her reputation to keep Sarah safe from Jane’s ongoing emotional abuse, I’m willing to take that risk. Are you?”

  The line had gone silent but I knew he hadn’t hung up because I could hear his shallow breaths coming through the speaker. Three minutes. Three more minutes before I needed to get off the phone.

  “Fine. I’ll talk to Jane.”

  “Again, thank you.”

  “But I can’t guarantee she’ll listen to me.”

  Why couldn’t this man see what I so clearly could? “If you take away her credit cards, I’m sure she’ll listen just fine.”

  After a few beats, he responded. “Fine. Consider it done.”

  “Great,” I replied. “And just so we’re clear, I’m not thanking you for me. I’m thanking you for finally treating your daughter with a little bit of respect.”

  With that, I hung up the phone.

  We still hadn’t heard back from Broderick, which was just as well since neither of us felt much like groveling or defending our actions. After all, it wasn’t as if we had done anything wrong, committed any major sin.

  The first couple of days after word had gotten out that Cameron was off gallivanting in the wilds of Canada with some red-headed harlot proved a bit tense for us while we waited for the inevitable calls or emails to descend, demanding that we get our asses back to L.A. or over to Vancouver. When after 48 hours we still hadn’t been called back, we settled in to a relaxed routine that had us up early each day so that I could paint in the morning light while Cameron took to the beach for a quick run up and down the shore. After breakfast we’d go for a hike or drive into town to chat with Drea and Alex over coffee and a maple bacon donut, and then for dinner we’d either cook at the house or head out to one of Eagle Harbour’s many restaurants.

  Which was what we were currently getting dressed to do. After days of living in a bubble of romantic bliss, Alex had declared us too disgustingly in love for our own good and promised to introduce us to her friends so we could do something other than “fuck like bunnies.”

  We weren’t quite that bad, but we’d put in a damn fine effort. But after three days of constant nakedness we were pretty much worn out. Well, me more so than him. Cameron was a machine who didn’t seem to need to eat or sleep as long as he could continue fucking me.

  He’d woken me up this morning as the sun rose, the sky bathing our bedroom in muddled shades or purple, gray, and red, to tell me how much he loved me and how he couldn’t wait to become my husband. Groggy with sleep, I’d smiled at him, agreed with the sentiment, and before I was fully cognizant of what was happening, he was kissing me so thoroughly as to make my mind fuzzy as he slid his thick, hard cock into me. And then I was fully awake, panting and sighing and very much enjoying waking up this way. That we’d had extremely loud, extremely hot sex the night before didn’t seem to deter him. After several days in a row of similar activity, I was beginning to think a woman could only take so much before it was time to give it a rest. And by “it” I meant my vagina.

  Hence, spending our evening among the locals.

  “We should have done something like this ages ago,” he said, pulling a long, fitted thermal over his naked chest.

  “We didn’t have a reason before to run off and hide from the world,” I reminded him, pulling boots on over my leggings.

  “No, but it still would have been nice to get away from everything. Just you, me, and Duke. I don’t know why you never said ‘yes’ all those times I asked you to go camping.”

  “You really can’t think of a reason why that would have been a bad idea?”

  “Nope, not a single one.” His back to me, he put on his watch and leaned forward to inspect his facial scruff – which was dangerously close to becoming a beard – in the mirror.

  I pulled my hair into a messy bun at the top of my head and put in my earrings. “There’s no way I could have spent time alone with you in a tent and not had you guessing my feelings for you.”

  Catching my eye, he asked, “Would that have been such a bad thing?”

  Would it have? Probably. “I wasn’t ready to go there and you weren’t either. It would have been a disaster.”

  He mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “I was ready,” and my heart kicked in my chest.

  I still got a little breathless whenever he reminded me that he’d been into me from practically the start of our friendship. It just seemed so implausible that we could have been something more to each other all this time. If only I’d said something. Then again, he’d had plenty of chances to speak up as well.

  Resting his large hands on my hips, he looked down at me and with a voice gone gravelly with desire said, “You and me alone in a shared tent with no one there to act as a buffer. That sounds like the best idea ever.”

  When I panted out a sigh of agreement and my body heated in recognition of what would have transpired, he chuckled and, kissing me softly, stepped back. His face had turned serious. “When I asked you to go with me to Joshua Tree last year, I planned on telling you then.”

  I did the math but the numbers didn’t add up. “That was almost fourteen months ago and you were dating … what was her name … Sheila or something.”

  “I went on three dates with Shayna because Mike was trying to sleep with her roommate. The second he locked that down, Shayna and I happily parted ways.” He scratched his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Come to think of it, he locked both of them down at the same time.”

