by Monroe, Max
And the kiss doesn’t disappoint. It’s all the things I requested and more.
She tugs on my bottom lip with her teeth and slips her fingers into my hair and kisses me in the kind of way I fucking pray is only reserved for me.
I grab her ass with my hands, pulling her closer to me, and Billie moans against my mouth.
I could spend eternity kissing this woman like this and I don’t think it’d be enough.
Eventually, though, she pulls away on a giggle, and her big green eyes stare up into mine. “Have I covered the bill?”
“More than covered.” I smirk and squeeze her ass one last time before letting go. “That wasn’t an eggs and bacon kind of kiss. That was worthy of lobster and filet mignon and a six-course-fucking meal and a goddamn dessert buffet.”
She giggles again and sits back down in her chair. “Well, it looks like you’re now facing an IOU kind of situation.”
I smirk and sit down across from her. “And how do you expect I go about repaying you?”
“Come to LA with me,” she says daringly, a smirk at just the corner of her mouth leaving me to wonder if she’s completely serious or not. “Live in my apartment and be my personal chef for a month. Then, I think we’ll be even Stephen.”
I laugh. Outright. “I’m not going to be your personal chef in LA, princess.”
“What? Why not?” she questions. “It’s warm, sunny… I’m there… What’s not to love about LA?”
The tone is playful, but the topic is serious. And for as much as I dislike the thought of parting ways with Billie today, I can’t bring myself to believe going back to that place is okay. “When I left that city eight years ago, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t go back. LA is out of the question for me.”
“Not even for a screenplay that you said was amazing?” she asks, a teasing tone still evident in her voice.
I shake my head, trying to soften the blow of my words with a conciliatory tone of voice. Still, my answer leaves no room for argument. “Nope. Not even for that.”
Instantly, her face falls and the playful mood takes a nose dive. She opens her mouth to say something, but she quickly shuts it and moves her eyes to her plate, sliding the fork through her eggs without any intention of eating them.
Impending doom settles into my belly, and I know, I just fucking know, the subject of me going to LA has only just begun with her. Billie Harris doesn’t know the limits of normal people. She doesn’t see hard lines and concise answers. She sees a jumping-off point. And like it or not, I’m going to have to run myself raggedly through the mud to get my point across.
Unbidden, inklings of anger start to flood my veins.
God, I hate that she’s going to push me on this.
I said no, and with everything I’ve told her, if she cared about me, she’d understand that enough is enough.
She knows why I left, what I felt like I lost—she should know this is a sore spot for me.
“But…” She pauses, and I meet her eyes.
What else is there to say at this point?
Doesn’t she fucking get that Hollywood stole my family from me? Doesn’t she get that it almost ruined me?
“But, what?” I ask her. “But what, Billie?”
She stares down at her plate and slides her eggs around with her fork again. “I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d at least fly to LA to take a meeting with Serena. I mean, you told me you loved acting. You told me you loved the screenplay. Even Lou thought you should look into it all more.” Her voice goes quiet. “I guess I just thought you’d at least do that.”
“That I’d at least do that?”
“Yes.”
Even after everything I’ve told her, things I’ve never fucking told anyone, she really, truly doesn’t get it. Or maybe, she doesn’t care to get it.
Maybe she’s like everyone else. Maybe she doesn’t want me at all—maybe she just wants what I can do for her and her fucking Hollywood career.
Hell, the only reason she came to Alaska in the first place was because she lied to her boss.
Maybe this has all been a lie. All the quiet laughs and soft touches and heartfelt conversations—maybe it’s all just a load of shit designed to get me right where she wants me.
Maybe Billie Harris doesn’t want me at all.
Billie
Can you hate someone’s guts and still love the rest of them? Asking for a friend.
At least, I wish I were asking for a friend. In reality, I’m asking for me.
What is he so afraid of?
I understand that LA—Hollywood—wasn’t good to him, and I understand why he had to leave.
But that was eight years ago.
He’s had space. He’s grown. He’s found himself.
Isn’t it time for him to start living his life again? To trust himself enough not to fall into the same old traps?
Because, fuck, sitting out here in some cabin in the middle of nowhere with his closest friend miles away isn’t a fucking life. He’s just avoiding everything and everyone.
“I’m not asking you to say you’ll do the movie, Luca,” I say quietly, my eyes still fixated on my plate. “I’m just asking you to come to LA for a few days to hear more about the project and Serena’s vision. This part is perfect for—”
He slams his fist down onto the table, and my body jumps. I look up to meet his eyes, and I hate what I see there.
His entire body is vibrating with irritation. With anger. “Goddammit! I’m not doing the fucking movie!” he shouts at the top of his lungs. “Don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? I don’t want to do it! We might’ve fucked a few times, but that doesn’t equate to me letting you use me as some kind of pawn in your fucking Hollywood career games.”
His words have claws, and they dig their way into my chest until I bleed.
Fucked a few times.
