by Kate Stewart
“Anything to help,” Blake retorts without missing a beat. “And you know damn well you missed me,” he coos. They share a smile, Lucas’s more of a grimace and it’s obvious the statement is true. Blake slides his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “Get that nut iced. Mila, my offer stands. Happy to donate to the growth of the family.”
I can’t help but smile because Blake’s is infectious. Over the years I’d learned he’s just the type of man you begrudgingly love. Where his charm is just enough to offset the asshole. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The hell you will,” Lucas grunts out. “Thanks, asshole. I’ll call you.”
“I’ll hold my breath, later bro,” Lucas taunts as he makes his way toward the front door.
“You’re the devil,” Lucas yells, wincing before he eases himself down on the pack.
“Heaven for the weather,” he grins back between us both, “hell for the company.”
I speak up then. “Did you seriously just misquote Mark Twain? It’s ‘Go to heaven for the climate, and hell for the company.’”
“Clever girl. I adapted it to suit me.”
I cross my arms, trying not to smile. “You ripped it off.”
He shrugs. “Everything under the sun has been done. But I can duel with you all day.”
I roll my eyes and respond with an annoyed, “Out, Grasshopper.”
“Later, Ants.”
I hadn’t exactly been kind to him the last time I saw him, I’d dismissed him. Guilt gnaws at me as I stare into Blake’s vacant office and imagine the horror of finding him lifeless, all the light and playful mischievousness in his beautiful brown eyes gone…forever.
Stifling a sob, I cup my hand over my mouth with grief for Blake, for the life he cut short, and for my husband who’s suffering this very stab a thousand times worse.
“You okay?” Amanda asks.
Wiping the tears away from my eyes, I do my best to tamp down my own pain. I’m here for Amanda, to get her through this. I nod. “Memories. Just thinking of the last time I saw him. It wasn’t here.”
“Good, because I hate this place,” she says, and I follow her past the office, through the living room into Blake’s bedroom.
“I think maintenance has been in. Everything looks picked through. I wouldn’t be surprised if half his shit were on eBay already,” she sniffed. “His Emmy is at my house, thank God.”
“Do you want to place a complaint?”
“I don’t have the energy.” She stands idle, too thin for her tall frame and ghastly pale. When I met Amanda, she’d been full of life, her tactless jokes terrible but her laughter contagious. We were on a high when we met. Lucas had just earned his first SAG award nomination, and Blake had guest-starred on a season of a crime series and won an Emmy. We were all on one edge or the other of thirty. Champagne and money were both flowing, and the red carpet was stretched out as far as the eye could see for both Blake and Lucas. We all looked the part, in both health and heart, we were unimaginably happy. And somewhere in the last few years, we’d lost sight of why. Looking at Amanda now, it feels like it had been a decade ago, but it was as close as yesterday. Her once vibrant auburn hair lay lifeless, piled on top of her head underneath two inches of new growth. Dark circles drown out the shimmer in her light blue eyes, and it’s easy to see she’s been doing the kind of crying that weakens the body but doesn’t heal the soul.
“I can say something to management,” I offer, surveying the ransacked apartment. “Do you have a list of things that are missing?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not worth it. Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
I nod because I can physically identify with her ache and I’m already on the verge of more tears. Amanda pushes past her emotion, pulling a box from a stack next to the wall. I feel like I’m circling in place as I try to muster up the courage to go through a dead man’s possessions.
Amanda reads my thoughts. “It’s okay to dig around. I know it might make you uncomfortable and I can’t thank you enough for helping me. Just pack what you think I might want to look through. I trust your judgment. I’m donating his clothes, and I have someone picking up the furniture. A cleaning service will come after that. We’re mostly here to make sure there’s nothing that could hurt him further, you know?”
“I know.”
Her chin trembles as she speaks. “They’ve already decided he hurt that woman who keeps bringing up his name. They think that’s why he did it. His death being an admission of guilt.”
My mouth goes dry. “What do you think?”
“I think he was too busy sabotaging himself. And I don’t think he would hurt anyone else, not like that.”
I’m at a loss for what to say. Silences with Blake were never comfortable. As far as my perception went, he seemed like a man with a thousand secrets, his personality split between the man he wanted to be and the side of himself he couldn’t fight. He was both tyrant and sweetheart, and you never knew where you stood with him. I’m not sure the man liked me, but I truly believed he loved his ex-wife with his whole tortured heart. I’d witnessed that love firsthand. Adoration clear in his features every time he looked at her or spoke of her.
“Whatever you’re thinking, you can tell me. If his death doesn’t provoke anything else, the least it should do is provoke some honesty. I want so much to say I knew him better than anyone, but I didn’t see this coming. I wonder now if I ever knew him at all.”
“What you knew you loved, and he knew it, Amanda. He knew it. I don’t think I tried to know him enough, but I do know he loved you. That I’m sure of.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I don’t have to, but I speak the truth because she deserves to know I don’t think ill of Blake, not in that way. “I don’t think he took part in whatever happened to those women, and I agree he was too hard on himself.”
