by Max Monroe
The bloody noses. The pranks. The endless nights with a broody, distressed brother making family dinners a living hell.
Harrison Hughes was a thorn in the Weaver family’s side more times than I can count.
Until…he wasn’t.
The day he moved away, my brother burned all the things he’d stolen from him in effigy—except Harrison’s Dallas Cowboys hat.
I pilfered it for my, um…cough…collectibles. Even at five, I wasn’t immune to the fact that my brother’s archnemesis was crush-worthy. I suppose, back then, I had some kind of organic sense of what a hot, older guy was. At least, I thought I did. My sense of it now, sitting across from the version of him that’s all grown-up, would argue otherwise.
My throat thickens, and the air around us warms.
My God, he is a good-looking man. Strong jaw, sharp, green eyes, and an award-winning smile, he too could be on the cover of magazines. Not to mention the way his rain-soaked clothes hug the taut lines of his powerful looking body.
I’m completely surprised when the bartender approaches, and he orders an iced tea. He must notice my interest because he turns to me with a small smile and a shrug.
“I’m not drinking today.”
I pick up my water and take a swig before replying, “Me either.”
He looks to my vodka and cranberry on the bar, and I shrug. “I thought I might, but I decided not to.”
His face is kind as the corner of his lip curls up, and he shakes his head.
“Jesus. What a great surprise. A really, really nice one to get today.” I blush a little as he leans into the bar counter with an elbow and turns his attention to me so that his body is squarely head on. “So, what have you been up to since then?” he asks casually, tucking his foot onto the rung of the barstool behind him.
I choke on my water as a laugh fights for real estate in my throat. “Are you asking me what’s happened in the last twenty-five years?” I question, and he nods enthusiastically with a grin.
“Pretty much.”
I smile sardonically. “A thing or two.”
The truth is, the last twenty-five years have been filled to the brim. Shortly after he left town, my parents enrolled my brother Luca and me in an acting class, and at the teacher’s praise, proceeded to run us through every audition in Hollywood.
The Weaver Siblings, they called us. As a brother and sister set, we did just about as much business as we could handle by the time I made it to my eleventh birthday. My parents pulled us out of school and enrolled us in an independent education course—better known as homeschooling—to accommodate the hours. It only took my brother about a year to get his GED, and my focus quickly became very inadequately pointed at school.
We worked hard and long, usually without any say in our own decisions, so by the time my brother’s eighteenth birthday rolled around, he was a master of self-destruction. Drinking, drugs, partying—you name it, he was into it.
After a few years of driving his own life into the ground, he left. Hollywood, fame, money—and me, unfortunately—Luca Weaver gave it all up. Some days, I really miss having someone to commiserate with.
And yet, giving up has never seemed like an option for me. I’ve invested too much time and work. And truthfully, I almost don’t even know who I am outside of the fame anymore. I haven’t even spoken to someone who didn’t recognize me as Raquel Weaver, the Virgin Sexpot from the Silver Screen, in more than a decade.
That’s probably why I’d forgotten how nice it is…
“A thing or two?” he questions.
“You know, a little of this, a little of that,” I add, and he just grins.
“I’m going to assume that’s a summarized version,” he says teasingly, and it’s all I can do to nod. “So, are you living here now or…?”
“Still in California.”
“What brought you to New York?”
What brought me to New York? Does he really not know who the persona Raquel Weaver is? No way I could be that fucking lucky…right?
“Uh…just a little vacation.” I pull a bullshit reason out of the air. “Visiting some friends.”
“That sounds nice. I’m sure this city has kept you busy.”
Well, it allowed me to talk about my virginity with a douchebag TV host, so yeah, I guess it’s kept me busy…
“It is the city that never sleeps,” I respond, and he just takes my answer like I’m not completely avoiding his question.
This is nuts. Does he really not know?
I search his eyes for most likely a beat too long, and when a neutral smile crests his lips, I feel like I’ve just won the lottery.
