Lazarus had parked ages ago, leaving me free to enter the back lot any I time I wanted, but I hadn’t moved. I stared at my phone resting in the palm of my hand. I wanted to tell someone. I’d just met Joseph Hoffman! He wanted to make a movie with me!
Joseph had made it clear the secret wasn’t safe with anyone in the industry. He’d said it with such pointed eye contact, I had little doubt that ‘anyone‘ firmly included my family. I would’ve liked to tell them, eager for their unpredictable reactions, but they weren’t the ones I wanted to share my news with the most.
Ironically, it was the one person I wanted to tell, that I could. Adley was so blissfully unaware of anything to do with our world, that I’d once seen her give Steven Spielberg an ugly look when he accidentally cut in front of her in the crafts’ line. She was the one person free of Joseph’s restraints, and yet, she was the one person I didn’t know how to tell.
Things had been weird ever since Cam returned. I’d sought her out a few times, but there was always an excuse as to why we couldn’t spend time together. She never told me to get lost either though, so I counted that as a good sign.
I missed her.
I hated that I did – that I’d grown disgustingly reliant on her, but there was no use denying it.
The days that had stretched on endlessly at the beginning of the summer had dwindled down, until just a few days of filming remained. The future hadn’t ever been something we discussed. It had seemed so distant, so insubstantial. I knew that her flight home wasn’t scheduled until the beginning of September, and we’d talked about my lack of a follow-up project a few times.
It seemed like, for the first time in my life, the time before me was an open canvas. My future was my own. In the back of my mind, maybe some part of me had hoped that the more blank I made my life, the more Adley would try to fill it.
And just like that, my spirits sank, pulling me slack and boneless, until I slumped in the seat.
It was pathetic. I was pathetic.
She’d turned me into a love-sick puppy. I’d been an uncertain mess from the moment Cam had waltzed back into the picture. All it had taken was one look at her face for me to realize that he’d never been gone, not really. Cam owned a piece of her. How could I compete with that?
They’d made me into a hypocrite. My eyes followed them any chance I got, sharper than any paparazzi’s camera lens. It didn’t matter how much I watched them, though. I had no way to decipher their sly looks or tentative touches. Jealousy tinted everything I saw into something meaningful.
I was beyond pathetic, and I was done with thinking about it. All the excitement, jealousy, and uncertainty, was left in the limo.
I had work to do.
Walking past the security guard, he barely took note of my nod, distracted by the sandy-haired bloke arguing with him.
“Look, right here, this is my official California driver’s license. See, Thomas Adair. I’m not some reporter. I just want to see my sister.”
I couldn’t escape her! I did everything I could to block them out besides clapping my hands over my ears and humming, but the slender man’s words slipped through. His claim of being Thomas and not Cade Adair, who was Adley’s ink and paper brother, gave validity to his statement.
Against my better judgment, my feet slowed down.
I didn’t know a lot about her family. Obviously, sharing wasn’t her favorite activity. What I did know was that she’d left them when she found out she was pregnant. I couldn’t imagine she’d bail on them without probable cause. There had to be a reason.
They’d never sought her out before, to my knowledge. Why had Thomas suddenly reappeared after so much time?
I didn’t stop to intervene. I was curious, but I wasn’t stupid. Asking Adley how her day was could be a dangerous move, I wasn’t about to go sticking my nose in her family issues. Nuh uh. No, thank you. Not gonna happen.
“Please, if you don’t believe me just go and tell her I’m here. She’ll tell you who I am,” he pleaded in a raspy, beaten down voice. There was something familiar in his voice; something that I could have only ever learned from hearing Adley speak; something that tugged at the weakest part of me.
Damn it, Thomas. I really hope you don’t get me castrated.
***
I found Adley tucked behind Alfred, taking advantage of his cloaking shadow, while Madeline signed autographs and posed for photos with a passing tour group. Her arms were crossed and chin tucked downwards in her best attempt to go unnoticed. I might’ve teased her, accusing her of having a phobia of fanny packs, but unlike most people, she had a real reason to fear a crowd.
I had seen her upset and I had seen her angry – furious even – but nothing had frightened me like the look on her face after the paparazzi had nearly pulled her apart. With skinned knees and bleeding, raw hands, the navy in her eyes had sparked with something wild and skittish. It reminded me of my mother’s horses; they got that same look just before they panicked and did something stupid, like bolt.
Her fear fed rage into my bloodstream. I’d wanted to bash their heads in with their own bloody cameras. I wanted to taunt and torture them until they felt helpless and terrified just like she had. Alfred had been the one to stop me, and his daily presence with her, ready to act as unofficial protector if needed, was a huge comfort.
She would’ve never let me protect her. Even showing concern was out of the question. My ridiculous little sheila.
Forgetting Madeline and Adley weren’t the only commodities on set, I barged into the fray. Squeals and exclamations exploded like I’d choreographed the entrance, and instinctively, I looked towards Adley, hoping to catch her having the same thought. I missed the annoyed little crease that sprouted between her brows when I did something she found particularly insufferable.
