by Devyn Cole
Collide Into You
Devyn Cole
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
The following is a work of fiction intended for adult readers only. All characters therein are 18 years old or older and not related by blood. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Devyn Cole
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Chapter One
Austin
My mood changes along with the song, another pop ballad I don’t know.
I’m sipping on a glass of cognac, trying not to focus on the fact that my wife is allowing a man who happens to be producing her next feature to slide his hands dangerously close to her ass. I promised Emily that I wouldn’t make a scene no matter what, but that was based on her promise to shut down Ari Cohen’s aggressive advances, which clearly she isn’t planning on doing.
I’m not sure why I’m even angry. The assholes in this room know that Emily cheats on me constantly with just about anyone who’ll advance her career even better than the millions of people who follow our relationship in the tabloids . What they don’t know is why I stay with her despite it. I’m not really clear on that either. I guess it’s not really her fault that she’s just about the worst wife a man could ask for. We were both too young to get married when we did. Well, she was.
Emily was a nineteen-year-old rising starlet, and I was a twenty-seven-year-old ex-Navy Seal who just happened to be visiting a friend in Los Angeles when a movie producer saw me and randomly demanded I audition for her romantic drama which later, I found out, was the leading role opposite Emily.
By some dark miracle, the movie grossed over a hundred million dollars and is now being referred to as the new generation’s The Notebook. Much like the stars of that movie, the stars of this one both really hate each other’s guts behind the scenes.
“You better make that your last drink,” my manager Sam tells me, pulling the glass out of my hand. “Everyone here is just waiting for you to go off like you did the last time a producer made a move on your wife.”
I shrug him off. I could care less what these people think of me. Emily can do what she wants, but I’m not going to just stand here and watch it.
“How much longer do you think I need to hang around?” I ask Sam.
“Considering your wife is about to present an award, I’d say you should probably stay for a few more hours,” he says back.
“Right,” I say, grabbing another drink off of a server’s tray just as the movie producer gives my wife’s ass another squeeze. “Guess I’ll need another one of these.”
“Careful, Austin,” Sam tells me, using his stern voice. “We just signed you on to do three romantic comedies back to back. Don’t give them a reason to fire you and send you packing back to your hometown of bumblefuck Winter Green. I’m telling you, man. You’re closer to being considered an A-list celebrity than you think. Things happen very quickly in this business. Folks in this town are talking about you being the next Zac Efron. ”
“I’ve got too many tattoos to be the next Zac Efron,” I grunt back. “Look, Sam, as my manager, you’ve got two choices. Either you let me drink my ass off tonight, or you let me skip out sometime in the next ten minutes. Or a third option is I could walk ten feet that way and totally wreck that sweaty little dough-boy right in front of all his sycophants.”
“You know what? Screw it,” Sam says, looking as though he’s wondering how I know the word ‘sycophants.’ “Go home, Austin. Just know it’s your acting career you’re pissing away by not being willing to play the game.”
“I think we both know how little I care about my acting career, Sam,” I say back. “Let it burn.”
Chapter Two
Lindsey
“WAHOOO!!!!!” I scream as I lunge myself up through the sunroof of my stepbrother’s jeep.
As he shouts profanities at me for standing on his expensive leather interior, I stretch my arms out as far as these little fuckers will go, feeling too damn good to let my brother, or anyone else, to annoy me today!
“I’m serious, Lindsey. Get the hell down. You’re dirtyin’ up my good leather!” Tim, my stepbrother, roars at me from the driver’s seat below me.
“Screw you, Tim! First of all, these boots are never dirty. Second, nothing about this piece of shit truck is good, and you know it,” I yell back. Ok, maybe he can annoy me.
“Hey, Tim, know what I’m about to do in less than ten minutes?! SIGN A MOTHER FUCKING RECORD DEAL, BITCH!”
“Relax, Lindsey. Let’s wait for them to make their offer official first,” Tim says, clearly just jealous. “What kind of country record label ain’t located in Nashville anyway?”
“Red Boots Records will have the prestigious honor of producing Lindsey Fox’s debut album named…um. Well, I haven’t worked out the name, but it will be fucking fabulous!”
“Hey, shut your mouth for a moment. I wanna’ hear this!” Tim says, turning up the XM radio because, for some reason, my brother still listens to XM radio.
“Really just such a tragic loss, the death of former child actress Emily Lavigne,” a middle-aged woman’s voice says through the car speaker.
“Wait, turn that up!” I yell at Tim, jumping back down onto the passenger’s seat. “I fucking love her husband! He’s so fucking beautiful, Tim!”
“Jesus, Lindsey!” Tim yells at me.
