by E V Darcy
‘So, what’s your name?’ Casey’s voice murmured into her hair, breaking the silence that had fallen around them.
‘Paige,’ she whispered. ‘Paige Hamilton.’
‘Nice to meet you, Paige Hamilton. You probably already know I’m Casey.’ She snorted at his introduction. ‘Well, I didn’t want to assume,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘That would just be rude.’
His glibness and comforting touches almost made the situation seem normal, or at least non-life-threatening as if they were merely meeting for the first time—albeit in a pitch-dark room that the star couldn’t properly sit up in. She could feel that he was squished down, that his neck must have been at an awful angle. He’d probably feel better lying down… Although did they have enough room for that either?
She slowly pulled away from the man, who let her go without protest. She shifted back off his lap. When her bottom hit the floor, she sat up straight and felt the table brushing against the top of her voluminous hair. If it wasn’t for the wildness of her locks she could probably have fit her fisted hand between their wooden safe haven and the top of her head.
She felt for the man at her side. Casey wasn’t as tall as some of his co-stars, particularly Marc Matthews and Luc Truman, but he was still pushing towards six-feet. Five foot ten… or something like that, if she recalled correctly.
‘What are you doing?’ Casey whispered as she began to search the pockets of her dress, looking for her phone. She hadn’t meant to bring it in with her; they were expressly forbidden in the Meet and Greets, but she’d been so distracted when she’d come back into the room, that she’d gone to the water table instead of to the bags.
‘Getting my phone,’ she said a second before she pressed the button to light it up.
‘Holy fuck! Warn a guy first!’ Casey complained as he held his hand out towards the device to try and block out the bright, white light.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered as she blinked the light-spots out of her vision and waited for her phone to automatically adjust its brightness setting. ‘I didn’t think. Dammit,’ she cursed. ‘No signal.’ There was no reception at all, not even the little E for emergency calls. There must be too much above them.
Okay, that revelation gave her no comfort.
She heard him shifting around behind her before she felt his chin on her shoulder. He sighed.
‘Always fucking Luc,’ he muttered, distracting her from her thoughts. She turned her head to look at him, but his eyes were focused on the wallpaper of her phone. It was a piece of fan art of Luc dressed in his Gabriel regalia; his golden wings were spread wide, sword drawn… chest bare.
‘I, umm. Sorry?’ she offered.
‘No, don’t be.’ He sighed again. ‘I love the guy, I really do, he’s a great mate—almost like a brother—and even I can say he’s fucking gorgeous, so I get it, but there’s a bigger cast on the show than just Luc.’
Ah. He was jealous. To be fair, Luc did get a lot of the attention from the Network. He and Marc Matthews were huge names and rarities; two big-named movie stars successfully crossing over to the smaller screen. Even rarer was the fact they did it at the same time, on the same show. If Marc were more willing to pander to the public, Paige figured the Network would push him just as much as they pushed Luc, in their marketing. But, unlike other shows, without the rest of the cast, the entire concept would never work; as much as she loved both of the two main stars and thought their acting far superior to the rest of the cast’s, the truth was that Marc’s and Luc’s characters were a little one-dimensional without their co-stars’ characters in the mix.
‘You’re right,’ she said with a straight face. ‘There’s Marc as well.’
He opened his mouth, ready to retort with indignation, but he closed it and glared from the side of his eyes. She giggled and pushed him back slightly, so she could finally get a view of where they both were.
He went without complaint, intrigued himself by their sarcophagus as he turned to look at what their little tomb looked like.
The thing that had protected them, and continued to provide their shelter, was a large, solid wood conference table. She knew these tables were strong, but they were not indestructible if the last office Christmas party she’d gone to was anything to go by.
Part of the space beneath the table was taken up on the right by an assortment of broken blocks of stone that had run underneath, next to them. What had stopped the pieces of stone overrunning them, looked like merely a stroke of luck. She moved towards the avalanche, very carefully. Casey hissing his disapproval behind her as she held up her phone to the rockfall. There was a tiny gap in the stones at the top of the pile; Paige’s light reached inside and was then lost.
