Spoiler Alert

by Olivia Dade

  She’d want him to visit, because he always had to come to them.

  From the doorway to their kitchen, he’d make himself small and watch them dance.

  “Do you want to call her back?” April’s voice was absolutely neutral.

  She’d taken off her glasses at some point, scooted her chair closer, and those brown eyes were soft and patient. Full of affection and trust he didn’t deserve.

  “They—” He cleared his throat. “They hate the show. Did I tell you that?”

  Silently, she shook her head.

  “They’ve hated all my roles, I think. But especially Aeneas, because they both taught classical languages, and they feel like the show slaughtered Virgil’s story.” His hand wasn’t entirely steady when he reached for another sip of water. “Which it did, of course, but I still didn’t—”

  Her knees were abutting his now, nudging softly. A reminder of her closeness.

  His voice cracked. “I d-didn’t expect them to write op-ed articles about the ‘pernicious influence’ of the show, and how it ‘promotes a disastrous misunderstanding of foundational mythology.’”

  That particular piece had run in the nation’s most popular newspaper, and after his computer had read the text aloud to him, he’d regretted his choice. If he’d read it himself, in print, maybe he could have pretended he’d gotten it wrong somehow. Mixed up the letters. Misunderstood, as he so often did.

  In his parents’ articles, they never mentioned their son or his role on the show. Not once. But of course, the names made the connection obvious, and he could have predicted the public reaction, the tittering about how such learned parents had birthed a son like him.

  “I thought it would be different. As an adult, I mean. I thought being around them would feel different someday. Once I had a career and friends and something outside them. But it never does, and April—” He turned to her, and her eyes were glassy again, for him, and he couldn’t bear it but couldn’t stop himself, either. “April, I’m so fucking angry every time I see them.”

  When she took his hand, the desperate force of his grip must have hurt.

  She didn’t complain. Didn’t move away.

  “I hate it. Hate it,” he spat. “How they despise all my roles, and how they wrote those articles and will probably write more, and how they looked at me like I was dumb and lazy and—and worthless, even though I swear to God, I tried. I tried and tried, as hard as I could, and I was just a fucking kid, and they were teachers. How could they not have known?”

  Later, he’d wondered whether their prep school discouraged kids with special needs, or whether his parents were just too stubborn to admit that their child, the product of their genes and guidance, could prove flawed in such a fundamental way. Whether the shame of it had blindfolded them, plunging them all into darkness.

  It didn’t matter, though. Not really.

  Either way, they’d never seen him for what he was, what he could become, what he had become, and what he would never, ever be.

  They still didn’t.

  His cheeks were wet, and she was blotting them with a napkin, and he was too lost to feel embarrassed. “I know they love me, and I love them, but I don’t know how to forgive them.”

  A lifetime’s worth of hurt spilled over them both, and she waited patiently and held his hand securely in hers and dried his tears, and if he were a warrior like the man he’d portrayed for so long, he’d have pledged his fealty, his life, to her right then. Laid his sword at her feet, relieved.

  She was easing him upward, guiding him to the couch, and tucking him into her body once they were seated. His head on her shoulder, his arms as tight around her as he could make them without hurting her, his face buried in her rose-scented neck.

  “I don’t know how to forgive them,” he repeated, whispering into that soft, secret hollow.

  Her fingers were combing through his hair, stroking him. He closed his eyes.

  When he didn’t speak for a while, she laid her cheek on his head. “We can talk about that, if you want, or I can simply listen. Or we can stay like this, if silence would help.”

  There was no judgment in her voice. No impatience. No disdain, at his weakness or his ingratitude or his tendency to feel more than was comfortable sometimes.

  He hadn’t known. How could he have? Nothing in his past, amid all his successes and ill-fated relationships, could have predicted the dizzying relief of laying his heart before her, unshielded, only to discover—

  Only to discover that she’d protect it for him.

  So he could talk. Finally, he wanted to talk about it. Wanted to listen.

  He took a shuddering breath against her throat. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I think . . .” Still tunneling her fingers gently through his hair, she paused before continuing. “I don’t think forgiveness is something that can be owed.”

  Against his face, he could hear her labored swallow. He could feel it.

  “Especially if that forgiveness hasn’t been earned. Even if the person who hurt you is also someone who—who loves you.” Her fingers stilled, her warm palm cradling his skull. “You can choose to offer it. But you don’t owe it to anyone. Not even your parents.”

  She was cupping his face, lifting it from her shoulder. Meeting his eyes, her own suddenly fierce. She spoke faster now, with more certainty.

  “If you don’t want to see them, don’t see them. If you don’t want to talk to them, don’t talk to them. If you can’t forgive them or don’t want to, then don’t fucking forgive them.” She nodded, either in emphasis or to herself, he wasn’t sure which. “If you do want to forgive them, that’s okay too. If you want to talk to them or visit them, I’ll support you however I can. There’s no right or wrong answer here, Marcus. Just whatever answer would make you happiest.”

  That had never been the point, not with his parents.