This guy really only knows me from our childhood.
That’s it. Nothing else. Holy hell.
But now that I’m pretty damn certain that he doesn’t know anything about me—the celebrity, the notoriety, the money—I’m suddenly overtly and embarrassingly nervous.
Clammy hands. Sweaty skin above my lip. An inability to swallow.
I move my hands to my lap and clench them twice to try to get control of myself. It’s an old trick I developed years ago during uncomfortable interviews—and trust me, I’ve done plenty of them.
Interviewers usually get some kind of sick thrill out of asking women the most ridiculous questions on the planet, base case. Throw in my reputation—as a sexed-up, mythical, aging virgin—and they get downright bold. No one has ever outright asked me, point-blank, about my virginity and my plans to lose it like Niall did tonight, but I can’t say they haven’t come close.
Getting asked about my weight and undergarment preferences in front of my mom, dad, and a million other people has become the cost basis by which I measure how much I’m being demeaned. Anything less than that anymore and I don’t even muster up the bat of an eye.
Tonight, though, really made me feel like nothing more than an object intended for providing entertainment, my emotional well-being and privacy be damned.
“How…” I swallow around the flex of a conversational muscle that’s practically deteriorated. “How have you been?”
“Good. Really good, actually. I still live here, in New York…” He pauses and chuckles a little, swirling his glass the bartender left in a small circle on the bar in front of us. “This is where we moved when I left California. I work for a great company, have a great group of friends, and am really happy with my life.”
“Wow. How about the perfect wife and two point five kids?” I ask sarcastically. It’s a little rude, I know, but after the shitshow of a day I’ve had, I’m feeling a little jealous of his normalcy.
Thankfully, he laughs despite my audacity.
“No wife or kids.” I redden a little as he leans in slightly closer. “No girlfriend, date for hire, complicated sexual friendship, or clingy one-time hookups either.”
It seems as though he’s mistaken my insult for a fishing expedition. I smile candidly. “Good for you.”
He barks another laugh, and I can’t help but laser in on the twinkle in his eyes. It’s almost like green glitter. “Man, it’s good to see you. And I see you still have the same attitude as the last time I saw you.”
I pull my wet hair into a gather at the back of my neck to get it to stop sticking and then let it fall again. “I’m not sure it’s a compliment that I evidently still act like a five-year-old.”
“No, no, trust me, it is. You were always the best kind of ballbuster. Kind but firm.” He pushes a hand out in front of him in emphasis. “The rest of you seems to have grown up completely, though.”
“That I know,” I say with an involuntary roll of my eyes.
It’s not until his eyebrows pinch together that I realize how freaking awful and self-centered I must sound. It’s just that in this business, with the way things are, I, as an oversexualized female public figure, hear about my appearance at least fifty times a day—minimum. An appearance that’s crafted by upwards of ten professionals sometimes and often looks very little like the real me.
So, it never even occurred to me that I took off all my makeup before I escaped from my dressing room on set, am wearing sweats, and that he might be paying me a genuine compliment.
I sit back in my seat and wince as I really start to feel awful.
“Wow, sorry. I realize now that must have sounded…” I wave a hand. “It’s complicated. But if you meant that as a compliment, I appreciate it.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it as an insult,” he says with a teasing smile, a subtle dimple settling into the apple of his scruff-roughened cheek.
Good God, the dimple. I’d completely forgotten about the damn dimple. My brother fucking hated that thing because all the ten-year-old little girls used to swoon for it.
Those little ponytail-wearers would shit themselves if they saw it now. Not to mention, the sexy, scruffy facial hair one hundred percent enhances it.
“Thanks, then.”
His responding smirk is playful. “You’re weird, but you’re welcome.”
“I’m weird?” I ask, my jaw dropping, but my lips quirking up in amusement at the same time.
“Don’t worry. That’s a compliment too.” He flashes a flirty wink, and my heart kicks up in rhythm inside my chest. “In fact, you should probably just prepare yourself. I’m likely going to be complimenting you all night.”