“Wow, you’re right. That was pretty messed up. Even for me. I apologize…”
“Well, Linda, I’d say prayers go out to her husband, Austin Turner. But, from the sound of things, he’s not too broken up about the tragedy. Wasn’t he spotted totally hammered out of his mind inside of the Viper Room when news of his wife’s death was first reported?” A male reporter asks back. “Uh-oh, guys. I think we struck a nerve with Linda! Of course, she’s going to come up with a reason to excuse the hot dude’s selfish attitude. C’mon, then. Let’s hear what ya’ got!”
“I mean, Tom, you can’t blame Austin for happening to be out and about at the time of his wife’s death. They were on opposite sides of town!” The female reporter responds.
“But after he learned about her death…he stayed there and kept drinking for like two more hours!” The male reporter yells.
“People grieve in their own ways, Tom,” she says back.
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Linda!” He yells at her as I turn off the volume.
“Man, that’s really disappointing. Emily Lavigne had the roundest, most slappable fucking ass in the entire damn country…” Tim says, sighing.
“My Lord, Tim. She just died. You need church!” I say, shaking my head. “All right. Well, we should definitely set aside sometime later to grieve for Ms. Lavigne. But, right now, we both need to concentrate on the task at hand! My very future hangs in the balance, Timothy. As you know, I’m not buying you and your girlfriend a house unless I lock down this record deal!”
We pull up in front of the
record label building, and before the jeep can even come to a complete stop.
“Wait, I should probably get some coffee, so I don’t seem drowsy!” I say out loud, even though Tim isn’t paying any attention to me.
“What’s that?” Tim asks. “My girl is calling me. You go ahead and do your thing. I’ll circle the block…”
Fortunately, there’s a coffee shop next door.
I walk over and get in line and, as I do, I feel like I’m getting judged, probably for wearing cowboy boots. Whoever these folks are, they can write me off as a small-town, Bible Belt simpleton, Taylor Swift-wannabe, worthless rural-trash all they want. I’ve heard it all. But, this is my moment, and I’m determined as hell to bask in the glow of it! Then again, as I look down at my phone, I’m noticing I have only two minutes to get to my meeting…
I rush towards the door, but the moment I’m about to walk through it, I’m blinded by a wall of flashing white lights. Then, I’m practically trampled on by a gang of paparazzi forcing their way inside the cafe.
Of course, this would happen to me. And, of course, it would happen literally seconds before I was about to go to the biggest meeting of my entire freaking existence. Why God?
“Assholes, this is a legitimate coffee house—not the fucking Coffee Bean on Sepulveda!” One of the baristas yells at the reporters and camera folks, “Get the hell out of here!”
Now in real danger of missing my record deal meeting, I scan the room for another exit and see a man running out of an emergency door. Knowing it may mean the difference between getting everything I’ve ever wanted. Or, well…I mean, not get everything I’ve ever wanted, I decide to follow the man outside.
The harsh flash of the ridiculously sunny LA sky blinds me as soon as I walk outside. When I regain my vision, I have to cover my mouth to keep from screaming, because Austin Turner is sitting on top of a picnic table ten feet away from me!
“I don’t mean to be rude, Miss. But who the hell are you?” The stranger I followed out here asks.
“Oh! My name’s Lindsey Fox,” I say back. “Sorry, for following you like that, I just really needed to find a way outside because—”
“Listen, could you keep an eye on my sour-faced friend here? I’m having trouble getting my driver to the lot because of all this crap that just happened,” the stranger says, sounding really stressed.
“Um, well, I...”
“Jesus, Sam, I’m not four. I don’t need a babysitter,” Austin Turner grunts.
“Until this thing blows over, you better believe you’re fucking going to be treated like you are!” He tells Austin. “Look, I don’t have time to deal with your moody bullshit right now. I’ve got to figure out how to get you out of here. Otherwise, those creeps will devour what’s left of your career like a pack of preying hyenas.”
“You’re so God damn dramatic…” Austin sighs, stretching across the top of the picnic table.
“Wait, um,” I say quickly before the man leaves. “I really need to get--”
“Jesus, I’ll be back in ten minutes, maximum. All right?!” The man yells at me, rather rudely.
Then, he leaves back into the fray of seizure-inducing camera flashes and screaming demands to know where Austin Turner is hiding.
“Hi…” I say, awkwardly.
“Hey,” Austin says back, not making eye contact with me.
At a loss for words for once in my life, I lean back against the wall and decide to just wait patiently for the rude man to come back.
God, I can’t believe I’m alone with the hottest guy in the world, and I’m not saying anything. I guess the problem is that I don’t really want to talk to him so much as I want to rip all his clothes off and pretty much maul him right now!
He’s so tall and built and unfairly handsome. I don’t usually like blonde guys, and I don’t generally like tattoos. I definitely don’t often like them together. But on him. Well, he’s not only making my heart race. He’s making other things throb as well.
