by Olivia Dade
It really doesn’t. Right now, what I want, what I need, what I think, my goals, and even my name are so much less important than you, Ewan. Your story. Your life. Your redemption.
Near tears, he tries to smile and presses a quick kiss on her mouth.
EWAN
I’ve never felt so understood before now. If someone like you had been in my life earlier, I think—
PIXIE
What?
EWAN
Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up in that unicycling gang to begin with. And now, I’m starting to think maybe—maybe—
(he takes a shuddering breath)
I could switch from one wheel . . . to two.
Pixie beams at him. This is the happiest moment of her life.
15
THE FOGGINESS OF THE MORNING HAD BURNED AWAY BENEATH the sun, and Marcus glowed golden in its rays. In that light, given the right cinematography, he could have been the demigod he’d played so ably for years. He could have been a figure of myth, or the stalwart, knightly hero of young April’s fevered imagination and current April’s most fevered fics.
But no camera was filming him, and this wasn’t a story, and he was no invincible half god. Not if she looked more closely.
His mouth had pressed into a tight grimace, and he directed that famous blue-eyed gaze anywhere but at her. At the sidewalk beneath their feet, at the businesses they’d already passed, at the sparkling water they’d begun to approach. If he suddenly sprinted from her and dove into the Bay to escape this conversation—perhaps sprouting a tail like the one he’d sported in Manmaid, his tragic film about a half-human sea creature cursed to love a woman allergic to kelp—she wouldn’t be shocked.
He didn’t run, though. Instead, he just looked . . . lost.
Then that knife-edged jaw firmed, and his eyes speared her. She stilled her caffeine-induced fidgeting, even as her pulse still pounded in her ears and his heartbeat thudded under her palm.
“When I was fifteen, I gave up.” That rich, low voice was flat. Devoid of all the emotion he’d poured into the words of countless screenwriters. For these, his own words, he allowed no jagged edges, no half-crumbled handholds for her to grasp and pull herself closer to him. “I was going to disappoint everyone. Disgust them. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, or how often I apologized.”
Careful. Careful. No inflection or sympathy or anything he could misinterpret. “Everyone?”
“I told you my mom homeschooled me. Until I finished my schoolwork, I didn’t go outside, and my parents weren’t big fans of organized sports. I didn’t see other kids a lot. When I did, I didn’t know what to say.” One shoulder twitched upward, a casual movement turned convulsive. “My parents were my world. They were everyone.”
“You gave up.” She repeated his own words, breath held against the possibilities contained in that phrase.
“I’d always been a good mimic. I’d practice to myself in my room. I had my parents down cold by then. That pompous guy from all the historical documentaries my parents loved too. The actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, whenever their performances came on public television and my parents made me watch.” His smile was thin and brittle. “Without even having to think about it much, I knew him. What he’d say. How he’d say it. His posture. What gestures he’d make.”
Her frown of confusion must have caught his attention.
“My first and longest-running role. The Worst Possible Son. Vain and lazy and stupid and careless and everything else they hate.” With a casual sweep of his hand, he flicked back a lock of sun-streaked hair. A demonstration. A reminder. “It was easy. So much easier than before.”
She closed her eyes.
Behind her lids, he shrank into a lanky, lonely boy. Angry. Hurt.
Not hard, not the diamond she’d once named him. Already golden, she guessed, even as a teenager. Like gold, so soft he could be gouged and warp under too much pressure—unless he shielded himself somehow. Unless he wedged something flinty and immovable between himself and the relentless, grinding weight of his parents’ displeasure.
The Worst Possible Son, he’d said. Vain and lazy and stupid and careless.
If they despised him then, they didn’t despise the real him. They couldn’t hurt the real him. They couldn’t even see the real him, if they ever had at all.
It was defiance, a middle finger held up to the heavens. It was armor. It was . . .
Jesus, it was enough to make her throat burn, her hand on his chest curl into a fist.
