Bad Company (Avery's Crossing: Gage and Nova Book 1)

by Minard, Tori

  She came back in the promised few minutes with tea for both of us. I pulled my legs up to make room for her on the couch and she sat down with me. Her arm brushed my leg.

  “You’re wet,” she said.

  “Yeah, I got snow all over my pants.”

  She made an impatient sound. “Go get something dry on. No, don’t. Stay there and I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Nova —”

  “Not another word, Dalton.” She set down her tea mug and walked toward the bedroom.

  Was it wrong that I kinda liked her taking care of me? Even when she bossed me around. That was sort of hot, actually. We could work with it.

  She came back with dry pants. “Do you need help getting them on?”

  “No way. I’ll do it myself.” I stood up, a little unsteadily, and took them from her.

  “Okay, if you’re sure.” She seemed to be hiding a smile.

  “I’m sure.” I shoved the wet pants down my legs.

  Chapter 22

  Not Art

  Gage:

  Nova blushed a brilliant pink and turned away as I bared myself. I grinned. After what we’d done together, and the way she’d touched me, I hadn’t thought I would embarrass her by undressing.

  “I—uh—I really would like to see some of your movies,” she said, transparently attempting to change the subject.

  “Would you?”

  I willed myself not to be flattered by her interest in my work. She was probably only trying to be polite—and change the subject. Besides, my work was just what I did. It wasn’t that special. Anyone who could memorize lines could do what I did.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, you’re—well—yeah.” She ended with a vague arm gesture.

  “If you give me your address, I’ll send you copies,” I said. “After I get home.”

  “Okay.”

  I kicked off the wet pants and somehow got into the dry ones, although I was swaying again and my vision seemed unstable. Finally, they were on and I could flop back on the couch. “I’m decent now,” I said.

  She turned around and took the seat she’d abandoned. “Have you been in a lot of movies?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I shrugged. “I’ve kinda lost count.” I rattled off the titles of a few of my pictures.

  “I haven’t seen any of those.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  I leaned my head against the arm of the couch and pulled the throw blanket over myself. “Don’t be sorry.”

  “But you’ve been in so many and I haven’t even seen one. It feels like an insult to your art or something.”

  “My art?” I snorted. “It’s not art, believe me. I don’t know why people insist on tagging me as an artist, because I sure as hell don’t deserve it.”

  “What?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why would you say that?”

  “I didn’t earn any of it,” I said, thinking of The Deal. “It was all given to me. I’ve just been along for the ride.”

  Her head tilted as she studied me. “I don’t get it. How was it given to you? You’re not related to any big Hollywood names, are you? So you didn’t get in by nepotism.”

  “No, it’s just—forget it.” I waved it off. “I’m just tired and I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  I couldn’t tell her. She’d think I was a lunatic. Jeremy’s ghost was one thing. Lots of people have seen a ghost or two. But deals with the devil? That’s a problem you don’t hear about every day, and Nova with her science background would never believe me.

  Besides, I’d always had the feeling that if I told anyone, that person would suffer. I don’t even know where the idea came from originally. It seemed like it had always been with me, every time I made a new friend, every time I got close to revealing the truth about my life.

  I picked up my tea mug, my hands trembling slightly from exhaustion, and sipped. She’d really sugared the hell out of it and it tasted pretty good.

  “I think you’re too hard on yourself,” she said. “And I don’t know why you’d think you didn’t earn your career. It’s not like someone else starred in those movies. That was all you, right?”

  I sighed. “Nova, let’s just drop it, okay? I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  She gave me her Dr. Pennyman look. “I don’t like to hear you putting yourself down.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yeah, you are. You’re totally devaluing your acting.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “You haven’t even seen any of my acting. How do you know I’m any good?”

  “You must be pretty good or you wouldn’t be so successful.”

  I laughed and shook my head. She was so naive in some ways. “That’s not necessarily true.”

  “Well, I’m going to watch all of them and give you my assessment.” She raised her brows at me. “And you’ll accept it. Right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She smirked. “That’s better.”

  I wished I could tell her everything. The only other person in the world who knew was my mom, and we couldn’t have a rational conversation about it. The thing is, I didn’t want to endanger Nova just so I could get shit off my chest.

  Maybe we could talk around the edges of the problem, though.

  “Have you ever been tied into something you hated because of what someone else did?” I said.

  Nova tilted her head again. “Um ... yeah, I guess. What exactly do you mean?”

  I shrugged. “You know, just, some kind of responsibility you wouldn’t have taken on, except this other person has saddled you with it. And now you can’t get out of it.”

  She studied me, and I had an awkward yet exhilarating feeling that she could actually see inside my mind. “My pre-med major is kind of like that,” she said slowly. “My parents want me to be a doctor and just recently I realized I’ve only been going through with it because of them.”

  “But you’re not tied to it, right? You can back out.”

  Her beautiful mouth twisted. “Technically, yeah. But how do you tell your parents you want to disappoint them?”