She opens his nightstand drawer and begins to trash the contents. “You know one of the reasons he asked me for a divorce is because he didn’t want me to suffer for him anymore. He told me when we got married that he felt calm for the first time in his life.”
The words are eerily familiar. “Lucas said something similar to me when we got together.”
“How is he?” She grabs another box and begins to tape it up.
“I wish I knew. He’s just taken on a significant role. I think he’s hiding.”
Amanda pauses with a new box in hand and looks over to me with concern. “That’s not good.”
“I agree, and he won’t listen to me. He’s not ready, but he seems to think it’s the answer.”
“The job is what made him sick. It made him so sick,” she whimpers. “There is no answer. I’ve looked everywhere, his laptop, his emails and at every fucking piece of paper in this apartment. There’s nothing. There’s no reason, no answers. And I still can’t believe he did it sober.”
Curiosity wins my idle tongue.
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“The night before they found him. We were supposed to head down to my mother’s in Santa Barbara and spend a few days together. I just knew it wasn’t over between us, ya know? At least I was hoping he was thinking along the same lines as me. I was so excited. I was going to spend the morning getting pampered, and then I was supposed to pick him up. The landlord said he was blaring music and he had left the door unlocked. Every part of it was intentional. And I can’t stop picturing him going through the motions.” She cringes as tears glide down her face as if it’s now second nature to talk through her anguish. It probably is. “I was leaving for the salon when I got the call,” she says, her voice weakening as she drifts off in thought. “Maybe he was never planning on coming. Maybe he just used it as an excuse to talk to me one last time. He told me he loved me. Those were his last words to me. At least he gave me that. But nothing in his tone said goodbye. Nothing.”
She visibly swallows. “All I kept thinking on the way to the funeral home was the bigg
est problem I was supposed to have that day was picking out what shade of nail polish I would wear. I was nervous but in that good way. I know it might not seem like it, but we had a decent marriage, Mila, for the most part. It was just so hard to love fire and ice. I never knew where we stood one month to the next. But his ambition, his need to be absolutely everything got in the way of us, our happiness, our life together. He lived for everyone but himself. He lived for them, and they turned on him. They ruined him. God,” she wipes her hand down her face, “why, why did he do it now? It doesn’t make any sense. If he needed me, I would’ve come running. I was already there. I was still so in love with him. I still am.” She lets out a guttural sob and sinks where she stands as I go to her, throwing my arms around her and erasing the distance of the last few years of our friendship. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper as she collapses on me. “I’m so, so, sorry, Amanda.” I do the only thing that feels right in this fucked-up situation, I cry with her.
Numb and thoroughly exhausted from consoling Amanda, I drive home determined to keep my vows to my husband. If he’s sick in grief, then I’ll help him figure out a cure. As selfish as the thought is, I don’t ever want to end up in Amanda’s shoes. I know my husband. I don’t doubt that. But he’s just as susceptible of falling victim to his career. The thought has me speeding to our driveway, running up the pavers and through our front door.
“Lucas?” I’m brought to a halt when I hear the screech of his guitar.
Right after we were married, Lucas had played a rock star and had spent months prepping for the part, mastering the instrument. It was one of the roles he’d lost himself in, and that amazing effort got him his first real taste of stardom. His picture was everywhere. There was even some Oscar buzz though he wasn’t nominated. He regularly played, more so when he was prepping for a role. He said it put him in a sort of meditative state. He is better now than he was when he filmed the movie. If the man weren’t one of the best contributors to cinema, he would make an awesome rock star. Blake played as well, and they used to jam regularly when they worked together.
Following the sound of the strings, I find him on our balcony bathed in the half-light of the moon with his amp attached, his guitar howling out Smashing Pumpkin’s “Bullet with Butterfly Wings.” I can’t help the light laughter that bubbles out of me as he serenades the beach and the surrounding houses with no shits given. But it’s the sight of him shirtless, in well-fitting jeans and bare feet that has my tongue going dry. Head bent, his dark hair naturally falls across his forehead while he bites his lip, running in his own perfect time along with the bass and drums. It’s chaotic but sounds incredible. I stand in awe of him and just watch. As he mouths the words, I see something take shape, something that looks like anger.
It takes the better half of the song for him to see me standing there and when he does, I’m slapped breathless with the intensity of his gaze. As if on cue, I get a flash of brilliant white teeth. He’d had them capped just after we met because according to the powers that be, they were too small. They weren’t “movie star” teeth. It was the only unnatural thing about him, but you could never tell. I still hated it. I hated everything the industry tried to change about my husband. I didn’t want them having any more than the time they paid him handsomely for. I was becoming resentful of how much they took from us, and it was apparent he was beginning to feel the same way. And now with Blake’s passing, and the state of Amanda and her words, I was more fearful than ever that one day they may take too much of him.
Lucas’s smile fades marginally as he reads the sadness in my posture and observes me carefully for a few seconds before he turns his back to me, facing the ocean while never missing a note.
Tamping down my hurt to his indifference, I realize I have a decision to make. Fight or fuck. I choose neither, drawing a hot bath before going to sleep alone.