Once all threat of tears had disappeared, if not her lingering helpless rage, she opened her eyes again. Met his.
She got it. She really did. The origins of his act, the catalyst for his longest-running role. But he was a man grown now, so why? Why was he still playacting?
He was watching her carefully, his tone so remote it frightened her. “I didn’t intend to keep up the act once I left for college, or after I dropped out and moved to LA. I had no idea what to say or do unless I was in character, but I tried. And eventually, I got a bit more practice talking to everyone, especially once Alex moved in with me. He helped me feel more comfortable around other people.”
Shy. Dammit, he was shy.
How had she not realized that before?
Also, note to self: Don’t tell Marcus you originally wanted to have dinner with his best friend instead of him.
“Before Gates, I didn’t have to deal with many interviews. Then I got the role of Aeneas, and . . .” His throat worked. “Suddenly, there were so many questions, and so much more of an audience for whatever I said, and I wasn’t prepared. Alex and I had run through likely questions, but we never thought anyone would hand me a fucking book and ask me to read a page about Aeneas aloud.”
Fuck. Fuck, she knew which interview he meant. That infamous two-part segment on a morning news and entertainment show, her mother’s favorite.
Her mom had even mentioned it during a phone call later that day, so many years ago. “Didn’t you used to read those books? You can watch the interview on mute, though. That boy is handsome, but not exactly a sparkling conversationalist.”
April had streamed it on YouTube that afternoon, complete with sound, despite her mother’s warning. She’d played it again less than two weeks ago, before her dinner with Marcus, as mental preparation for their planned date.
Both times, she’d studied Marcus as the host handed him a book with small text and asked him to read a steamy bit aloud. On live television. Without warning. With—as she now knew—dyslexia, which he’d been taught to consider a defining weakness and source of shame.
Still, he’d tried, stumbling over the words until the host and audience had laughed uncomfortably and the show broke for commercials.
A few comments beneath that video had speculated he was drunk, but the group consensus had coalesced quickly: stupid, not hammered.
Why is their IQ always the inverse of their fuckability?
With a face that pretty, I guess he didn’t have to learn to read, right?
“You saw the interview, I take it,” he said, and she tried to compose her expression. “At that point, I knew I was dyslexic. I wasn’t ashamed of it, not by the time I got cast in Gates.”
She wasn’t sure whether to believe that, but she nodded anyway.
Beneath her hand, his heartbeat hastened as he told the story. “But in that moment, I just . . . blanked. Panicked. I was sweating under the lights, and people in the studio were still whispering to themselves and laughing, and when we came back after the commercials, I heard myself answering questions as him.”
“The Worst Possible Son,” she said. The role he’d played more often than any other, the role that had offered him protection from scorn so often in the past.
God, now that she knew, she could see it so clearly. The transition between the man who’d occasionally looked down and fumbled for words even before E. Wade’s doorstop tome landed in his lap, and the man who’d preened for the camera
s during the rest of the two-part interview.
“Well, not entirely.” His smirk didn’t crinkle the corners of his eyes. “Somehow I had enough sense to make sure I came across as an especially friendly dunce, so as not to alienate our potential audience. So it was a variation on my original role. More the Well-Groomed Golden Retriever, less the Worst Possible Son.”
The biting edge to his words was meant to hurt someone. Himself? Anyone who’d scorn him? Both?
“I get it.” At least, the essentials of the situation. “But why not act differently for your next interview?”
His jaw shifted. “The showrunners were amused. They said it was less boring than my usual interviews, and since we weren’t allowed to say much about the script or the show anyway, I might as well entertain the audience a different way. After a while, I think they kind of forgot it was an act at all.”
To them, his humiliation was amusing. Entertainment. Goddammit, no wonder the show went off the rails once those motherfuckers couldn’t follow Wade’s books anymore.
