Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2)

by Esguerra, Mina V.

  “I’m not asking you to give up your work,” Jake said. “I’m not asking you to move to wherever I happen to be filming. That’s not what this is about.”

  “So, back to my original question. What is this exactly? What haven’t you told me?”

  If only Jake could say it. Not that he was holding anything back, but he didn’t know what it was. This didn’t have a name.

  “I had an accident on set last year,” he told her. It was the first time he had said it aloud to someone; he had no family really to report it to. Felt like a good time to have some wine, so he took a swig. “It was why I wasn’t able to visit you in August last year.”

  “What happened?”

  “Something to do with a harness, and I had trouble breathing...it was meant to be safe but I didn’t know that I would respond that way. I lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital, and they kept me there a couple of days. They managed to keep that quiet as much as possible, definitely Cora pulling her weight around...”

  “Dear God. You didn’t think I should know about that?”

  He shrugged. “I’m fine. I’ve been cleared, no memory loss, no damage... The point is...I was there in the hospital and I didn’t have family to call.”

  “You have family you can call.”

  “I didn’t want to. I only wanted to call you.”

  Lindsay’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t call me for a year.”

  “Because I didn’t want you to be back like that only time you came to Vancouver for me, cleaning me up like a nurse. I had so much crap to deal with. So I worked on it, dropped everything that I didn’t need. Decided what I really want. And that’s why I’m here. Does this answer your question?”

  He had practiced how he would say this, how much he would say. Maybe it worked.

  In response, she kissed him, and it was a deep kiss, her free hand going around to his back. It was arousing, also comforting.

  “I would have helped you,” she whispered against his face. “I would have dropped everything and helped you.”

  “I know that.” He did. It was the thing that gave him strength, but what he most feared he’d lose if he called upon it too often. Cora understood this, thank God, and did everything to keep Lindsay out of it. “It’s why I don’t care about your Victors or Roccos or whoever else you have in your pocket. I know what we are.”

  She wanted to go back up to his room, and he agreed. There was a slight difference to the way she touched him, looked at him, like she was softening it, meaning to be gentler. He didn’t want this, didn’t want her to see him any differently, but knew that it was inevitable. It made him glad for his decision to show up only when he was ready. Hopefully the idea of him helpless and alone would be abstract and hazy, shot in her imagination with flattering filters, and she’d never truly get to keep a vision of how low he had sunk. This pity, if she was feeling pity, was temporary. He hoped.

  Maybe he was overcompensating, but this led to him wanting to take control when they got to the bed. The admission put her in an emotional state, but maybe she’d remember instead his tongue against her clit, his fingers deep inside her, or, and this was likely, his impeccable timing, having rolled on the condom and then sinking into her right before getting her to come, knowing now that she wanted to come with him inside her, her hands full of whatever part of him she could find, and he felt it was perfect this time, felt the strength of the climax that tore through her, felt it in the arch of her back, her pleasurably painful grip on his hair and shoulder.

  “You’re crazy,” she said, trying to laugh, still out of breath some time later.

  “You love me, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, quickly. “That’s not the problem at all.”

  Chapter 17

  She thought that her five-thirty alarm was already impossibly early, but when she flicked the “dismiss” option on her phone, Jake was already awake, reading on his iPad.

  “God,” she said, voice cracking from her dry throat. “I still can’t believe how functional you are at this time.”

  “I told you, I’ve perfected the power nap,” he said. “They make me wait a lot at work. I can get a good night’s sleep two hours at a time spread out in a twenty-four hour period. I swear I’m completely rested.”

  “But jet lag.” Lindsay had been doing this world-travel thing for a few years now, and coped by sleeping in planes, buses, any vehicle that she had to park her butt in for an hour or more.

  “I can align my power naps with time zones.”

  “That can’t be healthy.”

  “It means I can take the night shift.”

  Lindsay groaned and elbowed his side. He meant the night shift, during the zombie apocalypse. “You know what happens when you’re sleep deprived, right? It catches up. You drop like a log, and you don’t even know it. You’re going to suck at night duty especially if you’re armed. Might as well just give the zombies a gun.”

  “You will be proven wrong, and you’ll beg me to teach you.”

  “You like it when I beg, don’t you.”

  His leg brushed against hers under the covers. “Why are you up so early?”

  “Need to call Marnie while she’s at work. You’re going to be all right today?”

  Jake nodded. “There are some sessions I want to attend, and then I have those meetings scheduled. I think you can leave me alone for a day, I won’t set anything on fire.”

  “I’ll find you at the cocktails tonight, okay?”

  After showering and collecting her work things, she found a spot at the hotel’s business center.

  Marnie stayed in New York even during conference season. First there was the matter of her small child, but as time went on, and more opportunities weren’t taken, Lindsay suspected that she just never wanted to travel. The woman wouldn’t admit a fear of flying, but never agreed to go on flights, or ferry rides, for that matter.