  For decades, the three of them had been bound by expectations and obligations, rather than any particular regard for something as inconsequential as his happiness, or even theirs. But if he shed those strangling tethers, if their bond became something he could choose or not choose, as he desired . . .

  He didn’t know what that would feel like. Whether his anger and hurt would fade into insignificance, finally. Whether forgiveness would come more easily, or whether he’d find himself confident in his decision not to offer it.

  “I’ve never—” He pinched his mouth shut and thought back. Scrolled through decades, searching, but his instinctive claim was correct. “I’ve never talked to them about how they made me feel back then. How they make me feel now. Instead, I just pretended to be someone else. It seems . . . wrong not to forgive them for things I never said hurt me.”

  She was back to picking her words with care. “Do you want to talk to them about it?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” he finally said.

  Shit, so much unguarded emotion was exhausting. Head muddled by fatigue and uncertainty, he was resting on her shoulder again, curled against her side, her body a bulwark in a gale. Her fingers were playing with the hair at the nape of his neck now, her other arm warm around his back.

  When it came to his parents, he truly had no idea how to proceed.

  All he knew: None of his characters, none of his artifice had ever offered him this kind of shelter, this kind of comfort. Only April.

  Despite the dread and shame curling in his gut, then, he wasn’t telling her about Book!AeneasWouldNever. He wasn’t confessing his lie of omission.

  This circumscribed openness might not be everything he wanted. She might never know all of his story. But what lay between them was more than he’d ever had before, more than he’d ever dreamed he could grasp, and he wasn’t risking it.

  No, he wasn’t risking it.

  He was squeezing tighter.

  Lavineas Server DMs, Seven Months Ago

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Are you going to next year’s Con of the Gates?

  Book!Aen
easWouldNever: Attending events as a fan isn’t really my thing.

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Because you don’t like crowds, or . . . ?

  Book!AeneasWouldNever: Something like that.

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Okay

  Book!AeneasWouldNever: It’s just

  Book!AeneasWouldNever: Meeting my online friends in person doesn’t seem like a great idea to me.

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: You’re shy?

  Book!AeneasWouldNever: Sometimes?

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: Because please know: you don’t have to be nervous around me. I don’t care what you look like, or whether you’re awkward face-to-face, or—whatever. We’ve been friends for a long time now, and I’d love to meet you in person.

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: for coffee

  Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: or dinner? Just the two of us?

  Book!AeneasWouldNever: I wish I could. Please, please believe that.

  21

  AFTER A DAY FULL OF DOCUMENTS, APRIL CAME HOME TO yet more documents.

  Not lab results from soil samples this time, or reports from consultants in which they misinterpreted data or used the wrong screening levels to draw their conclusions, but television and movie scripts. Actual Hollywood scripts, each containing a role Marcus’s agent thought he might like, or a role already offered to him before he even caught his first glimpse of the story.

  Some he’d have to audition for, others he wouldn’t. Some would offer a substantial paycheck, others not much above scale. Some boasted big names as costars or producers or directors, and others counted on the story itself as the main draw.

  His agent, Francine, had her preferences, of course, but she mostly just wanted him to choose something and have it hit the public before his post–Gods of the Gates recognizability began to wane. Or so he’d informed April over their dinner of mustard-roasted salmon and garlicky mashed cauliflower. During the afternoon, he’d baked some sort of savory flatbread too, for her sole, enthusiastic consumption.

  That salmon was fucking incredible. So was the rest of their meal.

  He’d shopped for the food. Paid for the food. Washed the dishes, changed the sheets, and even run a load of her laundry. Hung some pictures where she’d indicated she wanted them.

  If he never chose another role, she was planning to keep him as a househusband.

  Maybe that should be a joke, but it wasn’t.

  And as her mother kept hinting, maybe April should be alarmed by how quickly he’d moved into her home and become a familiar, essential presence in her daily existence. Instead, it seemed . . . natural. As if he’d been in her life for years, although she’d met him only weeks ago.

  She trusted him. Somehow, even after such a short time, she trusted him.

  As his scripts proved, they wouldn’t always have this sort of time together, either. Soon he’d return to LA or report to some international location for filming, and they might not see one another for weeks or months at a time.

  So if he wanted to stay, she wasn’t showing him the door. This alignment of their lives, their schedules, wouldn’t last forever, and she intended to appreciate every minute of it.

  “I hoped you wouldn’t mind if we talked through my choices.” Using his phone, he forwarded one of the relevant emails to her from his postdinner spot on the couch. “Normally I would have had something lined up months ago, but I couldn’t seem to decide, and I figured I could use a break once we finished filming Gates. Francine’s right, though. I need to pick a project soon. I could use a sounding board.”

  “You hoped I wouldn’t mind?” She opened up her laptop on the cleared kitchen table and eyed him over the top of her glasses. “Marcus, we’ve been over this before. I’m an incurably nosy bitch. Of course I want to see your scripts.”

  He snorted and kept scrolling through his messages for more scripts to send. “I tried talking to Alex about it, but he’s no help. He just keeps telling me to launch a line of hair care products and be done with it.”