‘That’s a big, empty space,’ she said moving back to where Casey sat. ‘Something further up’s probably stopped more stuff falling down there.’
‘Well thank fuck for whatever that is,’ he breathed, but his eyes glanced nervously to the now-hidden hollow. She understood his apprehension; if whatever was protecting that cavern dropped, they were well and truly fucked!
The back of their little space was the solid wall of the meeting room. Paige held her phone up towards the tiny gap between the wall and table, and saw her light bouncing back immediately. A huge slab of concrete was pressing down above them. That also didn’t provide any comfort. She couldn’t see the table legs on the side with the fall-in, but the ones on the left, where the second table full of cookies and pastries had been, were visible.
She crawled on her hands and knees to get a better look. The legs of the table they were under looked fine, although she wondered how long they would last. The table next to the one protecting them had broken in half, and the section connected to their little safe haven had fallen down at a diagonal angle, providing a barrier between the fallen masonry and the two of them. The legs, however, gave Paige a cause for concern; they buckled slightly where they met the wood of the tabletop. If they snapped, the table would flatten and whatever was above it would come rushing in and swallow them up.
Carefully, Paige moved back; she didn’t want to be near that when it went. However, Casey seemed to have other ideas.
‘Bingo!’ he called as he slithered over to the broken table on his stomach.
‘Casey, be carefu—’ her voice died out as something rolled towards her. A plastic bottle of water stopped at her outstretched foot. She peeked around the star who was pushing bottles back towards her, along with packets of cookies. How the hell had she missed them? They must have toppled from the table during the explosion. Maybe she’d even caused them to fall when she’d ducked down?
She didn’t care how they’d got there; they were a brief moment of hope. At least they wouldn’t die of thirst or starvation… at least not as soon she thought they would.
Oh, wasn’t she a cheerful little starfish today!
She let him finish his goody-gathering and watched him safely scuttle back before she swung the phone over to the front of the table—the side that had been facing the room. A huge slab of concrete, probably from the floor above, was laying against the table, stopping other stones coming down from above, and extending beyond what they could see—further than the second table on their left and the rockfall on their right.
‘Righty,’ Casey said as he cracked open a bottle of water and a pack of cookies. ‘I’m starving, had no breakfast, so I’m gonna eat these, then we’re going to ration out what we’ve got left.’
That seemed sensible. She checked the time on her phone. It was just after ten-thirty. She wondered if Daniel had signed the papers yet; maybe he’d signed them just as the explosion occurred. Lucky bastard. He wouldn’t be financially responsible for her funeral arrangements—
‘Oi,’ Casey said around a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Stop drifting off. Set that to flight mode to stop it searching for reception all the time, and then switch it off. Let’s conserve the battery.’
‘Don’t you have a phone?’ she asked. Surely, he’d h
ave the latest, flashiest device on the market. He shook his head and she did as he asked, setting it to flight mode, but hesitating to switching it off.
‘Got broken last night,’ he said as he swallowed his sugar-filled snack. He took a gulp of water. ‘Got a little tipsy and dropped the bugger, completely knackered. Damned things nowadays are too fragile.’
She nodded her agreement, taking in the man before her.
Paige had figured him to be childish, immature and unable to do anything for himself from the way the tabloids reported his antics. He gave off the impression of never taking life seriously, of being a horn-dog with only sex on his mind. Yet he’d been surprisingly reasonable, mature, and level-headed since the cave-in.
Hell, he’d actually saved her! If it wasn’t for him, she’d be squished right now, under that giant block of concrete. Her eyes slid to where the concrete block met the floor. Maybe they’d have been able to find half of her to send back home?