  “What?!”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Remember the weekend we all went up to Vegas and stayed in those baller suites at the Bellagio?”

  Of course I did. It had been a last minute trip and I hadn’t stayed in the suites with them. At 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning Cameron and Mike had stopped by unannounced to tell me Mike’s lady friend’s dad had two suites booked in Vegas for some work thing, but wasn’t going to be able to use them after all. I’m sure they told me why but I couldn’t remember why that had been. At the time, I’d tried to decline the invite but Cameron knew my plans for the weekend included going to Costco and getting a pedicure so they
’d strong-armed me into packing a bag and tagging along.

  I’d spent the entirety of the five-hour drive to Vegas in the back of Mike’s SUV trying not to glare at the perfectly blonde, perfectly tanned Shayna as she’d laughed at all of Cameron’s jokes while tangling her long, red nails in the hair at the nape of his neck. Once we arrived at the hotel, the six of us were split into two rooms, with me being assigned the couch in Cameron and Shayna’s suite. There was no way in hell I could bring myself to share space with Cameron and one of his flings, so I’d grabbed my purse and overnight bag, walked straight out of the hotel, and gone across the street to get my own room.

  “It rings a bell,” I replied. “Except if you recall, I stayed at The Flamingo because while you’d been given a bedroom, I’d been offered the couch. In your room. Right outside the door where you’d be sleeping with another woman.” Cameron winced and looked away sheepishly. “Not the best weekend, that.”

  “Fuck, I looked like such an asshole didn’t I?” he asked, scratching at his stubble pensively. “It wasn’t what you think, I promise.”

  I shrugged because he had looked like an asshole and I wasn’t about to assuage his guilt by telling him otherwise. That he’d sat next to me at dinner ignoring Shayna hadn’t made up for his rubbing my nose in his relationship with a legitimate underwear model by inviting me to go with them to Vegas in the first place and then, inconsiderately, invited me to stay in his room right outside their bedroom door. Nor did it negate the fact that when we’d gone to the club after dinner he’d danced with me for the majority of the night, again ignoring said underwear model. Of course, she and … Patrice, I think Mike’s girl was named … had been busy grinding on Mike the entire night, so it wasn’t as if Cameron would have been able to dance with her, even if he’d wanted to.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” I said instead of saying everything I’d just thought. It was ancient history and not worth dredging up. We were both adults when we’d fallen in love. I hadn’t expected him to be celibate just because I was too chicken to tell him how I felt. Just like I assumed he didn’t expect it of me. Never mind that I had. Stayed mostly celibate, that is.

  “It does,” he stressed. “And I promise I wouldn’t have asked you to go with me if I was planning on being with someone else right under your nose,” he insisted at my obvious skepticism. “You might not have known how I felt about you, but I did and there’s no way I would have done that to the woman I loved.” His eyes searched mine for a second before he continued. “I wanted you to stay in our room so I could spend the night with you.”

  My eyebrows rose in skepticism. “Not like that,” he answered, then grinned cheekily. “Although I wouldn’t have said no either. I just wanted to spend time with you. I just wanted to pretend I was there with you instead of Shayna.”

  “I’m sure Shayna loved that. There I was acting as a cock block all night long and she had no clue why. You might not have meant to flaunt her in my face, but just by asking me along you did. Thank god moved to a different room. A different hotel.”

  He shook his head and rubbing his thumb over my knuckles. “I’d hoped to convince you to go on a sunrise hike at Red Rocks with me.”

  “Bullshit.” I was willing to accept that he’d wanted to hang out with me, but you didn’t go hiking out in the middle of the desert on a whim.

  “You don’t believe me.” He dropped my hand and pulled out his phone. For several long seconds we stood in silence while his thumb swiped across the screen. “Ah, there it is,” he said, handing me his device and staring expectantly.

  I hesitated to take it, but when I did, I immediately saw the proof: an email dated the day before, confirming Cameron had booked a sunrise hike for two from an adventure group specializing in desert expeditions around Vegas. My eyes raised and I saw hurt reflected back at. Hurt that I hadn’t trusted him then and I hadn’t believed him now.

  “I didn’t sleep with Shayna. Ever.” He swallowed. “After I walked you back to your hotel, everyone had disappeared on me. I texted Mike but he didn’t respond. I decided to go upstairs, figuring I’d sleep on the couch, but when I opened the door I figured out why he hadn’t responded.”

  “Let me guess, Mike had mistakenly taken Patricia back to your suite and they were going at it?” To anyone else, that scenario might have seemed far fetched but Mike had the uncanny ability to have sex in his friends’ rooms instead of his own. Cameron and I had walked in on him fucking some girl in Cameron’s bed more than once.