“I also realized pretty quickly how easy I had it, compared to the other cast members.” Marcus’s voice had turned raspy and tired, and her hand rose and fell on his sigh. “They were always getting asked for character insights or opinions about the books versus the show, but once the media decided I was dumb, they didn’t bother giving me hard questions. I didn’t have to deflect or lie. I could just flex and primp and talk about my exercise routine. Eventually, most outlets stopped asking for individual interviews entirely, which was a relief.”
“Because you didn’t know what to say,” she said. “Not as yourself.”
He inclined his head, a mute agreement.
Now they’d reached the heart of the issue. His heart, beating steadily under her palm. His heart, evident in every bit of truth he’d offered her.
She stroked him with her thumb, a gentle arc of a caress. “Because you weren’t comfortable in your own skin.”
“No. Not like I am now.” For the first time since the conversation began, he touched her in return. His hand covered hers, pressed it close to the soft, nubby fabric of his sweater. “But once I had that version of myself established, April, I was kind of stuck.”
An elderly couple was walking arm-in-arm on the sidewalk nearby, chatting amiably as they drew closer. Close enough to hear things Marcus didn’t yet want revealed to the world.
Even though the two wizened men weren’t listening, she still lowered her voice to a thready whisper. “What do you mean?”
He edged closer. Ducked his head to speak directly into her ear, that golden hair cool and silky against her cheek. Softened his voice to match hers.
“After a year or two, I thought about changing my public persona, but I didn’t want Gates fans to think I was just fucking with them this whole time as some sort of weird, mean joke. I’d have to explain why I’d been pretending, and I didn’t know how to do it in a way that would satisfy them but not humiliate me.” He blew out a breath, and it tickled her earlobe enough to make her shiver. “To be frank, I’ve also been happy not to answer questions about scripts the last three seasons.”
That was as close to criticism of the show as she’d ever heard him venture. And as part of the Lavineas server, whose denizens linked to and analyzed every interview he gave, no matter how vapid, she would know.
Another gesture of trust, offered this time without prompting.
The couple had passed by them and shuffled farther down the street, but she didn’t back away. The intimacy of their position warmed her against the spring breeze, and he smelled—
A perfumer would know, could tease apart each delicious, herbal note. He’d said so.
She couldn’t. All she could do was inhale and sway closer and—wonder.
“Did you explain all this to your ex-girlfriends? Why you were different in private than in public?” she asked. “Because if I hadn’t pushed just now, I got the sense you’d have avoided the subject as long as possible.”
The material of his jeans teased against her knit leggings, thigh against thigh, and her lips parted.
“I haven’t had many relationships, April.” He wasn’t speaking into her ear anymore, but facing her from inches away, gaze as steady as that rhythmic heartbeat. “Just to be clear.”
Oh, he was very, very clear. From the heat radiating off him, his blown pupils, she suspected a glance downward would make his current state even more undeniable.
His hand tightened over hers. “And for the most part, I wasn’t different in private. Not until I knew them and trusted their discretion. Once I did trust them . . .” He leaned back a tad and ran his free hand through his hair. “I tried to transition slowly. At that point, things fell apart, for obvious reasons.”
With those bare centimeters of distance, she could breathe a little more easily. But her thinking remained muddled by pheromones and the lightning strike of lust, and she had no idea what he meant.
At her frown, he elaborated. “They began dating me based on my public persona, and then found themselves with someone entirely different. Someone inexplicable and kind of boring. When I’m not filming or working out, I like to stay home and listen to audiobooks, or go online, or wr—” He paused. “Or ride horses. Or watch baking shows with Alex. I was, um—”
When he took a half step away, the morning chill sneaked between them. “I was a disappointment, I guess.”
To his exes, the change must have seemed inexplicable. And to Marcus . . . dammit. He must have felt rejected for who he really was. Again.
“On top of that, dating someone in the public eye is hard on a relationship, even without other issues,” he said. “You’ve already experienced a few of the downsides. Did the paparazzi find you last week?”