  “You hate the idea of becoming a doctor?”

  “I think it would make me miserable,” she said.

  “Then tell them that. I’m sure they want you to be happy.”

  She wasn’t getting it, but then how could she? Her situation wasn’t remotely like mine. I sympathized with her about her insistent parents, but it was hardly in the same league as my mom’s deal with Old Nick.

  What would happen if I gave up acting? If I tried to fade into the background, just be normal? He would probably come storming into my life to fuck with my friends for real and maybe kill me as well. Because my giving up wasn’t part of the The Deal.

  “I’m getting the feeling,” Nova said, “that your problem is a lot deeper than mine.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a lift of one shoulder. “It sort of is.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “No. I’m sorry.” God, I hated the way she was looking at me. Like I’d disappointed her or something. Disappointing Nova hurt me, just like the way she was looking at me hurt. I was turning into a pussy.

  “It’s like—say someone had signed you up for military service, maybe,” I said after an awkward pause. “Something really intense that you didn’t want to do and couldn’t possibly escape. At least, not without dying and getting other people hurt too.”

  She frowned, squinting at me and pursing her lips. “I can’t even imagine what that might be.”

  “Just go with it. What if somehow you were drafted into some elite military unit and you didn’t want to be there but you had to go forward no matter what it did to you? Even if you had to do some bad shit and you didn’t know if you could live with that?”

  She blew out a heavy breath and leaned against the couch back. “I don’t know. I guess—I guess I’d be mad as hell. And I’d be looking for a way out.”

  “There is no way out.”

  “How do yo
u know that?” Those honey-gold eyes of hers were so serious. “Have you ever tried?”

  Well, no. I’d assumed. I’d gone with what my mother had told me. Why had I done that?

  “I trusted the person who got me into the mess,” I said after another long silence.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have trusted them. After all, they’re the one who did it to you.”

  “Yeah. Isn’t that the truth.”

  “Have you told anyone else about this? Maybe someone would have an idea of how to help you.”

  I shook my head. “No. No way. If I talk about it, the person I tell could get hurt.”

  “You’re starting to scare me,” she said, her tone apprehensive.

  I met her gaze. “You should be scared, Nova. This is dangerous stuff.”

  She put her hand on my calf and squeezed. “I just wish you would tell me anyway. I want to help you.”

  “I wish I could, but I wouldn’t be able to stand it if you got hurt.”

  “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  She leaned against my shin, put her arm around my thigh and laid her cheek against my propped-up knee. I stroked her hair. I couldn’t picture anyone else I knew taking my part the way she had. She was so generous. Too generous for her own good.

  “Is this why you told me not to worry about you?” she said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s too late, you know.”

  “Yeah, you told me.” I kept stroking those long, dark locks. “But I’d like you to try anyway. I don’t want to hurt you. Ever.”

  “Well, whatever it is that’s threatening you can’t find us up here, right? I mean, we’re in the middle of nowhere, in a huge snowstorm. Even if they knew where you were, they wouldn’t be able to reach you.”

  If only that were true. I kept petting her hair while saying nothing.

  It wasn’t her fight and I didn’t want her getting involved. I’d already said too much as it was. The thought of getting some outside help was tempting, but I couldn’t go there. This was something I had to do on my own, because I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt.

  When I was in my teens, I’d tried to talk to my mom about it. About getting out of The Deal. She’d gotten hysterical, started screaming and carrying on about how I’d ruin everything and kill everyone I knew, and then gone on a week-long drinking binge. That was the last time I’d attempted that kind of conversation.

  The notion of getting out of The Deal hadn’t even occurred to me again until the past few months. I’d been so caught up in my career, in the busy-ness of it, all the demands, that it hadn’t crossed my mind. Plus, The Deal had been part of the background of my life since I was ten, so in a way it was all I knew. Then Jeremy had died.

  Maybe I could do my own research. Maybe there was a way out there somewhere and I could find it on my own. It was worth a try.

  But would I really kill my friends if I did? Would he take them in retribution?

  Chapter 23

  Supernatural

  Nova:

  Whatever was bothering Gage, I could tell it was serious. It just sounded so bizarre. From the little he’d told me, it was no ordinary problem. It didn’t even sound like the mob.

  Okay, it sort of did sound like the mob, but I had a powerful hunch that organized crime had nothing to do with it. But what else could it be?

  He seemed almost haunted. Which was ironic, considering that his ghostly friend had led me to him in the first place.

  Maybe he really was haunted. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me because he thought I’d laugh at him. Or maybe he really did believe that whatever this thing was would come after me once I knew about it.

  Of course, I knew about it now. Not the details, but its existence—of that I was aware. And it was one of those cat out of the bag problems—once the cat was out, there was no way you were getting it back in. What has been seen cannot be un-seen. You couldn’t un-know something like this.

  Yeah. Whatever this is.

  “Gage, you know I would never laugh at you, right? I mean, sure, I teased you this morning, but I would never really laugh at you. You can tell me anything, I swear it.”