“There’s a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.”—Nicolas Cage
Mila
PRESENT
Pulling up to the inn, I move to gather my things but sit idle in my Range Rover when I hear Lucas’s name mentioned on the morning show.
Casey: Bon! What in the world is going on with Lucas Walker?
Bonnie: Oh no, do we have another Britney meltdown on our hands?
Casey: Seems like it. Apparently, Lucas Walker was nearly arrested last night for attacking paparazzi. Sources said when the pap asked Walker about his wife’s whereabouts, Lucas lost it. One of Walker’s bodyguards broke up the altercation but not before he got a few punches in. When police arrived, no arrests were made, but those close-by said Lucas was slurring and still spewing threats.
Bonnie: That pap is going to get a great settlement.
Casey: Don’t they always? But this isn’t like Lucas. I wonder what in the world has gotten into that man. And where is Mila? We haven’t seen them publicly together in months?
Bonnie: This is bad. So bad. If they split up, I’m literally going to cry.
Casey: Me too. Between the reports from the set of the film he just wrapped and this latest incident, it seems like our good boy has gone very bad.
Bonnie: He can still eat crackers in my bed.
Casey: Bon!
Bonnie: Just saying, if you need a place to stay, Lucas, I’ve got room. I’m all about the damaged goods.
Casey: You’re so bad.
Bonnie: You know it. That boy is fine.
Casey: Truth. But let’s put our hands together and say a prayer for our beloved Lucas Walker, Hollywood. It seems he could sure use them.
“What are you doing, Lucas?” I whisper before turning off the radio. He’s throwing everything away because of my silence while publicly imploding. A part of me wants to go back and try to save him from himself, but the other part of me knows he has to see this side of things in order to hit rock bottom. Funnily enough, neither one of us had any idea bottom was coming. Blake’s death had taken more of a toll than either of us could have anticipated, but Lucas was always stronger than his demons. He’s been battling them for years without giving them any power. When I met him, he was focused, alert, aware of his limitations, and working hard to break through them. He was a force of nature, purely determined to make a name for himself with his unbelievable presence. I’ll never forget the way I felt the first time he picked me up.
When I answer the door, he could knock me down with a feather. While he looked edible in the tux he’d worn the night before, the man could sport a sweater and jeans like no one’s business. The material hangs on him showcasing his incredible build, and it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve spent my entire day polishing, waxing, and buffing, but I’m still unprepared for what greets me. His Wayfarers dangle from his fingers, his palms on the frame of the door, hip cocked as if he were peering through the peephole before I answered it. His thick, black hair is loosely styled and pushed away from his forehead. The sheer size of him is intimidating. A fucking movie star and last year’s sexiest man alive is at my doorstep to take me on a date. I give myself some grace to be a little awestruck. Breath knocked out of me, I stand stupefied by him briefly before I get my shit together.
“Hi,” he says, thoughtfully surveying my dress with an appreciative gaze as his words come out in a rush. “You look beautiful…so is your mom around?”
I realize he is just as nervous as I am. “Mom?” I ask with a laugh.
He looks past my shoulder apprehensively. More laughter bubbles out of me, and I let out a snort as he cuts his eyes my way. “You came prepared to win my mother over, Lucas, so this can be a real date?”
“You are unbelievable, lady,” he mutters, taking a step back, thoroughly embarrassed.
“You thought I still lived with my mother?”
“It seems expensive to live here,” he says solemnly, which sobers me.
What an odd thing for a millionaire to say. “That’s…thoughtful.”
“Thoughtful, huh? Great, because you already have a kna
ck for making me feel like a jackass. Ready to go?”
This isn’t starting well. There’s an embarrassed edge to his voice, and guilt begins to gnaw at me. It makes sense why he would question why I’m living in a spacious cottage in the Cahuenga Pass in the hills that’s worth well over a million dollars.
“Well, you’re partially right. My parents do own the house. They bought it in the seventies and refuse to part with it. I grew up here.”
He surveys the property, my cottage nestled in the hills with a private drive and spectacular view. “It really is beautiful.”
“Thank you.” I reach behind me and grab the large picnic basket full of wines and other goodies I spent half my day preparing and thrust it toward him, hearing the bottles clank.
“Peace offering?”
He raises a brow. “We’ll see.”
He moves to reach for the basket, and I hold it with hesitance as he looks down at me quizzically. “I’ve done nothing but look forward to our date all day.”
It’s honest, and it’s all I’ve got to try to smooth down the feathers I’ve inadvertently ruffled.
His lips twitch with amusement at my ploy to make nice, and he flips open the lid of the basket and wrinkles his nose. “It’s not a date,” he deadpans. “And this looks…nice. I guess.”
I lean down toward the bottles. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll love you, I promise.” He grins, taking the basket before walking to his Land Rover and opening the door for me.
“Thank you,” I say, stepping up into the spotless SUV as he places the basket in the back behind me before shutting my door.
Nervously I watch as he crosses the hood. The blinding afternoon sun gives me only a partial view of him.