  Lindsay found her on Skype and started the call. “Hey, Marnie,” she said, when Marnie picked up. “Thanks for those slides I asked for. Lucien is going to need you to stand by there for another hour or so until he finds out if his eight a.m. is going to happen.”

  “No problem. I’ll wait.”

  “And...yeah I have another thing. I’d do it myself except it’s going to distract me from actual work...”

  “What is it?”

  “Can you find out anything you can about an accident on the Rage Eternal set last year? August?”

  “Why are you looking up stuff about Jacob behind his back?”

  Lindsay groaned. “Can you not judge me about this? He told me about the accident himself. I want more info, that’s all.”

  “Fine. You know that relationships are supposed to be founded on trust, right?”

  “Yeah well, there’s trust, and then there’s protection.” Lindsay sighed. “I think he confuses the two.”

  Lindsay could see Marnie’s eyebrow shoot up. “I think you have some learning to do too.”

  “Whatever. You’ll do this please?”

  “Yes. Check your phone later.”

  “Thank you.”

  The next person Lindsay looked for was her sister. “Cordelia?”

  “Linds?” From the background of the video that came up, it looked like Lindsay had caught her sister at the supermarket. “Aren’t you in China or somewhere?”

  “I’ll be back in New York by the weekend. Jake is here, with me, by the way.”

  “I know. Rusty told me. Things are good?”

  Rusty, her brother-in-law. Lindsay knew that he and Jake were close. She was counting on it, even. “Yeah, they’re great. Cord, do you know why Jake wasn’t with us at Christmas last year?”

  There it was—a split second of something passing through her sister’s face. Lindsay was waiting for that awareness, and it was the reason why she called video instead of by phone. The image shifted to the Whole Foods prepared meals display, but that was enough of a tell.

  “Please tell me
what you know about what happened,” Lindsay said. “He told me that he had an accident, and for some reason kept me in the dark about it. I know he talks to Rusty. I know Rusty tells you everything. Cord.”

  She heard her sister cough, and then the video moved, and it was Cordelia’s face there again. “Hey, I don’t know everything, Lindsay. All I know is that he’s okay, and he was messed up, and he didn’t want you—or Zane and Brian too—to see him like that.”

  “Was it really bad? I was worried he’d be on drugs or something.”

  “It’s not that, is what I know,” Cordelia said. “I don’t know much more, really. I didn’t pry. I found out he’s okay, but needed time, and I respected that. He seems okay now?”

  “He’s awesome.”

  “Then why are you digging this up?”

  “He wants us to be together. Seriously together.”

  “Well duh, we knew that. You’re not happy about this?”

  “I am, like a little bunny, you have no idea,” she said. “But I’m concerned about what made him do this. It’s like phone calls you make when you’re drunk at two a.m. I don’t want to be a decision he regrets when he has more time to think about this.”

  “Lindsay, he’s always loved you.”

  “I know that.”

  “And I think he’s had more time to think about this than a drunk with a cellphone.”

  “I know. I just wish...”

  “Lindsay, I don’t know what to tell you. You crazy kids should know how to talk to each other about this.”

  “Will Rusty talk to me about it?”

  “Don’t ask him to throw his bro under the bus. Jake is his only bro.”

  Lindsay shook her head. “Well. Thank you for telling me what you know.”

  Cordelia was shaking hers too. “Talk to him!”

  How could she? Do you really love me, or am I only the thing you reach out to in a crisis? Will you still want me when you’ve conquered this new world, which you will, because you’re like that? She’d figure out a way to ask that, after today.

  Chapter 18

  The point that Lindsay needed to get across in her presentation that day was “all’s well that ends well, we fixed it, let’s move on, give us more money.”

  She’d taken environmental science as her undergrad and started out being intern and assistant for air quality measurement firms. When she moved to Caine to do the same thing but for the benefit of poorer nations, it was to make a difference. Well, she still wanted to. A lot of them did. But the higher up she began to see into this, the more she realized that the real art to this was not crunching numbers pulled out of an air quality monitoring sensor, but in getting the funding to put that sensor up in the first place. They didn’t teach her that, in school. They operated under the assumption that things like this were needed, so naturally, they would be provided. The dirty work really wasn’t in taking out tools and working in grime, but in sitting in fancy conference halls, using the right words, finding the right way to ask for money.

  It was easy to keep focused on the goal at hand, though, when the goal was something as fundamental as breathing.

  Lindsay liked air.

  This project she was presenting, it went through a bump, but it made it through. The entire budget was spent, the sensors ordered, delivered, and set up, but the data that had been collected so far from this pilot urban center somewhere in Asia was at risk of being discarded, because some agency didn’t want to certify it.

  But it got fixed, in time for her to be able to say on this day that it was fine, and operational, and they learned their lessons and can do it better in three different cities, if they got the funding.

  Lindsay was told that the news was good, but they could not say right then what the answer was, and would get to her within the week. She was fine with that; it was better than nothing.

  Rocco Leone, while irritatingly gorgeous and flirtatious, was in truth not that important in her life or mind, so his sudden presence throughout her entire meeting didn’t throw her off. It was just...ugh. Him again.