As if what happened between us didn’t mean anything. As if I don’t mean anything. As if I’m the same as all the women the old Hollywood Luca went through.
God, that hurts so fucking bad.
Maybe he hasn’t changed at all.
Even though he thinks he’s grown and changed and become a better, more grounded person, maybe he’s still the same Luca from eight years ago.
Maybe everything he’s said to me, shared with me, is utter bullshit.
“Wow.” It’s all I can say. The only word my mouth is capable of right now.
Tight like a rubber band, silence stretches between us until it becomes so taut, I snap.
“You know what I think?” I ask, the words sharp on my tongue. “I think you’re a coward. I think you’re scared and threatened by the possibility that you might not be right about every freaking thing, and I think when shit gets tough, you’re the type of person who runs away from it instead of facing it.”
“You couldn’t be any more wrong about me if you tried,” he retorts. “You don’t know what my life was like growing up. You don’t know what it was like having parents who were so goddamn focused on their kids becoming the next big star that they didn’t even have time to be parents. They didn’t have time to do shit but force us into acting classes and auditions. And when the auditions turned into jobs and the money started rolling in, their obsession with our success only grew. Instead of seeing me as their son, they saw me as a commodity. A fucking paycheck.”
“At least you had parents!” The words fly from my lips before I can even register them, and tears follow in their wake. “I’ve spent the last fifteen fucking years waking up every day, wishing my parents were still alive! Wishing they never would’ve gotten in that car! Wishing I could just have one more damn day with them!”
Tears drip down my cheeks, and I look down at my feet, staring at them but not really seeing them. My mind too consumed with this moment. “You know, maybe your parents did a shitty job being parents. And maybe they got too wrapped up in your and your sister’s careers. But at least they were there.”
I lift my eyes to his, but he doesn’t say anything.
How could he?
We’ve been reduced to shouting and screaming and slinging meanness back and forth. Gone are the soft smiles and affectionate touches. Gone are the laughs and inside jokes.
Just…gone. It’s all fucking gone.
And all that’s left is the rubble and debris of our harsh words.
“You were never a pawn in my mind,” I say quietly. “You were this insanely talented actor who would be perfect for this once-in-a-lifetime movie. You were someone on a TV show that my sister and I used to watch every day after school. Someone who was a part of a tiny bright spot in our lives after we’d gone through the absolute worst thing any child could experience. You were someone whose achievements and career I admired. And you were someone who made me wonder why a person would walk away from everything and isolate themselves—what that person had been through. You were a lot of things. A lot of fucking things, but you were never a pawn.”
He scoffs. “Yet I was the guy you just had to get to do a movie because your career was on the line. So much so, you came all the way out here, to fucking Alaska, to convince me. And I told you what I’ve been through—you know. But it doesn’t matter. You still won’t take no for a fucking answer. It’s just about the money to you, isn’t it? The career. The success. It’s been that way the whole fucking time.”
All I can do is shake my head and swipe at my cheeks.
There is absolutely nothing I can say that will change his mind.
And there is nothing he can say that will make me forget his cruel words and cold eyes.
My career might be on the line, but I’d rather go down in flames than stand here any longer and be in the presence of this man.
I’d rather go back to LA and face the career-death music than be near Luca Weaver and his self-destruct button for one more minute.
“Yeah, I think we’re done here, huh?” I question, but it’s most certainly rhetorical because I am fucking done.
I leave him standing in the kitchen and begin to gather all of my things scattered around his house—my dirty clothes in his bedroom, my shampoo in his bathroom, my smashed-up, useless cell phone, my shoes, and hiking backpack by the front door.
The entire time, Bailey is at my side, following me intently while I haphazardly throw everything I can find into my backpack.
Once I reach the front door, Luca is standing there, staring back at me.
But he doesn’t say anything.
Lord knows we’ve both said more than enough.
I step around him and wrap my hands around the doorknob. “I really hope all of this isolation from the rest of the world brings you the peace and happiness you’re searching for.”
I open the door and step onto the porch and turn on my heel to meet his eyes one last time.
If this were a movie, the camera would cut to my eyes. I’d blink once. Twice. “The Blower’s Daughter” would begin to play slowly in the background. The music would build. The camera would cut to my trembling hands and stay there until they fall to my sides, and the hearts of a million viewers would break right along with mine.
But this isn’t a movie. This is real life.
And this is goodbye.
Billie
I’m fucking cry-aking—crying while kayaking—and it is proving to be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Besides walking away from him…
Tears flood my eyes again, and my vision blurs.
My daddy would say this is a time for Patsy Cline, but seeing as my cell phone is dunzo and the last time I had any kind of service feels like a fucking year ago, I hum instead.
Apparently, it’s something I do often, but don’t realize I’m doing it.
When I catch myself humming the rhythm to “I Fall to Pieces,” more tears fill my stupid, emotional eyes.
How could I get so damn close to someone in such a short amount of time?
It might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
And why does it feel this painful to leave him? Like I’ve cut off a piece of my heart and left it behind.