“Yeah.” If she sounded like she didn’t care, that was almost entirely the truth. Especially at this moment, with this man only inches away.
Now that the fog had lifted, sunshine highlighted the starbursts of fine lines at the corners of his solemn eyes, the brackets surrounding his perfect mouth, the creases running across that noble forehead. Somehow the lines didn’t look like flaws, even in the unfiltered, unforgiving glare. Instead, they only transformed his unmistakable prettiness into something earthier, something she could grasp in her fist and take between her teeth and consume.
Honestly, if she hadn’t begun to like him so much, she would find his excessive handsomeness extremely aggravating. And despite all her affection, she still wanted to rumple all that beauty, wanted to sink her fingers into that shiny, silky hair and pull, even as she traced the jut of his jaw, sharp as flint, with her tongue.
What sound would he make if she bit him there?
When he swallowed, his throat bobbed. “Is that why you changed your number?”
He was breathing faster now, and fuck, she wanted him gasping in need. For her. Only her.
She shrugged. “Once they figured out my name, I had a few calls and some pictures taken. But changing my number helped, and they seemed to lose interest after a couple of days.” Once they concluded we weren’t dating anymore. “I figure the reprieve will end soon, and that’s okay. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
What strangers said didn’t concern her.
Her mother’s phone calls, however, she’d dodged since that first date.
“Are you sure?” With a gentle fingertip, he urged her face toward his again. “Because you’re right. They’ll find us again. Find you. If you decided to protect your privacy and stop seeing me, I’d understand.”
He’d bared himself metaphorically for her today. It was enough. More than enough, despite the dangers of their involvement.
So she had every intention of baring him literally. Tonight, if possible.
“Maybe you’d understand. I wouldn’t.” Boldly, she stepped into him again. “If I want you, I’m not letting a few strangers with cameras stop me from having you.”
Dropping her hand from his chest, she slid it around to h
is back. Slipped a fingertip below the hem of his sweater and teased the hot, bare skin just above his jeans.
As he bit off a rough sound, she walked him back, back, back, their thighs tangling with each step, until he was pressed against a sturdy-looking wrought-iron fence, and she was pressed tight to him.
Her heart was thumping hard enough to shake her, and it wasn’t due to all that caffeine.
Once she got on tiptoe, she laid her mouth on his jaw. The merest hint of stubble abraded her lips, a welcome friction. The tight-stretched flesh there tasted like salt on her tongue, and vibrated with his low moan.
She took that skin between her teeth and licked.
His hips bucked, and she gloried in the way he ground against her so fiercely, just for one mindless moment.
“What do you say, Marcus?” Back against that fence, where passersby couldn’t see, she slid both hands beneath his sweater and stroked up the satiny line of his spine, then dragged her nails lightly going back down. “Should I have you?”
He didn’t answer in words.
He didn’t need to.
It seemed she’d burned all the gentleness out of him, and good riddance. He fisted her hair in one hand and splayed the other wide on the swell of her ass, hauling her tighter against him. Her own sweater had ridden up, and those knit leggings didn’t blunt the sensation of his thigh nudging between hers, the jut of his cock against her belly.
She might have backed him into that fence, but she wasn’t in control. Not anymore.
“Turnabout,” he murmured against her neck, open mouth hot on her skin, and licked the spot. Nipped it. “You still have a mark here. Good.”
Her back hit the fence as he flipped their position, and he settled hard between her thighs. She huffed out a labored breath, dizzied and so fucking turned on she wanted to scratch and claw until he made the ache go away.
His teeth and tongue scored a path of fire up her neck, under her own jaw, and then—
Oh, his mouth claimed hers like a battle prize, hard and desperate, and she opened to the claim without hesitation.
Later they could try tender and sweet, but right now she wanted his tongue in her mouth, his teeth on her lower lip, and his groan swallowed by her panting breath. She wanted that possessive hold on her ass to squeeze her closer, closer, as the tug of her hair turned her nerve endings incandescent.