  He had been brought in as someone’s guest, for “knowledge sharing” purposes, bullshit for sure because Rocco had no stake in this and already came and went through conference sessions as he pleased. This was a game for him, something he did to pass the time. He did good work, sure, but seemed not to have further aspirations. Work and play happened at the same time and place for him, all the time.

  This wouldn’t even have registered with her if not for the strange, strange way he came up to her and Jake at the Caine Foundation-sponsored cocktails, with a woman on his arm, and was very in her face about showing her this woman and that they were together.

  If it was meant to get her jealous, it didn’t work at all. Unlike Victor, who seemed to know even if she never told him, Rocco had no idea what Jake being around meant.

  “You’re better at this now,” he told her, catching up to her as she left the meeting room. Rocco was always impeccably dressed too, in a way that made people feel that he was only stopping by on his way someplace else, someplace better. She wasn’t used to Rocco lingering like this, even with her.

  “Why were you even in there?” she demanded, the fatigue from her long day starting to sink into her skin. “Unless you were planning to fund us.”

  “Oh we are, don’t worry. I meant what I said...you did well and it doesn’t cost that much really. I will recommend it to our board.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” Was she wrong about him?

  “I wanted to see you without your Hollywood boyfriend, also.”

  The way he said Hollywood, and boyfriend, with increasing disdain. Not entirely wrong about him, then.

  “Rocco,” she said.

  “Lindsay. I’m just making sure. As I recall you were also seeing someone when you and I...you and I.”

  “We weren’t.” She sighed, but kept walking. They made it down the stairs to the main conference hall, and in a few minutes she’d be back at the Caine booth. “I wasn’t. Victor wasn’t my boyfriend.”

  Rocco shrugged, dismissive. “Call it whatever you want then. I never cared.”

  “No, but you sure are being a pain about it now.”

  “You love this Hollywood boyfriend of yours, Lindsay?”

  Technically, she wanted to say, Jake spent very little time in “Hollywood” at all.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do. I really do, and if you’re thinking that I was being...civil toward you just because he was around, that’s not it at all. I don’t...you’re not going to...you and I will not happen.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “And you have a girlfriend.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “You introduced her last night. What’s her name.”

  “Zoe. I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce her properly then. I know Zoe from work, she also works with energy funds, at our counterpart agency in New York. I thought you’d be familiar with her because she and Victor.”

  “What?”

  “She and Victor. Attached. Involved. Whatever you call it. You did not know this?”

  Lindsay knew but didn’t. Victor never mentioned her name, nor did he want any connection between them to be made. Of course she’d be in the same general circle though. Their offices may be small but they were all interconnected, meeting in conferences, briefings, social gatherings like this one. Victor could have been in Hong Kong too, for all she knew.

  She was beginning to feel cold, the kind that came with dread, down to her fingers. “Do you want anything from me, Rocco? Seriously?”

  “Don’t misunderstand,” he said, smooth and warm all of a sudden, to counter how she suddenly froze. “I’m not trying to make you feel...threatened. Is that how you feel? No it’s not that. You have nothing to hide from your Jacob, it seems.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Rocking the boat, that’s all,” he said. “If your ship is strong, it will hold. If it’s not, then you know I’m here.” />
  “Like a shark,” she said warily.

  Rocco laughed. “That’s nice. I’ll remember that.”

  ***

  “How was your day, honey?”

  Jake meant that as a joke, she was sure, but it was like she was given permission to collapse, and she did. She fell into that hug and hung to him like he was a life preserver; the most handsome, best-smelling life preserver in the world. Her fingernails scraped against his shoulders, loving the material of his jacket, relishing the warmth of his neck. His breath smelled slightly of beer; he’d gotten a head start at the cocktail hour.

  She hadn’t seen him all day. Their meetings overlapped, and he had an entire stretch of afternoon free. She suggested he go around the city, since it was his first time in Hong Kong, and he should just get Krup to help him get to the cocktails, at a tiny, tiny bar called Blue Fire.

  As far as her work conferences went, this was the largest, and it happened every year. It was, as she told Jake, like camp for many of them. They saw old friends and enemies, made new ones of each, and at the end of each day retreated into socializing events like this one, on company money. She needed to do some work before she took the train one stop over and walked three blocks down to the bar. Seeing Jake there, after what seemed like forever, was such a relief.

  Rocco, thankfully, took the hint and stayed out of her way the rest of the day. She didn’t see him that afternoon, and even though she felt he was around there somewhere, he wasn’t hovering too closely.

  “Oh. Hey.” Jake’s arm circled around her, before she toppled them both. “Tough meeting?”

  “It went fine. I missed you.”

  It was the right thing to say. It made her feel better. It felt honest. And she had the pleasure of seeing his eyes light up, and the kiss he dropped on her mouth was so happy, if that was possible.

  “There are no seats,” he said. As it was, he was hitting someone every time he moved an elbow. “Can you manage to stay up while I get you something? What do you want?”