Lost in Scotland

by Hilaria Alexander

  I grabbed my phone from under the pillow. It was Cecilia.

  “Hello?”

  “Sam! Where the bloody hell are you? You’re not at the pub.”

  “Uh, I left.”

  “Want to have a sarnie together? I’ll come meet you.”

  I hesitated for a moment and tried to come up with an excuse, but I was drawing a blank. “Uh, I’m just walking around town. I’ll come meet you. Stay put.” It was the first thing I could think of.

  “See you in a bit.”

  I hung up the phone, realizing I had just said I would meet her at the pub. I wasn’t going to have sex tonight. Stupid me. Missed opportunity.

  “I have to go meet her or she’ll wonder what I’m up to—”

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Me, too,” he replied with a small smile, looking up at me. I leaned down and kissed him again…and again.

  “You’re a really good kisser, by the way.”

  His lips curled up in a smile. “Years of practice,” he replied with a laugh. I pulled myself off him unwillingly, and I put my sweater back on.

  “I’m going to use the restroom,” I said. I fixed my hair back in a ponytail and washed my face. My lips were a little red, but it wasn’t anything a little ChapStick couldn’t fix. My eyes, though—they were wide and excited as if I were high. Well, in a way I was. High on Hugh. Although part of me knew it was better this way, I was sorry to leave.

  I found him standing in the middle of his living room, hands in his pockets. He’d put his shirt back on, unfortunately, and I sighed. He smiled at me, and I fought the impulse to run and wrap my arms around him. Before I said good-bye, though, I did caress his face, and when he leaned down, I kissed him again. This one was hard and fast, a kiss driven by the fact that neither one of us wanted to let go.

  “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow,” he whispered against my lips.

  I begrudgingly let go of his hand and left to go meet my pest of a roommate.

  A few steps down the road, I pulled out my phone to send a text to my sister.

  Dare fulfilled. Scot kissed.

  She replied a few minutes later.

  You’re a lousy reader.

  I am so not, but I found a Scot who’s possibly as dreamy in person as Jamie Fraser is on paper.

  Where did you find such guy?

  On set, duh.

  Oh, Sammy. I thought you didn’t want to go there.

  I didn’t, but he started it.

  Oh, this is good stuff. I’m calling you.

  Hugh

  Things were good for all of two days. Granted, it was neither my fault nor Sam’s. The circumstances sucked, and it only got worse.

  I didn’t seem to have a choice when it came to Sam.

  For years, I had avoided any distraction and only focused on work, but now I couldn’t push my thoughts of her away. I knew this wasn’t the time to chase after someone, yet my heart wasn’t listening.

  It was a daily struggle to be so close to her and not being able to do anything. Even when we weren’t together, I could see her. I could feel her. If I closed my eyes, I could picture her moving around me in that certain way she seemed to move. She looked like a panther around set, moving swiftly from one station to another. Black hair, dark skin, and black clothes; she was sinuous and sexy—at least when she wasn’t wearing big coats that swallowed up her figure.

  I could see her beautiful mouth and her sweet brown eyes, which sometimes turned as dark as the blackest coffee. The air of mystery about her was one of the things that attracted me the most, and her soft voice was another, but the way her eyes seemed to look right through me was what was most unsettling.

  On top of that, when she smiled at me, I felt powerless. I didn’t have a chance against her. I had to give in. I wanted to fall for her, follow her anywhere.

  We tried to behave for the first two days of the week, but then I made a mistake. I requested for Sam to come to my trailer to do my makeup.

  Nora wasn’t too happy about my request and eyed me with suspicion. I justified it by saying I was coming down with a cold. No one wants the lead actor to get sick. She agreed then, reminding me of the upcoming press trip to London. I was supposed to leave with some of the main cast.

  “We’re all going to have a meeting before you guys leave to brief you about what you can and can’t say.” I didn’t think any of it sounded unusual; those kinds of briefings were standard procedure. I knew the network wanted us to go on a first round of interviews and show a few snippets of what we had filmed so far. Abarath had a massive audience, but we had to conquer the viewers who were not familiar with the books. We’d go on a short promo tour now and then would do a worldwide tour the next year when the show was going to air.

  Having Sam alone in my trailer only made it harder for me to be good. I was the one trying to misbehave, disrupting her work, trying to steal more kisses.

  “Listen,” she finally said after my last attempt at delaying the process. “Whose job do you think it’s going to be on the line here? You’ve already raised enough suspicions by calling me to your dungeon.”

  “Dungeon?” I asked her, fighting a smile. “I think Nora believed I was getting sick. Are you questioning my acting skills?”

  “I would never,” she deadpanned. She smiled at me, and then leaned down to kiss me again. “This is the last one you’ll get today, so you better make it last.” Her fresh, minty breath against my lips was the most delicious invitation. Her lips were made to be tugged at and bitten. I didn’t know how much longer I could wait until I had her in my bed, naked. I pressed my lips against hers, and as they parted, I captured her tongue with mine, tasting her until she pulled away.

  “Now, let me do my job.”

  “Ye better kiss me again before I leave for London tonight.”

  “Only if you promise to behave,” she said with a grin.

