Until now.
And why? Why did I take this job without investigating it further?
Logan.
Because I’d wanted to prove to myself that my emotions for Logan wouldn’t affect my work. Instead, I’ve proven just the opposite. I’ve proven that what he makes me feel is frightening enough to cause me to ignore my usual thorough standards. I’ve proven that these feelings are the strong kind, probably strong enough to be given a label. Strong enough to call love.
I’m still too dazed from everything that’s just happened to fully feel the impact of this realization, but I want to feel it. I want to feel something that isn’t this dirty, terrible, violated feeling.
So I say the words out loud, seeing if it makes a difference. “I love Logan. I’m in love with Logan.”
The acknowledgment helps. I’m still cold and numb, but there’s a light now, something hopeful, like the first star in a night sky. Like something I can cling to in order to keep from drowning in the darkness.
My phone starts singing the ringtone I’ve assigned for my agent and thank God I’m at a stoplight so I can dig through my purse to find it. “Thank, fuck,” I say skipping a formal greeting. “The shoot with LaRue? Fucking terrible. It was unsafe, un-female friendly. The director—I still don’t know his fucking name—treated me as inferior. The dressing room didn’t lock. Bruce Madden walked right in and made himself at home with my body. I swear he would have raped me if LaRue hadn’t walked in.” Talking about it renews my anger. I’m shaking by the time I get through everything. “I just…I’m so upset, Lucy, I can’t even.”
“Take a deep breath,” Lucy says calmly. “Now, are you driving? You’re upset. Should you pull over?”
“Probably. But I need to keep driving.” I’m not sure where I am. There are places I could park—a gas station, a McDonald’s parking lot—but the thought of stopping makes me panic, as though Bruce might be driving right behind me, just waiting for me to let my guard down.
Lucy doesn’t try to argue. “Understood. Be careful, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now, first. Are you hurt?”
I shake my head before realizing she can’t see me. “No. I’m just worked up.”
“Would you rather I call you back?”
“Don’t hang up!” I didn’t realize how desperate I was to talk to someone until now. “I just. I might not be very coherent. But I want to talk. Please.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Do you want to tell me what happened with Bruce?”
“He harassed me. He scared me.” I tell her the whole thing in as much detail as I can muster. I hear myself as I’m talking, and I know I sound melodramatic. I begin to doubt myself again.
But Lucy is supportive and reassuring, treating my every emotion as valid and legitimate.
“And Bruce is the reason you quit the scene?” she asks eventually.
“No—wait. How do you know—?” I try to remember if I mentioned quitting, but can’t recall.
“I just got off the phone with LaRue,” she explains.
Of course he called her immediately. I probably wasn’t even out of the house before he’d dialed her number. “Whatever he said to you is full of shit. That situation was one hundred percent not appropriate.”
“I understand, and I’m sorry.” There’s a beat before she goes on. “But you left me a phone message before you even got to the set, didn’t you? Saying you couldn’t do the scene?”
“Oh, great. You think I’m being ridiculous too.”
“I didn’t say that, Devi. I’m trying to get a clear picture of the situation so that I can get you out of this the best I can.”
“Get me out of what? I’m not the one who did anything that needs getting out of. Is LaRue trying to sue or…?” I trail off, overwhelmed by the prospect of a legal battle.
“Yes, he wants to be reimbursed for money lost.” Well, fuck. There goes my apartment. “But I’m pretty sure I can get him to drop that, Devi. I’m more concerned about what he’s going to do to your reputation going forward.”
“He can shit on my rep all he wants. I’m not doing het porn. I thought I was cut out for it, but I was wrong.” I know it’s not fair to assume all hetero sets are alike, but I’m not about to take the chance of repeating this afternoon’s experience.
And there’s the other reason I won’t consider doing het porn again anytime soon. The reason that has nothing to do with Bruce or LaRue and has everything to do with Logan.
Lucy is silent for a second. “It’s not just P in V scenes I’m concerned about. Hagen has a lot of pull in the industry. I’m afraid you’re going to see fallout in your regular jobs as well.”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
I bite the inside of my cheek and fight the new set of tears that are threatening to fall. “Do you think I did the wrong thing by walking off the set?”
“No.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “But there are rules in this industry. Rules I don’t agree with, but they’re there all the same. They’re unethical and illegal, even, but very few people take sex workers seriously. If you’re not making any formal allegations then we have a better shot at coming out of this, but it’s going to be hard to not point fingers at something if we’re trying to get out of your contractual obligation to LaRue Hagen’s company.”
I bite my cheek harder, taking in what she’s said. Nothing here is a revelation. I know what kind of world I’m part of. I’m not this ignorant.
“I really fucked up, didn’t I?” And I don’t mean by walking off the job but by pushing to take it in the first place. By staying in this business instead of figuring out what I really want to do with my life. Because is this really what I want to be doing in five years? In ten? Is porn my passion? Is all of this bullshit worth it?
And wasn’t it just this morning at my shoot with Lynne that I thought I could do this forever?