Because it is that damn painful.
I let go of the paddle with one hand to swipe at my face, but in the process, I nearly drop the damn thing into the water.
Shit!
Both hands on the paddle again, I steady it in my grip while the kayak rocks back and forth.
For the love of everything, if I fall into this frigid water, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown. The freaking Coast Guard will have to come out here and rescue me.
Like the Coast Guard is going to find you out here…
Jesus. This day. This fucking day.
Where did it all go so wrong?
I woke up. I found a smiling Luca in his kitchen, making us breakfast.
We flirted. We kissed. And then, it all went to shit.
You pushed him too hard.
I roll my eyes at myself. How could I have pushed him too hard?
I asked him about the screenplay. He had to know that was going to come up. I mean, it is the reason I came all the way out here. It’s the reason we crossed paths in the first place.
Yeah, but it quickly got pushed onto the back burner when you started to actually fall for him…
I wish I could tell myself that I didn’t fall for Luca Weaver, but I know it would be a flat-out lie. I did start to fall for him. Hell, I’m pretty sure I did fall for him.
And what good did that do me? Basically, a backpack full of hiking shit I don’t need and a goddamn broken heart.
“Fuck!” I shout into the open air. “Fuck this kayak! Fuck Luca Weaver! And fuck you, Alaska! You might be pretty, but I will never come back here again!”
Somehow, between all of my outrageous shouting, I manage to make it all the way to the other side of the bay, and lucky for me, I get out of the kayak without falling face first into the water.
Lucky. Jesus. Is every-fucking-thing going to remind me of him?
Yes, my brain taunts, but I brush it off with a deep sigh and lug the kayak up the dry ground and toward my rental that’s still parked just past the dock.
I struggle with putting the damn thing on top of the roof like Earl showed me, and eventually, when I give up on using rope to secure it, I open both of the back seat windows and just shove the sucker through the holes. It looks like I have a giant plastic banana in my car, the ends poking out the damn windows.
No doubt, this is some sort of safety hazard, but it’s the best I can do.
I fire up the engine and pull out onto the open road, tears still dripping down my cheeks.
I shouldn’t be crying. It’s dumb that I’m crying.
But I can’t stop.
It’s all so fucking painful.
The drive is short, and thankfully, I only pass one other car on the road before I reach my destination—Earl’s.
But when I pull into the small gravel parking lot, I’m surprised to find a small crowd of people standing in the grass on the side of the shop.
There have to be fifteen or twenty people standing there, doing god knows what.
Probably preparing for some kind of Alaskan wilderness adventure.
That is what Earl is known for.
I hop out of my car and slide the yellow kayak out of the windows. It falls to the gravel with a thud, and I immediately look up to make sure Earl isn’t watching. Lord knows I’ll end up with some kind of damage fee if he spots me tossing his kayak around like a sack of potatoes.
Thankfully, he is nowhere to be found.
I lug the damn plastic banana toward the back of the store and place it against the side of the building beside the rest of his rentals.
Once I’m certain it’s stable and isn’t going to create some kind of domino effect of falling water equipment, I walk around the building and back toward the entrance.
But the crowd of people has spread out, and I’m having to weave through them to get to the store’s front door.
“Here ya go.” An older lady with a clipboard and bright white hair hands me a flashlight and a yellow ribbon.
I look at her in confusion, but she’s so focused on the clipboard, she doesn’t actually meet my eyes.
“Uh…what’s this for?”
“The search for the missing girl.”
My heart drops. “There’s a missing girl?”
“Yep,” she says and jots down something on her clipboard. “We’re going to start in the woods behind Earl’s and work our way toward the bay.”
And I thought I had problems. At least I know where I’m at. At least I’m not lost out there in the freaking forest.
“What happened? How did she go missing?”
“Well, we’re not sure. Her sister called Sheriff Townsend and let him know she hadn’t heard from the girl in days.”
“Can you tell me some information about her? How old is she? What does she look like? What’s her name?”
“She’s twenty-four. Blond hair…” The woman looks up from her clipboard and meets my eyes. “Green ey—” She pauses, and her jaw plunges.
“What? What’s wrong?”
The woman fumbles with her clipboard and tugs a piece of paper out from under the stack. She hands it to me with shaky fingers.
I look down at the sheet and see its information about the missing girl.
Age: 24
Appearance: Blond hair, green eyes, 5’2”, 105 lbs.
Name: Billie Harris
Wait…what?
I blink several times to read the name again.
Billie Harris
And then I look to the right of the page and find me, staring back at myself from a fucking picture. A horrible picture, mind you, but that’s probably not the biggest concern right now.
“It’s you,” the woman says.
“It’s me,” I repeat.
Holy hell, why is there a freaking search party for me?!
“Oh my goodness!” she shouts so loud I nearly drop the sheet of paper out of my hands. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” I can tell this woman is about two seconds away from bringing the rest of the search party—my search party—into this awkward conversation, and panic settles into my chest.