She wasn’t even looking at me though. Alfred had moved closer to Madeline, protectively, after my disturbance, and Adley shuffled after him like a child hiding behind her father’s legs. The vulnerability of it drew a scowl across my face as I finally got her attention and pulled her away before she could protest.
“What are you doing, you brute?” She jerked her arm, trying to free it, but her feet never fought my lead. It was a promising start.
I didn’t answer, not yet. I had to be careful – delicate – as to how the situation played out. First, we needed to lose the audience, and after that…well, I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I went to the most abandoned place I could think of. I liked to think of the area as a neighborhood, but really it was just a quiet row where the top billed cast could retreat to their trailers.
Adley made a small noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, and I wheeled around confused and – frankly – a bit scared. Her knowing grin made me even more nervous.
“A few days without getting laid and you’re reduced to a caveman, Mr. Davies,” she said with a sassy quirk, lifting the right side of her mouth and a hand on her hip.
I couldn’t remember a thing about Thomas as she strutted closer to me with a saucy little sway of her hips. I groaned at the sight. Did she have any idea the power she held over me? Could I even truly fathom it, or would it only sink in after she’d left me at the bottom of a pit made of my own despair?
Her hands and eyes caressed my chest and upper arms like I was a piece of meat as she backed us up against the aluminum siding of one of the other actor’s trailers. I’d never felt more objectified, and that was saying something, coming from me. All I wanted was for her to look me in the eyes – to want me – instead of the escape my body offered her. It felt wrong – dirty almost – and yet, when she leaned into me, I was helpless.
I wanted her…All of her, but I’d take any piece of her I could get.
I yanked her tight against me and found her silky lips with my own, lifting her with the leverage of my arms around her petite waist. She was the smallest force of nature I’d ever encountered.
“Wait.” I pulled back with a savage breath, trying to shake of
f my sudden intoxication. I was drunk off her. There was something I was missing though, something important. As soon as the memory fluttered through my mind, I blurted it out, scared to lose it again, “Your brother, Thomas, he’s here.”
Really smooth. I cringed as my whole ‘careful’ and ‘delicate’ plan bombed epically.
She stiffened and broke all physical contact between us.
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a guy here to see you claiming to be Thomas Adair…Tallish, thin guy with hair a shade or two lighter than yours,” I explained gently, trying not to spook her. She’d recaptured the untamed horse look.
“What does he want?”
“I can’t imagine what he’d want, other than to see you.”
She seemed lost, utterly confused, and then her stance shifted and, like rising steam, her posture soon followed. In her mouth first, and then slowly leaking up to her eyes.
I knew what it meant. I read it as clearly off her as if she’d she said it aloud. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear though.
“I’ll go with you,” I offered in denial of the resolution I saw so clearly.
“No,” was all she said.
“Look, I’m not going to pretend to know or understand your relationship with your family, but if he’s trying to see you, then that’s a good thing, right? It can’t hurt to see what he wants…He’s your family.”
Her eyes were already long gone from me. “No.”
All I could do was watch her walk away.
It felt like so much more than that one moment though. Every joint and muscle screamed at me to do something – anything – to keep her with me. I didn’t move though, frozen and torn between what she wanted and what I thought she needed.
I was sure I could find a way to make her stop. Up until that point, I had always found a way. But something occurred to me, as I stood there for the first time.
Just because I’d found a way to make her come back time after time, didn’t mean I’d ever be enough to make her quit walking away in the first place.
As her back disappeared out of sight, it felt so much more like a premonition of what was to come than reality.
Chapter Seventeen
Adley
I had no idea how I was going to survive the next two weeks. My plane ticket didn’t offer an escape for nearly sixteen days after the final day of production. It served me right for letting Cam make my travel arrangements at the beginning of the summer. Every second of every day was a struggle against my deeply embedded urge to flee – to run as fast and as far as I possibly could – to forget the dent another plane ticket would put in my soon-to-be-acquired funds.
Cam’s house had turned quiet upon his return; even quieter than it had been when it had only been me haunting the halls. We lived in the most boring silent film ever made, going through our daily lives in perfectly polite contempt, never daring to reenter the crescendo of our last confrontation. I could do nothing as my past, present, and future closed in on me from all sides.
Thomas had appeared as if he’d been called forth by the universe to make sure no amount of pain was spared, no throb of heartache left unaccounted. Why had he come? He was supposed to stay locked behind the door. Didn’t he know I’d long since forfeit the rights to that part of my life? I’d given up – thrown in the towel – when it came to my family, and I knew better than anybody, there were no such things as second chances, not real ones at least.
My past was easier to avoid than the present. I’d never gone to identify the man Declan told me about. I already knew it was really him. I could feel it inside of me, and it happened to be just the sort of thing my brother would do. If he’d come to see me once, I doubted it was the last time, but that just meant I had to be more alert than ever.
My present was more complicated. I’d worked out a system on set that seemed to suit my intentions well enough. Along with avoiding any areas of the back lot where the public was permitted, I kept up a strict timetable. And I’d also learned that I could use their own weaknesses against them when it came to keeping Cam and Declan at bay. The brief awkwardness of hanging by Cam’s side was worth the distance Declan gave us when we were together.