“You…” Austin Turner blurts suddenly, making my heart totally fucking freeze. “Why do I feel like I know you?”
“Um, ever been to Winston-Salem, North Carolina?” I ask, like a dork, too distracted by his enormous biceps to say anything remotely interesting right now.
He slides to his feet, then saunters towards me. Part of me hopes he finally stands still because I really like these panties, and I don’t want to stain them, which is what is about to happen.
Austin places his big hands on my hips and pulls me closer towards him. We’re so close that I can smell his spicy cologne mixed with the clean scent of his aftershave, which, together with his masculine musk, give me goosebumps all over.
I know I should be feeling at least a little uncomfortable right now. Even though he’s a celebrity, he’s still kind of just like manhandling me like some random bar skank. But, for some reason, it doesn’t feel playerish. Instead, it feels genuine. Gosh, Lindsey. Please, don’t act like an obsessed fangirl. You’re better than that. You’re practically drooling over him right now and you haven’t seen the movie that made him famous!
“You’re magnificently beautiful,” he says without hesitation. “Like, ridiculously gorgeous. I just want to paint you or something.”
“T-Thank you,” I say. “So are you. I mean—Omigod! Sorry, I’m nervous…”
“Why?” He asks me. “I make you nervous?”
“To be honest, yes,” I say, my face flushing red.
His sharp blue eyes search me all over—seizing on my lips, my tits, my ass, and lingering for much longer than they should. I don’t know if this guy thinks because he’s famous he can have me just like that. But if so, he’s wrong. I think…
“Stand still,” he orders me, and, for some reason, I listen. God, is he actually going to paint me?!
Austin runs his hands up my body, causing the warmth in my middle to ratchet up to an inferno. Then, the gorgeous movie star who is currently every woman’s wet dream smashes his lips against mine.
Instead of pushing him off like I know I should, I find myself running my fingers through his thick, blonde hair, while our tongues swirl around one another in a pool of shared saliva.
“AUSTIN! WHO IS THIS WOMAN?!” An Instagrammer I think I follow suddenly yells, while aiming her phone at us. “OMIGOD, IS SHE YOUR NEW GIRLFRIEND?”
“AUSTIN! WHAT’S HER NAME?!” A reporter asks as a cameraman bends down to find a good angle of Austin and me. “MISS, WHAT’S YOUR NAME?!”
“Um, uh, it’s Lindsey Fox,” I say back.
“LINDSEY FOX, THE LINDSEY FOX FROM YOUTUBE?!” Some random girl who has managed to work her way to the front of the crowd shrieks.
“Yeah…” I tell her, blushing not from the attention, but from the unexpected kiss. I’m having the “introduction-to-the-world-famous-moment,” I was obsessed with literally less than twenty minutes ago, and all I can think about is where that kiss may have been leading to…
I turn back to Austin and see that his facial expression has completely changed to what I can only describe as complete hatred for me for some reason. Suddenly, he’s glaring at me like I killed his dog or something. What the hell is happening to my life?!
“All right, that’s enough!” The rude man from before yells, charging in between Austin and the camera people. “The police will be here in the next five minutes. You’ve been warned. What you all choose to do now is entirely up to you, but I’m taking my client home now.”
Chapter Three
Austin
Lindsey: Um, so why did you kiss me?Lindsey: Hello?
I’ve been staring down at these text messages on my phone for the past half hour. I was hoping the answer on how to respond would eventually come to me. It didn’t.
It doesn’t matter anyway. Lindsey is a massive Youtube singer-celebrity. Which means I want absolutely nothing to do with her. I won’t go down this road again. Not again…
But because of my idiot decision to make out with a ra
ndom girl I’d never met, while the paparazzi was literally chasing me at the time, I now have to pretend like Lindsey is my girlfriend. Sam says that dating her will make the public stop thinking I’m a sociopath for not being more torn up about Emily’s death. Instead, they’ll just think I’m a cheater who’s been in love with another woman long before my wife’s accident.
The truth is that I am hurting over Emily’s death. How could I not be? Even though she was found with her head bent over that movie producer’s lap, she was still someone I spent a lot of time with, and now I’ll never even get to speak to her again. It’s just that I don’t show my emotions. I don’t understand why that’s so difficult for folks to understand.
Right now, I’m waiting backstage at some pop singer’s concert. Lindsey is going to open, and, apparently, I’m going to introduce her to the crowd. I don’t know why the hell I agreed to do this except for the fact that there’s something about this girl. I feel like I want to be with her all the time. God damn it, Austin! Get a grip! You’ve never even bought a girl so much as a birthday card before. But now you’re waking up in the middle of the night thinking about this girl? Wanting to touch her again? Needing to make her yours?
This is real bad. But, I will make sure to get control of this situation before it gets anymore out of hand. I have to…for her sake as much as mine.