  “And what if I’m up to no good?” I gave her a playful look, waggling my eyebrows.

  “Then you’ll get nothing until you get back.”

  I gave her arse a squeeze, and after she swatted me on my shoulder, I promised I’d behave for the rest of the day.

  We had a meeting in the afternoon before leaving the set, and that’s when I got news that didn’t sit well with me. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about it, but I wasn’t sure how to break it to Sam.

  After the meeting, I had the hardest time saying my lines, and I had to force the whole crew to stick around a bit longer just so I could get the scene right.

  I went back to my trailer in a daze as everyone else was leaving. After a while, there was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  “It’s me,” Sam said as she closed the door behind her. She walked toward me with a playful smile on her face, and my heart sank. How was I going to break it to her?

  I didn’t want to hurt her. I never wanted to hurt her.

  She started getting her things organized to clean my face, but I grabbed her by the waist and made her sit on me. I gazed into her chestnut brown eyes, trying to come up with the right words to say.

  “I need to get all that grime off your face. After that, I hope I can give you a kiss or two before you leave. The drivers are already out there, waiting for you guys.”

  I exhaled sharply through my nose, unable to respond with anything more than a nod.

  “What’s up with you, grumpy pants?”

  “It’s nothing,” I replied, forcing a smile.

  She laughed softly. “I’m going to miss you, too, you know, but it’s only a couple days. As much as it’s going to wound your ego, I have to confess that I’ll live.” She smiled and placed a kiss on my cheek. I reached for her mouth and kissed her on the lips, and her eyes were hazy when she broke the kiss. “Oh, I just remembered something! I was thinking…Friday is karaoke night again,” she said with a playful smile. “If you get back from London in time, you should really consider participa
ting. We could sing a duet, so you can get over your absurd rejection of karaoke.” I gave her a distraught look. I wanted to smile, but I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t know how I was going to tell her what I had been told in the meeting. “Only maybe we shouldn’t do a love song because that would be bad.”

  “It would?” I asked.

  “Well, yeah. If we do a love song, everyone is going to figure out we’re screwing behind closed doors. Not that that has happened…yet,” she added, raising both eyebrows and adding a flirty smile. I let out a low growl out of frustration. Imagining Sam naked in my bed was the last thing I needed right then.

  “So, I was thinking…we could do ‘Empire State of Mind’ if you think you can pull off Jay Z’s rap. Or…maybe we should do a Broadway duet, like ‘Anything You Can Do’ from Annie Get Your Gun. That would be a good one! Or I might have to research better duet songs that are not strictly romantic,” she said, scrunching up her face.

  Her hand reached for my face, and I grabbed it, kissing her palm. My nostrils flared with an exasperated breath, and she frowned.

  “Hugh, what is it? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this pensive before.”

  I hummed, my nose pressed against her skin, smelling the freesia fragrance on her wrist. “I have to tell you something, Sam.”

  She tipped my chin up, and I looked at her. My stomach churned at the thought of hurting her.

  “Is everything okay? You’re worrying me.”

  “We had a meeting today. Nora and all the producers were there. They even phoned in someone from the network.”

  “Is everything okay? Are there any issues with the show?”

  “No, no, but they asked specific things of some of us. Me…and Melissa, in particular.”

  She frowned, and then her face fell. “They want you to pretend you two are together.”

  “More or less.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m supposed to have off-set ‘chemistry’ with her in public.”

  “I see,” she said simply. She nodded and considered what I’d just told her. “I told you Leonia is Abarath’s true love,” she mumbled.

  “They’re telling us to remain coy. They don’t want us to say we’re dating, but they want us to play on our chemistry, and that means we can’t be seen with anyone else in public. They were very adamant about that.”

  “They want people to buy into it.”

  “Pretty much. They think it will help the show establish its popularity.” I sighed. There wasn’t anything I could say at this point.

  “And then what’s going to happen when the fans start expecting more from you two?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long are you supposed to keep lying?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied, and I couldn’t even bear to look at her eyes.

  She stood up then and picked up a clean washcloth to wipe the dirt from my face. She didn’t say a word the rest of the time she was in my trailer. I didn’t know what I could say to make any of this better. How could I reassure her? I didn’t know how I could possibly stay away from her, but I knew it wasn’t right to drag her into this, to ask her to be my fling while pretending to have an ongoing affair with one of the lead actresses.

  “Good luck in London,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder, giving me a forced smile. I grabbed her hand before she could remove it and I kissed it, whispering a “thank you” against her skin. She nodded, withdrew her hand, and left the trailer.

  Sam

  The rest of the week was hell.

  We were still busy, even without the main actors. We had to shoot big aerial scenes with lots of extras for some battle sequence, so all the available makeup artists had to work on hundreds of actors.

  It wasn’t exactly a blast, but at least being busy kept my mind off of Hugh.

  Sort of.

  Okay, no. It didn’t.

  To make things worse, in the evening, I couldn’t stop staring at my phone. I kept waiting for a text, a call…something.