If I wasn’t brooding silently in Cam’s shadow, then I was with Madeline, and almost everyone avoided her.
If there was one weak spot in my system, it was the three minute power walk to Madeline’s trailer every morning, but it went unnoticed – well, until Declan stepped out in front of me on the last day of filming.
“Not now, Declan.” I tried to brush by him, ignoring the hammering of my heart, a common side effect of being too close to him.
He blocked my path. “If not now, then when exactly? Today’s kind of the end, so were you thinking – I don’t know – never? I’m sorry, mate, that doesn’t really work for me.”
That had been exactly what I’d been thinking. The idea of just dropping out of his life without a word was both tempting and revolting at the same time. My insides were being torn apart as want and need battled for control.
Smoothing away signs of inner turmoil, I looked at him with feigned detachment.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Joseph Hoffman offered me Gone with the Wind,” he said, fireworks exploded the gray in his eyes with excitement. “I had lunch with him, and it was amazing. He’s unlike anything I ever imagined.”
“That’s excellent… Just really, really – what’s that word you use? Oh yeah – ace! That’s just really, really ace!” My outpour of words were dead, unenthusiastic, causing me to plunge deeper into ramblings, hoping quantity would substitute for quality. I wanted to be happy for him, I did. I knew how much it meant to him. It was written all over his face. My selfishness infected my goodwill, almost leaving it unrecognizable.
His eyes slipped backwards, rolling unimpressed with my display. “Oh, shut up.”
One moment I was standing there, preparing to summon up some semblance of a real response, and the next thing I knew I was being swept backwards like a limp ragdoll. Declan’s arms wrapped securely around me, and my body arched against him in comfortable recline.
God, he smelled amazing. Clark Gable couldn’t have possibly smelled better than he did.
“I’m not telling you so you’ll give me a pat on the back. No congratulations necessary. I’m not taking it.”
“What?” My jaw dropped, astounded. “Why?”
He planted his lips against mine in reminiscence of an old Hollywood kiss, better suited for black and white than the stunning color that exploded behind my eyelids. The feel of the kiss, his sweet rolling tongue and insistent mouth, made me lightheaded, but even the sensations he unloaded on me were nothing in comparison to the words that he told me silently.
When it came to me, Declan had always had the ability say more when he didn’t say anything at all, and that kiss spoke volumes. It wrote novels and twisted thoughts into reality.
He wasn’t going to take the role because of me. He felt the same way I felt about him. He cared for me as much as I’d hoped he hadn’t. I couldn’t call it love – couldn’t even think it – but my heart sang a different story.
It was painful to wrench away from him, as if some invisible – but nonetheless important – part of me stayed with him, lost to me forever. I gazed up into gray depths, trying to summon up enough strength to do what I knew was right.
“You should do the movie.”
The lines of his face sharpened with suspicious distrust, and I knew I had to strike again to keep him from figuring me out.
“You can’t be with someone like me, and I can’t be with someone like you. I’m not cut out for this life. And I don’t want it.”
“What do you mean someone like you?” He completely bypassed my curveball about his celebrity that I’d thrown to distract him.
“A girl who got pregnant at seventeen; someone who couldn’t even take care of their own flesh and blood...Everyone in the world knows
my past, and if I was with you, then they’d never forget it...I could never forget it. I don’t want that.”
“It’s bullshit. This is all complete bullshit. When will it be enough, Adley? You can’t punish yourself forever…You’re being a bloody coward, and we both know it.”
I was being a coward, but it didn’t make my decision any less valid. Even I knew Gone with the Wind was the role of a lifetime. It would make his career. He might think the feelings he had for me meant something, but in the long run, he’d see that forgetting each other was for the best. I wouldn’t – couldn’t – let him ruin his life over me.
My chin dug into a stubborn jut. “It isn’t the right thing for us to be together.”
A shiver of tension rolled down his spine, spreading stiffness through his stance and exuding resolve through his steely glare.
“You can’t force people to agree with your decisions. That might be how things worked with you in the past, but that sure as hell isn’t going to be the way things go down with me. You don’t always know what’s right.”
“No, Declan,” I retaliated, spitting the sharp words. He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He certainly didn’t know the sensitive buttons he was about to trample all over. “I made the decisions that no one else wanted to make. I submit to being the bad guy, so you don’t have to. I’m strong so everyone gets what’s best for them, and no one else is stuck shouldering the guilt.”
His expression slackened, disbelief coloring every handsome facet. “You honestly believe that things worked out so great the last time you got to make all the decisions? You think the life you and Cam have now is really for thebest?”
My eyes narrowed, and my body went rigid. He was treading on very dangerous ground.
“If I hadn’t been the strong one last time, and kept Cam from seeing our daughter, then his dreams would have never come true. And you’d be out of job.”
He paused for a long time. A look of incredulity painted thickly over him, to the point where it almost bordered on amused.
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