Ugh. Her stomach churned at that thought and she quickly turned her gaze back to the man at her side. He was watching her as he drank his water. He had to sit back, shoulders against the wall, legs out before him, in order to be able to drink. He couldn’t sit up without bending his neck.
She returned his stare, taking in his reddish-blonde hair that was starting to show hints of grey at his temples. It made him look rather distinguished, she thought, and was always a sharp contrast to his blue eyes that usually looked so boyish in the images the paparazzi seemed to have unlimited access to. But right now, those eyes were tired and looked like they carried all the secrets of the world. She wondered what secrets they were and if they’d die with him here, under a Las Vegas hotel.
How wonderfully ironic that would be.
4
‘So where you from?’ he asked, curious as to who the woman was trapped with him in the dark.
‘Chicago.’
‘Oh, I loved the Windy City! First time I saw Lake Michigan, I was just astounded.’ He rolled over from where he lay and propped himself up on his elbow. It was strange being in the dark, chatting away to someone he’d only just met. He was the kind of guy who never engaged in pillow talk and never, ever had sex in the dark. Too big a risk of his chosen bed partner thinking they were more than a quick fuck, amongst other things.
‘Why?’ He imagined she was looking up at him. They’d both taken to lying on the floor, legs sticking out the front of the table—although hers didn’t reach as far as his.
‘Because it’s so frigging big! It’s more like a sea than a lake,’ he said as if it was the most obvious fact in the world. ‘There’s nothing comparable in the UK. Lakes there tend to be longer than wide, so they don’t feel as vast as the Great Lakes. You can always see more than one side.’
‘I can see how it would be impressive then.’ They went back to silence for a few minutes before she finally asked, ‘What about you? Where in Britain are you from?’
He sighed and lay back down on his back, bending his legs and staring up into the darkness.
‘I’m from the North of England, from a town called Leigh, not far from Manchester. Small town. Run down after the mill industries all disappeared.’
‘You know, I’m just going to say it’—he heard the determination in her voice—‘we’re probably going to die here, so let’s have a rule.’
‘Okay,’ he drawled, hesitantly.
‘No bullshit. No hiding,’ she declared. ‘Let’s be one-hundred percent level with one another. If we have a question, we ask it and the other person answers it completely truthfully. No holds barred. If we’re the last person we’re each going to meet, let’s go out being the closest we’ve ever been to anyone.’
He mulled the idea over for a moment; could he be so open with someone? He wasn’t particularly thrilled at the idea he was going to die, and was still trying to hold onto the hope that someone would find them. But the idea of someone knowing him before he left this earth, of someone seeing through all the crap he’d built around himself was a little intriguing. He’d die the playboy TV star to the rest of the world, but to this one woman, to Paige Hamilton, he’d die simply Casey McManaman.
He could hear her shifting around, probably pulling her dress down to reach under her legs a little more. Well, he said dress, he imagined that it was actually a tunic for a taller lady. It had been pretty; bottle green with intricate gold embroidery around the collar line. It worked well with her colouring, highlighting the thin strands of gold within a burning fire of orange-amber that whipped around her face and tumbled around her shoulders as she’d turned around to face him. Her green eyes had seared his when she’d set her sights upon him.
She may look a delicate little thing, but she was all fire underneath. It was a shame he’d never be burnt by it.
‘C’mere,’ he said, moving his arm, and pulling her towards him. She settled her head in the crook of his shoulder and snuggled up against him, her hand rested on his chest.
He took a deep breath.
‘So, I’m from this town called Leigh, my folks were shit poor and lived on benefits—welfare—for most of my life. I’ve got three brothers and a sister. My sister died when I was fourteen, drugs overdose. I have many faults in life, but after watching her go through what she did with her addiction, I’ve never been lured to sample that particular sin. My oldest brother is…’
His own hand crept up to meet hers.
‘—And then there was Daniel.’ Paige finished her list with a sigh. She was lying a-top the TV-star, her chin propped up on her hands that lay flat across his chest. His arms crossed at the small of her back, keeping her close, and her legs lay entwined with his. They were trying to keep warm as the temperature was dropping and the two assumed evening was falling across the desert city.