  To be honest, for a man whose vanity was much less all-encompassing than he pretended in public, Marcus did spend a lot of time on his hair. Even on days when he wasn’t doing anything important.

  Better to withhold comment.

  As her laptop booted up, she hummed happily, eager to get started, and even more eager to spend time together.

  This past week, she’d devoted two evenings to writing and revising her one-shot for Aeneas’s Sad Boner Week, another to working on her Lavinia costume, and yet another to sketching possible performance outfits for the Folk Trio Formerly Known As My Chemical Folkmance. Which was now, due to Mel’s successful lobbying efforts, the Indium Girls instead—despite Pablo’s initial protest that two of the three band members were not, in fact, female.

  “No worries.” Kei had waved off that concern. “The contradiction will only add to our mystique.”

  “It’ll change again next month,” Heidi had whispered near the staff refrigerator later that day. “Whatever you do, Whittier, don’t design the costumes around the band name.”

  The nights April told Marcus she wanted to work on her various hobbies, he didn’t quibble. Other than giving her an occasional lingering kiss and offering tentative but useful advice on her fic, he’d mostly left her to her own devices. Instead of pouting, as some of her exes would have done, he’d amused himself listening to audiobooks or simul-bingeing yet more baking shows with Alex via FaceTime.

  “Claggy sponge!” Alex kept gleefully shouting, his voice loud and all too clear through the cell phone’s speaker. “Claggy goddamn sponge!”

  After the evenings they’d spent apart, she’d rewarded Marcus’s patience at bedtime. He’d seemed more than satisfied with the tradeoff. So satisfied, in fact, that he insisted on returning the favor, and by the time she was satisfied, he was hard and hot and ready to climb aboard the Good Ship April for another naked, mutually enjoyable voyage.

  Despite all the sex, though, she’d still felt guilty. It was past time they had an evening together, especially doing something that mattered to him.

  “Okay,” Marcus said after a few more minutes. “I’ve sent you the three main contenders.”

  Yes, he had. There were three new messages in her inbox, complete with attachments. But before she could open them and satisfy her curiosity, she needed to know more.

  For the moment, she moved her laptop aside so it didn’t block her view of her boyfriend. “Now that Gods of the Gates is almost done, what’s your next step? Where do you want your career to go? What sorts of roles are you looking for? And why are these your three main contenders?”

  For most of a decade, he’d been fitting movies and television roles in between seasons of filming Gods of the Gates, choosing his projects from the limited selection that both interested him and would work timing-wise. The absolute freedom he now had, to pick whatever role he wanted, no matter when and where filming would occur, was a recent development.

  Sometimes she got the sense that all that freedom disoriented him a bit.

  “I don’t think so.” He lounged back against the sofa cushions, his smile suddenly sharp-edged with challenge. “You like figuring things out, so do the work, Whittier. You tell me why these are the three roles I’m considering.”

  It felt like avoidance to her, as well as a genuine dare, but he knew her all too well. She loved shit like this. A mystery. A test of her insight. An invitation to discover stories within stories. Not to mention the carnal promise contained within that lazy, inciting smile.

  She raised her brows, meeting his insolence with her own. “If I get it right, what’s my reward, Caster-Hyphen-Rupp?”

  At that, the tension broke, and he snickered.

  Once he’d recovered himself, though, he looked her dead in the eye. Then he slowly scanned her, all the way from her haphazard ponytail to her curling toes, pausing at a few key spots in between. Her heavy, unbound breasts, nipples pebbling against thin, soft cotton. The lavish swell of her hi
ps and belly. Her dimpled thighs, caressed by the brush of her lounge pants when she shifted under his stare. The juncture of those thighs, where he’d settled and teased and explored so many nights now.

  A flush burnishing his cheekbones, he stretched magnificently on the couch.

  He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly how he looked. All his training for various roles and all his acting experience had taught him body awareness the likes of which she’d never witnessed before.

  As he stretched, his thin tee rode up his flat belly, his biceps straining the sleeves. He arched his spine, his head thrown back in a way she recognized from their more intimate moments.

  Not that this moment lacked intimacy.

  He relaxed back into the sofa with a satisfied purr. Her labored swallow caught his attention, and that knife-sharp smile returned.

  “Your reward?” Now displayed full-length along the couch, he folded his hands beneath his head and blinked heavy-lidded blue-gray eyes at her. “For each role you analyze correctly, I’ll take off a piece of clothing. And if you get all three right, you can have whatever you want. Anything.”

  Twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger, she eyed him consideringly. She knew for a fact he was currently wearing three—and only three—items of clothing. The perfect number for her purposes.

  It would take so little effort to get him naked. Even less to ride that handsome face of his once he was hot and needy and stretched out beneath her.

  “Game on,” she said.

  SHE HAD TO skim, of course, and she didn’t read the scripts all the way to the end.

  Later, if he wanted her to read every word, she would. For tonight, though, for this particular challenge and discussion, that kind of intense scrutiny wasn’t necessary.

  He watched her as she read, his steady attention on her a caress rather than an irritant. Whenever she took a break and glanced around her screen, she met his eyes and had to fight her own flush at the heat in that stare.