“All night?” I feign a teasing scoff. “That’s a little ambitious, don’t you think?”
He laughs, and the air in my chest arrests. “Oh wow. You have a dirty mind, too?” He looks to the ceiling dramatically. “How good can this get?”
I roll my eyes. “It just seems presumptuous of you to assume you’re going to see me for anything longer than the next couple of minutes.”
He shakes his head pointedly. “It’s not presumption, Rock. It’s hope.”
Goddamn. This man. I think I’m in trouble. Yes, please.
Harrison
Usually, sexy and nauseous are not synonymous, but the same can probably be said about a one-night stand with a secret virgin and an unexpected pregnancy.
God, the swell of her stomach is sexy.
It’s an odd thought, finding a curved, pregnant belly so erotic; one made stranger by the timing of its delivery to my awareness—smack-dab in the middle of several threats of vomit.
“I guess my face should be expecting a visit from your brother’s fist sometime soon?” I ask Rocky in an attempt to take her mind off the nausea.
“What?” she asks, her head still bowed toward her master bathroom sink.
“For my crimes. I can’t imagine Luca Weaver has taken kindly to his mortal enemy getting his baby sister pregnant.”
Rocky rolls her eyes briefly, and I see it in the vanity mirror. It’s a gesture I’m not expecting, and I have to admit, I don’t understand.
“He’d have to know I’m pregnant in order to be angry about it.”
My eyes narrow. “He doesn’t know you’re pregnant?”
“He doesn’t know anything about me.” My chin jerks into my chest, and she turns from the sink to face me. We’ve been in here since we got back to her apartment, an overwhelming bout of morning sickness making it impossible for Rocky to feel comfortable talking anywhere else. Her last sentence and the absolute lack of sense it makes have me thinking the smell of the bleach in the toilet cleaner that was clearly recently used to sanitize the area is starting to get to one or both of us.
“You guys aren’t close anymore?” I ask, trying to make sense of it all. They were as close as two siblings could be before I left California all those years ago. I distinctly remember because I used to tease Luca relentlessly about being so involved with his much younger sister.
I can’t say I understand what I was making fun of back then, but as a nine-year-old little shit-stirrer, especially when it came to Luca Weaver, I would have picked on anything.
“You really are numb to the goings-on of Hollywood, huh?”
I shrug. I have no good defense other than apathy. I never had much interest in keeping up with the lives of celebrities—certainly a side effect of being Hall Hughes’s son—and I never invested any time in it. Ironically, that’s all been flipped on its head, and as a result, I now have to deal with the consequences of knowing absolutely nothing.
Ignorance, in this case, is not bliss. It’s just a position behind the curve and leaves a hell of a lot of catching up to do.
“Luca left the summer after he turned twenty-six. Moved…somewhere.” She shrugs. “I don’t know where. He couldn’t take this life anymore—the pressure and expectation of it all combined with having no choice to change it while he was here. My parents worked too hard to get us into the limelight to let him control the direction and wattage of the beam.” Rocky frowns as she recalls the sour memories. “Eventually, he just broke. Left all of it—and me—behind. I haven’t spoken to him since. I don’t even think he’s got a phone wherever he is. Or if he does, I sure as hell don’t have the number.”
“God, Rock. That’s…terrible. I’m really sorry. I had no idea—”
Abruptly, Rocky throws up one hand in my face and puts another to her mouth as her cheeks inflate. I don’t even have time to question it before she shoves me out of the way and dives to her knees on the floor in front of the toilet.
With a bowed back, she empties the contents of her stomach into the bowl of the toilet and grabs at the edge of the porcelain to steady herself against the heaves.
Surprisingly unaffected by the wholly icky factor of being privy to someone else’s bodily fluids, I rush to the cabinet by the sink, search the shelves for a washcloth, and wet it under the faucet.
I sink down behind her as gently as possible and try to make myself as unobtrusive but comforting as I can.