‘That’s not that many,’ Casey scoffed. ‘I’ve had so many, I can’t even count them anymore.’
‘That’s not something to be proud of,’ she admonished with a shake of her head. She had no idea how the man felt that sleeping around, especially in this day and age, was acceptable. Not only acceptable, but he was proud of the damned fact. ‘There’s too much risk jumping between partners.’
‘Hey, if I don’t wrap it, I don’t tap it.’ The way he said it sounded as if it was a practiced mantra. ‘Anyway, I’m tested every six weeks like clockwork. Have my doctor come on set if I can’t make it in to her.’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘Condoms aren’t always effective, Casey. They only have like a ninety-nine or ninety-eight percent success rate. What if you’ve got a half dozen little Caseys out there?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had any paternity cases so far. No wait, that’s a lie.’ He chuckled. He actually laughed at his comment. ‘There’s been a few, but every single time none of them have turned out to be mine. Thank fuck.’
She rolled her eyes at herself. She really shouldn’t have been surprised at his attitude. He was the playboy of the industry, after all.
‘You don’t want kids?’ she asked.
‘No.’ His voice was cold. ‘Do you?’
‘Eh,’ she said with a shrug. ‘It would have been nice. But I’m thirty-six now. I’m too set in my ways. I had thought it would have happened with Daniel when we first got married.’ She let out a long sigh at the thought of her now ex-husband. ‘But my career took off unexpectedly… I made a choice, I suppose.’
‘Well, why can’t you guys try for it after we get out?’
She laughed at that comment, and it wasn’t just for the idea of them being rescued. ‘Daniel was signing our divorce papers as we were buried under here.’
He was silent for a moment and Paige didn’t prompt him for a response. She rested her cheek on his chest, taking comfort in the rhythmic rise and fall as he breathed in and out. One of his hands reached up and absently stroked her hair as he thought about whatever it was her declaration had triggered.
‘Was there a reason you broke up?’ he asked. There was something in his
voice, a slight flicker of… she didn’t know what; hesitation? Regret? Was he thinking of the amount of times he’d been the other guy, the reason a couple broke up?
‘Yeah, he was fucking one of our mutual friends for the last eight months. Said I put my job before him.’ Her head rose as his chest expanded with a sharp intake of breath.
‘You ever been the other guy?’ she asked him as her curiosity got the better of her. She shifted her face towards the direction of his own, her cheek still against his chest. ‘No bullshit, remember.’
‘Unknowingly, once or twice.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve never purposefully taken another guy’s girl, nor would I want to. I’m not that much of an arsehole.’ His voice was firm and confident and left no room for argument on the matter. There was definitely a story behind the statement and Paige wished she could see his eyes to see if he was telling the truth.
‘Tell me you got everything,’ he said after a moment of quiet. ‘Tell me you wiped the bastard out and took the lot.’
‘Nope. I didn’t want to fight. I just wanted out.’ She paused for a moment and then decided to tell him what he’d walked in on that morning. ‘In fact, when you saw me this morning I had just told my lawyer to sign the apartment over to him.’
‘What?’ he asked, dislodging her as he sat himself up on his elbows.
‘Well, the longer it dragged on, the less I’d have with legal costs and all that crap. I just couldn’t be bothered.’
He didn’t say anything for a while, and she imagined that if they were able to see each other he’d be staring down at her incredulously. Finally, he flopped back to the floor with a sigh.
‘Tell me about your best lesbian experience.’
‘Only if you tell me about your best gay one,’ she countered.
‘His name was Jim—’
She burst out laughing.
He curled his body around hers, his large frame spooning around her small one, trying to keep her warm. She’d fallen asleep talking about her college days and left him alone in the darkness, once again listening to the sounds of the fallen building shifting around them. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to stop thinking about when it would finally fall.