“I suppose we could do a party,” I said, grinning over my wine glass. “Only I’m not sure my husband can keep up with me.”
Our eyes met across the table, and for a moment, I felt like this was something real, like we really were a couple. Bennett reached a hand across to me, then, and gently wiped something from my cheek with his thumb. He offered it to me to lick clean as though we’d eaten together for so long it was just natural. As my lips closed over his thumb and my tongue swiped up a tiny smear of avocado, I felt the blood rushing to my face, pulsing through me. Everything narrowed down to the salty taste of Bennett’s skin and the way his eyes refused to let go of mine.
“Oh, hey!” River said, breaking the spell. I sat back, still feeling the flush in my cheeks and the weight of Bennett’s gaze on me. “You can ring the bell to call everybody in!”
14
Bennett
Ava had let out the smallest giggle as she yanked on the rope, and yet the sound rang in my ears even louder than the big bell, with an echo that continued even as we followed River down the dirt path that led down to the lake.
Every full moon, River’s buddies—hippies or Wiccans or pagans or... something—got together by the lake to celebrate. I’d never been here for one of the gatherings, and I was beyond amused at the very thought of finally participating.
River was one of my closest friends, oddly, but I did not get this side of him at all. It was just completely out of my own element and realm of experience, but that just made it all the more interesting to finally witness.
As the sound of the drum circle filtered through the trees to our path, I felt my practiced, cynical smirk sliding into place. This should be hilarious. I mean, a drum circle, are you serious?
The firelight reached us just before we came out of the trees and around a corner onto the beach. A crackling bonfire was blazing gold and yellow and red in a neat fire pit, and a ring of people stood around it, some of them with their hands out as if they were warming them by the fire, even in the summer night. I was surprised to see they weren’t all the crunchy granola type, like River. There was even a guy there wearing a Padres jersey. My caretaker stopped to greet a few people, but he was staying close to us.
No, I realized, he was staying close to Layla.
Well, good for him. From the moment I laid eyes on Ava’s assistant, I could tell what she needed most was a good fuck. That woman just needed someone to throw her down on a bed and do every nasty thing to her that she could think of. River seemed like the perfect guy to round out her rough edges. That man was so natural he might as well be water.
We shuffled into the drum circle, people smiling warmly as they parted to make room for us. Some of them smelled distinctly of marijuana, a couple of booze, more than one of B.O. But each one of them welcomed us, clearly grateful to have a few more people to enjoy the evening with. There were dry logs, about knee high, circled around the fire to sit on, and we found a seat just as everyone in the circle seemed to be settling in.
“Well,” I whispered, leaning close to Ava. “This should be interesting.” The drums continued their steady, syncopated beat, and slowly other instruments joined in: guitars and fiddles and even a banjo. Someone started playing a wooden flute, and then someone else pulled out a pan pipe.
I kept glancing around the circle to see if anyone was moving, if this was, maybe, going to turn into a huge, pagan orgy.
Eventually, someone did get up, a short, curvy girl with bare feet and dreads, a broomstick skirt sitting low on her hips. She started to dance, swaying with the music, then easing seamlessly into a twirling, hypnotic rhythm. In the firelight, she looked like some ethereal creature. A fire sprite. An ifrit.
It was unexpectedly beautiful, and I found myself mesmerized by her movements.
Gradually, others started to join in, pulling themselves upright and slipping into the rhythm of the music. Each one hypnotized into their own kind of expressive movement. All of them flowing and all of them earnest. I could see bottles and boxes and plates being passed from person to person, and when I looked over toward Ava, I saw Layla sharing some sort of cake with River.
Ava held a bottle in her hand and took a long drink.
“Careful, there,” I said, laughing. Who knew what was in that?
Ava grinned at me and began swaying slightly to the beat of the drums. “Don’t worry,” she said, handing me the bottle. “I won’t overdo it. I want to remember everything this time.”
She got to her feet, and shimmied a little, hips flowing with the song. I raised an eyebrow as I watched her, amazed at how at ease she seemed with everything around her. Even I was feeling more than a little bit out of place. “Going to join in?”
“I just might, Cowboy,” she said, and then Layla was standing next to her. She took Ava’s hand and led her into the circle. I waved them off, taking a big gulp from the bottle she left behind, laughing as I watched her being drawn even deeper into the dance.
The firelight caught every golden highlight in Ava’s hair, and her eyes were wide and bright. She was as happy as I’d seen her yet, and my cynical smirk slipped away, replaced by a smile that felt unfamiliar. Something more peaceful and content.
She was so free. So untethered by any of her worries. It was hard to resist the temptation to just move forward without telling her the truth, but I would never do that. The whole point of a prank is the reveal. The whole point is the “ta-da” moment when everyone laughs and is in awe and wonder as to how you pulled it all off. That was the way it was supposed to go, anyway. Ideally. But this was no ordinary prank.
Damn was I was going to miss her when it was all over.
She was painfully beautiful, and I knew I didn’t deserve to have her feel so comfortable around me. It was despicable for me to try something like this after everything that her ex did to her, but it was so spontaneous and as usual I really just acted without thinking. And she did say she wanted to get away.