  He gave me a weary smile that sat oddly on his youthful face. “Thanks, Nova. It means a lot to me to hear you say that. But it wouldn’t be right for me to involve you.”

  “I don’t understand. How could this thing or person get to me? Nobody knows about me. If you don’t tell and I don’t tell, how could they possibly find out?”

  “Oh, they can find out anything. Believe me.”

  “You know what this sounds like, right?”

  “He shook his head. “No, what?”

  “It sounds supernatural.”

  He laughed. “Nah. It’s nothing that interesting.”

  I watched him through narrowed eyes. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. It’s totally mundane. Just in a really dangerous way.”

  “Okay,” I said, not sure if I believed him.

  “You’re doubting me.”

  My eyes opened wide. “No, I’m not.” I so was.

  “Fine,” he growled.

  “Fine.”

  He glowered at me. “I didn’t think you believed in the supernatural.”

  I shrugged. “I did see Jeremy’s ghost, remember?”

  “Yeah, but with your parents being doctors, I figured —”

  “First of all, my parents aren’t me,” I said with some asperity. “Second, even doctors can have otherworldly experiences. Even doctors’ kids.”

  He raised his brows, a much more relaxed look coming over him. “Oh, yeah? Want to tell me about it?”

  “No. You can’t be involved. It’s too dangerous.”

  He tossed a pillow at me. “Not funny, Pennyman. And you promised me you would never laugh at me.”

  “Oops. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He nudged me with his foot. “So give. What did you see?”

  Biting my lip, I considered whether I wanted to tell him. Not that I thought I couldn’t trust him. But I didn’t talk about this stuff either. Not normally, anyway. Most of my friends would have thought I’d lost my marbles if I did.

  I licked my lips. “Okay. Well, it wasn’t something I saw. It was something I heard.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh? That was all he had to say?

  “Go on,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. “I heard my friend calling for me. The one who died. Remember I told you about her?”

  “I remember.”

  “Yeah, the day she died, I was studying in my room and I heard her voice calling my name. It was clear and it sounded exactly like she was in the room with me. But she was several miles away.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah. I actually never told anyone about this.”

  “Why do you suppose she called for you? You said you two weren’t all that close.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because my parents are doctors? I wondered the same thing.”

  Gage looked thoughtful. “Did you ever hear her voice after that?”

  “No. Not ever once.” I looked him right in the eye. “But I believe in ghosts and spirits now. No matter what anybody says. I know because I’ve experienced it. So you really can talk to me and I won’t laugh.”

  I so wanted him to confide in me. To be honest, my curiosity was driving me wild. But I also wanted to see if I could help him. He seemed so alone, and not just because he was stuck in this cabin with only me for company. There was something essentially alone about him, like he’d never really had a true friend. Like there was no-one in his life in whom he could confide. No-one to trust.

  That seemed awful to me.

  He only sat up straighter and leaned in for a kiss. “You’re amazing, Nova. If I told anyone, it would be you. But I’m serious about the danger. I don’t want you to get hurt ever, and especially not because of me. I think it would kill something in me if you got hurt.”

  He was cupp
ing the side of my face and I laid my hand over his. I turned my head and kissed his palm. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “So do I.”

  “Really? You really wish you could stay with me?”

  “Yeah. I do.” He smiled wryly. “Did you think I was lying?”

  “No. But it’s so hard for me to believe me. I mean, look at me. You’re—well, you’re you, and I’m just plain old Nova.”

  “Jesus, Nova, there is nothing plain about you. Not one thing. You’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. I mean that, so quit looking at me that way. Most of the women I know require at least an hour of work and a ton of makeup to look as good as you do with a bare face.”

  My face started to burn. His words were sweet, but they couldn’t be true. How could I compete with all those Hollywood beauties?

  “And your personality is beautiful too.”

  “You’re a sweet talker,” I said.

  “Not really. You want to know the truth?”

  I nodded.

  “Usually women throw themselves at me. I don’t really have to work at this stuff. They seek me out. They follow me around, try to arrange meetings, shit like that. It’s embarrassing sometimes. But it makes it easy for me. Maybe too easy.”

  His beautiful face looked completely guileless and I felt I could believe him. But part of me wondered if I were being played. He knew how ignorant I was of Hollywood goings-on, so he could feed me all kinds of bullshit and I’d never know the difference.

  I wanted to believe him, though.

  “I know you hear this all the time,” I said, my hand still over his, “but you’re beautiful too. And not just on the outside.”

  Gage Dalton actually blushed. He ducked his head as his cheeks turned pink.

  “Thanks, Nova. I think you’re just flattering me, but thanks.”

  “I am not flattering you. It’s true.” I leaned over his bent knee to kiss him on his beautiful mouth. “How many guys would be as protective of me as you’ve been? Not many, I can tell you. How many guys would make themselves sick getting the firewood in so I wouldn’t have to do it?”

  “Come on, any guy would’ve done the same thing.”