  “Close, but not quite.” He pulled me toward him and locked his arms around my waist, trapping me against his solid heat. “Mike was fucking Patricia from behind, while Shayna was perched on top of the couch.” My jaw dropped and he went in for punchline. “Patricia’s face was between Shayna’s legs and she was going to town.”

  I broke out laughing because (a) I’d obviously read the entire situation wrong, and (b) Mike was the undisputed king of threesomes. I didn’t understand it myself, but the man was a legend when it came to that sort of thing.

  “Full on porno style.” Cameron added, joining in my laughter. “I stood there for a few seconds watching because … you know … it was actually pretty fucking hot, but then Mike started grunting and that snapped me right out of it. Before I could sneak out with my bag, he looked over at me, and hips still pumping away at good old Patrice’s rear, told me to take the key to his room because he had zero plans to leave mine.”

  Okay, so Cameron hadn’t slept with Shayna. But he’d had other girlfriends during the past year. I sifted through my memories, jumping forward a month or so after the weekend in Vegas. “Okay, what about Monica?”

  He scrunched up his face, confused, and then his eyebrows raised in understanding. “Ah, not Monica. Matika.”

  “Monica, Matika … whatever.” Yeah, I was jealous and might have been saying his girls’ names incorrectly accidentally on purpose. Sue me.

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “Not her either.”

  “Liar,” I retorted. “I saw you kiss her.”

  “When did you see me kiss her?” he asked incredulously. “I told you Sarah, I wouldn’t have done anything with anyone in front of you.”

  “I stopped by to pick you up for something and when I walked past your front window, I watched you swallow her face through the curtains.” I was really beginning to hate this conversation. I’d had to sit idly by while Cameron had dated (and I hadn’t) which had been bad enough. But to have to re-live how it’d felt a second time was just mean.

  His lips hitched to the right and he shook his head again. “This is going to sound like such a lie, but she was my partner in a workshop I was taking. We were rehearsing a scene.”

  I raised my eyebrow. “You’re right, it does sound like a lie.”

  “Scout’s honor.” He raised his fingers.

  “I know you dated, Cameron, I don’t begrudge you your previous girlfriends.”

  He raised a challenging eyebrow.

  “Okay, maybe I do,” I huffed. “But you didn’t know how I felt so I can’t have expected you lived like a monk this whole time.”

  His brows furrowed and he looked away guiltily.

  Right. So he hadn’t been a monk then. I really didn’t want to know … but I kind of also did. I plopped down on the edge of the bed. “How many?”

  He ran his hand through his hair and sat down next to me. Exhaling on a loud sigh, he said, “Three over three years.”

  When Cameron and I had sex that first time, we’d been friends for about three years.

  “And only one in the past year,” he added. “The actress.”

  Right, the actress. The one who’d necessitated his STD test while I’d gone along with the group to get tested because … well, who knows why? Maybe I didn’t want anyone to know I wasn’t getting any?

  Cameron nudged my chin and I looked up at him. His face was serious, somber. His eyes flicked between mine and then he dropped his hand.

  “Three women
in three years. The first one because I thought, stupidly, that if I fucked someone else it’d help get you out of my mind. The second one because it didn’t work the first time and because I couldn’t have you, I needed someone else.” His smile was a sad one.

  “And then Melanie,” I finished.

  “And then Melanie,” he agreed.

  While I’d spent years being quietly envious of Cameron’s women, Melanie was the only one who’s presence had truly distressed me because it had been clear his feelings for her went beyond the superfluous. They had so much in common and from the moment he introduced her, we could all see she was different from other women he’d brought around. Mike had commented once that he thought Cameron tried too hard with Melanie, while I silently thought his trying so hard meant he was invested in her and wanted their relationship to work. When Cameron found out she’d been cheating on him for the entirety of their relationship, he’d been gutted. No one, including Mike, saw him for three weeks and he wouldn’t answer any of our calls or emails. Then, as if he hadn’t gone missing for a month, he turned up and was fine. As far as I knew, this was the first time he’d spoken her name aloud to anyone. We all tried not to talk about her, but if we did, she was simply referred to as The Actress.

  “You loved her,” I whispered, staring down at my clenched hands.

  Next to me, Cameron exhaled loudly. “I thought I could, but no.” He shifted and then he dropped down in front of me. Moving his hands to my face, he held my cheeks in his palms while his eyes bored into mine. When his hands into my hair he cradled my skull and held me still as he kissed me. Our lips separated by a hair’s breadth, he whispered, “I wanted to love her because if I did, it would mean I could stop loving you. But no,” he shook his head and our lips brushed, “I never loved her.”

  “Did you ever tell her?”

  “That I loved her?” he asked, quietly.

  I shook my head and he shook his. “And I think she knew why.”