Taking one more deep drink to help push aside all of the guilt and regret, I pulled myself to my feet and passed the bottle along to the next person, a wild eyed twenty-something that had somehow lost her shirt and seemed not to notice or care that she was standing around in just a white bra.
On Ava’s next pass, I reached out, almost without meaning to, drawn to touch her by some unseen, magnetic-like force. I pulled her into my arms, and the next thing I knew we were both dancing, swaying and floating along with the music. I was acutely aware of her body pressed to mine, feeling connected by some sort of energy. It made me briefly wonder what had been in that bottle after all. I held her so close I could feel her heart beating against my chest.
I wanted to kiss her again. I wanted to taste her mouth. I thought of the cabin earlier, how sweet she’d tasted, how eager she’d been. She couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—take her hands off of me. I’d never wanted someone so much than in that moment, and even though that was physically impossible to hide from her, I knew I couldn’t take advantage of the situation then. And I still couldn’t.
Something about the firelight and the floaty sensation caused by whatever we’d been drinking made me suddenly want to tell her everything. All of the guilt that I’d been pushing away came crashing down on me at once, and I thought that in that moment, she deserved the truth. But if I told her the truth, she’d stop looking at me like she was, like there was nowhere she’d rather be than in my arms. Like I was her savior, the best thing that had ever happened to her. How could I walk away from that?
I couldn’t. Not yet.
Maybe I could just wait a few more days.
The internal battle was still waging in my head when Ava surged up on her toes and pressed her irresistibly soft lips to mine.
15
Ava
I could feel the drums beating under my skin.
Or maybe that was my heart.
Or maybe it was whatever noxious excuse for kombucha had been in that bottle.
It hardly mattered. Even with
Bennett’s arms curled around me almost possessively, I felt freer than I had in years. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt this light, like I could float away on a cloud. Only the faint scratch of his evening stubble against my temple kept me grounded in reality.
With his arms so solidly surrounding me, I finally felt like myself again. Like the Ava Cassidy I’d been before Wild Rovers, before Ken, before any of it. As I pulled back slightly to look at Bennett, I remembered. I remembered why I’d started talking to him in that bar when he’d first approached me. He didn’t know who I was. I was just a girl in a bar.
I was just a girl in a drum circle.
The idea hit me with such an absurd pleasure that I had to kiss him. The surge of the music seemed to push me up and I pressed my lips to his, feeling them yield to my touch, tasting the saltiness of his skin and the sweetness of the drink we’d both had. Another memory hit me, Bennett’s lips meeting mine in a fierce passion that seemed to set every one of my nerves on fire, each synapse firing in a delicious crackle of passion. My body reacted to the memory, and I felt an echo of that passion rolling through me. Building.
For a moment, we both allowed the delusion that we were still dancing, that we were still part of this circle, but it didn’t last. We soon stumbled away from the group, grinning like idiots. We didn’t go far—close enough that we could still see the fire, but far enough that the night air was beginning to cool. Bennett took my hand and led me to the base of a wide pine tree. We settled down between two enormous roots, and when I shivered, he wrapped his arms around me, holding me like something precious.
I curled closer to him, my head resting on his chest, just under his chin.
“I remember,” I said quietly. “I remember kissing you.”
“Oh?” he said quietly, fingers stroking lightly down my bare arm.
“Yes,” I said, snuggling closer. I had remembered quite a few things from that night by now. “I remember I liked it.” I laughed, nervous even now. “I remember liking it a lot. But I... I still don’t remember the Elvis impersonator.”
I felt Bennett stiffen a little, and I worried he was still hurt that I didn’t remember our ceremony at all. I could hardly blame him. I’d be furious if my husband had forgotten our wedding.
Even in his stiff silence, his arms stayed curled around me, holding me close. I snuggled further into his warm, the faint sound of the nearby drums soothing me into relaxation. “I wish I could,” I murmured, the warmth and the alcohol conspiring to pull me into sleep. “It sounds like we had fun.”
I don’t know how I got back to the ranch that night. Bennett wouldn’t admit to carrying me, but I couldn’t imagine him letting anyone else do it, not with the possessive way he’d held me when we danced.
By the next morning, Layla seemed perfectly content to stay as long as I needed. Over buttermilk pancakes and fresh blackberries, she confessed that she thought we could both use a vacation.
“I mean, sooner or later we’re gonna have to go back to the real world, but until then?” Her gaze wandered over toward River. “There are worse places to hole up.”
I still didn’t know what my husband did for a living. He said he was “independently wealthy”, and it certainly seemed like he had endless amounts of cash, given the way he lavished me with random, exceedingly expensive, gifts as if he were simply treating me to a Snickers bar. One night he had an expensive new dress waiting for me in our room, telling me he thought we could dress up for dinner that night. Then waiting for us in a small, private dining room was a diamond necklace to match.
The man was full of surprises. On our first full day there, he took me on a quick tour of the grounds, and when we got back, River told him there was a short in the breaker for the cabins and offered to call an electrician. But Bennett waved him off.