  We had a Casa de Sam y Cecilia dinner party one night, and that kept me busy enough, but the thought of him was always there, in the back of my mind. Of course, it didn’t help that people kept bringing up the footage from the press tour and kept discussing “how cute he and Melissa looked together.”

  It made me want to throw up, mostly because they were right. They did look cute together. They looked beautiful together.

  In one of the clips I had seen, Melissa had her light brown hair down in loose waves and wore a pale pink dress that complemented her skin tone perfectly. Her eyebrows were thick and perfectly styled, and the makeup was flawless. She was as cute as a button, with delicate features and bone structure. She reminded me a bit of Lily Collins, and Hugh, sitting next to her, was the epitome of dapper. He was wearing a dark blue suit with a white button-down shirt and a skinny tie. The fabric of the tailored suit was rich and had a slight shine. His hair was styled back, a look I wasn’t too fond of; I liked his hair better when it was wild and unruly.

  We didn’t get that far. It’s not too late. I’m going to get over him, I told myself.

  His blue eyes looked as if they sparkled under the bright lights of the TV studio. His scruff was perfection. His lips could have said anything, and they would have made me a believer. Yep, I was totally getting over him. Just as I thought that, one of our kisses flashed across my mind.

  By the time Friday came around, I was in such a bad mood I ditched karaoke for the gym. I was desperate to get him out of my head.

  I got dressed and did the only thing I knew would make me feel better.

  Releasing some endorphins was the only way to find any peace of mind. I let out a deep breath as I briskly walked to the gym that had been made available for cast and crew to use. Walking always eased my mind a bit, yet I couldn’t shake off the ache in my stomach and the knot in my throat. I’d missed him, but I was afraid to face him again. Production had let us know we’d have to work that weekend to make up for the days the actors were away, so I knew I wouldn’t get to sleep in. I was already mentally and physically exhausted, and by the end of the weekend, I was going to be even more of a mess.

  I thought of LA, of my friends, of what we’d be doing on a Friday night like this. I’d heard it might snow in the next few days, and that made me miss the warm autumn sun even more, the hikes at Fryman Canyon Park, going out to Venice Beach for tacos. I even missed the traffic and the superficial LA conversations I would often overhear.

  It was official—I was homesick again, on top of being distraught over Hugh. I felt like an idiot for even feeling that way. He shouldn’t have mattered. He should have been just some guy, a rebound, maybe, yet I felt like I was lying to myself.

  The hollow feeling in my stomach grew bigger, the knot in my throat tighter. Tears stung my eyes, and I wiped them away. I refused to cry.

  Breaking a sweat was not necessarily my idea of a good time, but sometimes it was the only way to get out of a funk. I was going to work my ass off into oblivion, and the endorphins were going to help me get out of the pity pit I had been digging for myself.

  And music. Music was going to help me weather the storm.

  I reached the old store that had been transformed to house a gym, and I was glad to see Hugh’s trainer was the only one there and appeared to be on his way out. I had my earbuds in already, so I waved and walked over to one of the elliptical machines in the back.

  I stepped up, set the timer, and turned the music on. I closed my eyes, and everything around me started fading away.

  The smooth voice of Frank Ocean felt comforting through my earbuds, reminding me of my sunny LA days from a few years back, when everything was so much easier. With my eyes closed, I could see the California palm trees. I could see myself hanging out with Amira, laughing together at something stupid. Slowly, the tension in my chest dissipated. My muscles felt less tense. The power of music was undeniable. A good song could make me feel stronger,
empowered, and suddenly I felt able to sweep away most of my feelings of homesickness.

  I suddenly opened my eyes wanting to grab my bottle of water and found Hugh standing right in front of me, his eyes bright and amused, a corner of his lips curled into a smile. I lost my grip and fell off the machine, almost pulling the whole thing down with me. Thankfully, his reflexes stopped the machine from tipping over, and he stretched out an arm to catch me. How long had he been there? And how long had he been staring at me?

  Creep.

  I gave him a sour look and straightened myself up. I grabbed my earbuds, which had fallen out of my ears and were dangling off the exercise armband in which I had stored my phone. He stood in front of me, not saying a word, his eyes still shiny with amusement, just as beautiful as they’d been on TV a couple days ago.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I growled.

  “I just got back. I had a long few days and thought a workout might be in order. Apparently, great minds think alike,” he said, leaning closer to me, mere inches away from my face.

  I glared at him and scoffed. How could he talk to me so nonchalantly after our last conversation? He was acting as if nothing had happened. What a fucking jerk.

  “Then what the hell are you doing staring at me? There’s plenty of equipment available for your use. Didn’t your mother teach you not to stare?”

  “She did, but it just so happens that I cannot help myself.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “I can’t keep up with you, Hugh. I thought you were supposed to date Melissa. I don’t have time for this. I’m leaving. Thanks for ruining my workout.” And my night. And my whole weekend. And for not saying anything to make this pill less bitter to swallow.

  He grabbed my arm, and I rolled my eyes in annoyance.

  “I don’t want to date Melissa, you know that. I want you.”

  My heart was lodged in my throat, beating so loudly I could feel it in my ears. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach, and I felt the impulse to run away. I wasn’t in control of my emotions. I needed to get away from him.