Unfortunately, my quiet for her benefit makes it all too easy to hear everyone else right outside.
“What about a fall from grace?” a prepubescent-looking PR lackey suggests outside the bathroom as I rub Rocky’s back and drop the cold washcloth on the back of her neck. I can just see him through the crack in the door at his perch on the arm on the couch. “Britney-style breakdown. We all know that brings big numbers.”
“Big numbers, sure,” another voice says. “Breakdowns bring publicity, but not work and paychecks. We need to try to keep this as positive as possible.”
“Should she take an oath of revirginization?” someone else asks, and a surge of anger tightens my chest. They’re talking about Rocky like she’s not even a person. I’m sure she’s used to it, but I don’t think I’ll ever see it as anything other than it is—fucking ludicrous.
“Gonna be kinda hard to spin the virgin tale as she gives birth, Wilson.”
“Right.” They all laugh a little, and I stand up with the help of the tub, my body volunteering to get in there and talk some sense into these motherfuckers. It’s been years since I’ve felt this kind of upset—the physical, nerve-scraping, blood-pumping, chest-tightening kind. As I’ve aged, I’ve matured by developing a much more practical sense of emotion.
But right now—standing behind the woman carrying my baby as she vomits everything she’s eaten into the toilet while other people talk about her life so callously—it’s like I’m nine years old all over again. Back then, though, the face I would have been ready to put a fist in would have been her brother Luca’s.
“So, what’s the best angle?” he asks. “We’ve already seen some of the fanbase shifting. They really don’t like the idea of sex out of wedlock, let alone a baby.”
“So why don’t we give them a wedding?” the lackey suggests again. “Find a good pairing for a fiancé and father figure, and when the smoke clears in a few years, we can get the divorce support. Single mother left behind. It works on both ends.”
“It could work,” her manager, Heidi, muses, her irritating, unforgettable voice coming from somewhere out of sight. “But we’ll have to find a good match. Somebody on the upsweep. Choir boy image.”
The lackey snaps. “Ben Huddleson.”
> He smiles as he looks around the room and stands to pace along with his thinking. “They’ve been rumored to date before, he just put out American Gold to amazing reviews, he’s clean-cut, he’s career-building, and he hasn’t dated lately. He’s a perfect fit.”
“Get on the phone with his people. See if you can take the temperature on a scenario like this without making an actual pitch.” Heidi, Rocky’s callous manager, laughs. “Bonus points if you can somehow make them think it’s their idea.”
My feet move without thought, taking me slowly from the bathroom out into the living room where the crowd is gathered. They’ve all got their heads down, typing frantically on their phones and scribbling notes on tablets until Heidi catches my motion out of the corner of her eye and snaps her gaze up to meet mine.
“Is she about ready?” she asks without preamble. “We have to be out of here in ten minutes if we’re going to make her meeting.”
No inquiry into her health or happiness—not one inkling about how she’s handling all this or if she can keep a drink of water down.
“The meeting is going to have to wait,” I say. “She’s still not feeling well.”
Heidi’s face pinches with noticeable annoyance. “Going to have to wait? No, no. The producers of Homebound wait for no one. People wait for them. We’ve been trying for three months for this opportunity. There is no waiting.”
I’m about to tell her the producers can go fuck themselves when Rocky skirts around me and speaks. “It’s okay, I’m fine. I’m ready.”
Heidi’s eyebrows become one even as she nods. She snaps her fingers over her shoulder, and a couple people rush us. “Let’s do a little hair fluff, honey,” the woman says while the man reaches for some brushes that are in a holster at his side.
“Just a little touch-up, pumpkin,” he says, whipping out a case of something from the other side, dipping a brush in it, and swiping it across Rocky’s face without pause.
I watch intently as the woman I know disappears and someone else emerges. Heavy red lips, carved cheekbones, and startlingly perfect eyebrows, this is the Raquel Weaver the rest of the world knows—even expects, I guess.