“I’ll take a look. I’m sure I can handle it.”
“You’re the boss, boss,” River said with a lazy salute and a bright smile.
I followed Bennett to the breaker, mostly because I didn’t know where else to go. Layla had said she’d be sunning by the lake all day, but I wanted to do something more active. And I wanted to get to know my husband.
He took a path that led around behind the main house, to a room full of more electronics than I could ever identify. Lots of boxes with blinking lights and switches. “What is this, WarGames?” I asked, laughing.
“This,” he said with a smirk, “is the beating heart of the ranch. It’s where all the magic happens.”
He moved to one of the boxes and started fiddling about in it. I watched him, but I couldn’t even guess what he was doing. It seemed complicated.
“I don’t get it,” I said after a moment. “Do you ever even use the cabins?”
“Not really,” Bennett said with a shrug.
“So why do you need to fix the breaker now?”
He was quiet for a moment while he worked, and several emotions I couldn’t identify flitted across his face.
“I like to keep things going,” he said after a while, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it over the whirring of fans in the room.
As I watched him work, I mused out loud, “I had no idea you could do all that.”
He winked at me. “Your husband has a few surprises up his sleeve, you know.”
Apparently, another one of those surprises was his ability to share a bed with his wife for four nights of their honeymoon and not manage to touch her once.
I didn’t know why Bennett was holding back. We’d already had sex. I remembered enough from that night to know that. Was he trying to be gentlemanly? Was he waiting for me to make the first move? Maybe he was waiting for me to actually remember our wedding?
Whatever it was, even if I made an attempt to initiate something, he pulled away—albeit seemingly with great reluctance. Yet, I was still getting to know him so well in so many other ways as we spent day after day together. We’d practically created a commune here, and there was a part of me that wanted to stay here with Layla forever. Forget about Hollywood, forget about acting.
It was easy enough to put my past life out of my mind. The ranch didn’t get any TV reception, and Bennett didn’t have cable, so I hadn’t seen anything in the news about me. Not after my phone’s battery died the first day and I decided not to bother recharging it. I didn’t want to have to face anything outside this beautiful bubble we’d created. Eventually I would have to face the real world again, but for at least a little while I was content to ignore it.
Besides, even if we weren’t having sex, there were other distractions. Bennett was romantic. He’d surprise me with wildflowers or have River fill our meals with anything I even mentioned liking or having a craving for. We spent most evenings cuddling by the fire pit on the patio, until Layla and River disappeared, and then we’d tumble (platonically) into our own bed. Still, I was a little bitter that my assistant was having more sex on my honeymoon than I was.
He woke me one morning with a thermos of coffee and two enormous blueberry muffins, fresh from the oven, if the steam rising from them was any indication.
“Come on,” he said. “Can’t come to a ranch without riding horses.”
I’d been past the stables several times since I arrived, but I hadn’t ventured inside. I wasn’t sure if these were the kind of horses you could ride or if you needed a special jockey license for them.
It turned out that all of Bennett’s horses were former thoroughbred racers, now retired to a life of Western riding and lazily grazing in the sweet mountain grass.
“Domino,” Bennett said, as he led me to one of the stalls. Inside was an impressive specimen, white with black spots that did look a bit like a domino. “I mean, the guy who sold him to me had some long ass name for him, but Domino seems to like his new nickname well enough, don’t you, boy?”
Domino whinnied softly, shaking his mane.
“He’s big, but he’s sweet,” Bennett assured me. “He’ll be an easy ride for you.”
“Now h
ere’s….”
Bennett trailed off as he started explaining the tack to me, watching as I reached for Domino’s lead rope and tied it to the post.
“Brush?” I said, holding out my hand once the rope was secure. Bennett wordlessly handed me the brush, and I started grooming the big horse, speaking softly to him as I worked. I’d learned to ride for the second season of Wild Rovers, for a small set of episodes where the family had visited a dude ranch. For realism, the handlers had taught us how to groom and tack our own horses.
Once I’d gotten the saddle and bridle into place and was stroking the bridge of Domino’s nose, Bennett let out a low whistle. “How come you didn’t tell me you could ride?” he asked, and I shrugged, smiling.
“Your wife has a few surprises up her sleeve too,” I said, swinging into the saddle.
We rode up a trail behind the main house that led into the mountains. Bennett told me more about his family, about their summers here. I talked about the few family vacations we’d gone on before my career had started to take up too much of our time.
At about lunchtime, we reached a wide clearing with a small stream trickling through it, ending in a wide pool, and tied up the horses. Bennett unpacked a picnic, and I stretched out in the sun. It was peaceful up here. Serene. Quiet. All the things my life was not.
And that was before everything had gone to hell.
After lunch, we lay on the blanket on our sides, arms tucked under our heads, swapping stories and laughing. He’d taken off his shirt, and both of us had shed our shoes.
“You should have seen his face!” Bennett said, shaking his head. “He just couldn’t fathom how his car had made it into the bell tower.”
“You’re the worst sort of prankster!” I said, but I couldn’t stop the laugh bubbling up in my chest.
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