Well, maybe I could have if I hadn’t fucked it up.
“Hey. Don’t blame yourself for this. We should be able to salvage a career, though it might be a good idea to focus on just print work for a while.”
“Whatever you think is best.” I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure about anything anymore.
“Out of curiosity—was there a reason in particular that you were wary before you arrived on set?”
There’s a part of me that wants to tell her about Logan, about how I’ve fallen head over heels for him, about how I kind of only want to have sex with him now.
But if I thought I sounded naïve complaining about Bruce, I can only imagine how naïve it will sound to declare that I’m in love with a porn star.
So I say, “I just had a bad feeling. That’s all.”
If Lucy senses I’m withholding something, she doesn’t let on. “Sounds like you’ve got good instincts. But it’s probably best we not mention that you had any issues before you walked in. It weakens the argument for the inappropriate work environment. Let’s meet next week, and we can prepare a formal record of complaint to rebuttal against LaRue’s accusation of breach of contract.”
“Okay. But, Lucy? If Hagen tries to make bargains—like, even if he hires a new crew or changes the rules for the set behavior—I don’t want to do a reshoot.”
“I understand.” And though I can tell she truly does, I can also tell that this would be so much easier if I would just agree to do another shoot. Thankfully, she doesn’t say that. “Don’t think about this too much tonight, Dev. Be proud for sticking up for yourself. That took guts. A lot of women wouldn’t have been able to do that.”
I tell her I’ll try to focus on the positive and agree to call her in a day or two. We hang up, and I’m back to where I was before she called—lost and drifting. I need a shower. But I don’t want to go home—I need to not be alone. I need to be somewhere I feel safe and supported.
I’m not sure when or if I actually decide where I’m going, but at some point my driving turns from aimless to purposeful, and before lo
ng I’m pulling into his driveway and using the key under the succulent plant to let myself into his house.
Logan’s stretched out on his front room couch. He’s wearing nothing but jeans; his bare feet are crossed at the ankles in front of him as he edits some footage on his laptop.
He sits up, surprised, when I walk in the room, but then I think he must get a good look at me, and his features quickly wrinkle into concern. Instantly, he’s on his feet. “What’s wrong?”
Instead of answering him, I fall into his open arms and let out a raspy, “I need you.” Because, the truth is, now that I’m wrapped in the cocoon of his warmth and his scent and his touch and his him-ness, the answer to his question is, “nothing.”
Sixteen
Devi’s face is buried in my shoulder, and I want to pull back to look at her, but then I feel the unmistakable warmth of tears on my skin, and so I don’t. Instead, I hook an arm behind her knees and scoop her up into my arms and carry her into my dark bedroom, where the drawn shades keep out most of the afternoon sun. I sit on the edge of the bed with her still in my arms, and simply sit, rocking her slowly and resting my head on top of hers.
I don’t ask her what’s wrong again, even though I’m itching in the worst way to know. When I last saw her this morning, she was dewy-faced and flushed from her scene with Kendi (and, I secretly hoped, the moment we shared on set). And when she kissed me goodbye, she seemed happy and chipper, if a little nervous. I know she had a scene scheduled after the one I saw—could that be what’s upsetting her? Something that happened on set?
I rack my brain, trying to remember if she told me any details about the shoot she was going to. Generally, her scenes don’t get much rougher than some dildo play and maybe the occasional light bondage, but certainly not the kind of punishing scenes some actors film. So maybe she fought with someone on set? Another performer? A director?
“Devi,” I say. It’s an invitation for her to speak, but it’s also an affirmation, a reminder that I am here for her and only for her, and that she is completely safe and cared for in my arms.
“I—I didn’t tell you something,” she gets out.
I frown, my eyebrows pulling together. “Whatever it is, babe, it’s fine.”
She shakes her head against my chest. “It wasn’t fine,” she says, the tears flowing faster and harder now. “I—I thought I could do it and then he was so aggressive and he cornered me—”
He?
A fucking he?
What the fuck was she doing this afternoon? While I was missing her and feeling lonely as I worked on my couch, she was on a set with a he?
My mouth reacts before my brain entirely catches up. “What?” I ask sharply. “Who is he?”
I feel her shrink in my arms, retreating into herself and curling into a ball. “I booked a het shoot with LaRue Hagen,” she whispers tearfully. “That’s where I was going today...not for a girl-on-girl scene, but for a scene with Bruce Madden.”
“Bruce Madden?” I demand, five different kinds of anger rising in my chest, the chief one an insanely protective instinct, because Bruce Madden is notorious for shitty onset behavior and fuck that guy. My blood immediately boils, conjuring the worst possible scenarios and elaborate fantasies that involve me going on vigilante murder sprees, but I try to breathe myself into a state of patient calm until I know what actually happened. It’s just that I know my girl, and I know that she’s not the type to cry. She’s not the type to let emotions overrule her control, and so whatever happened must have been big.
And bad.
I think about some of the worst stories I’ve heard happen on porn sets, all the rapes that happened on camera and were never prosecuted. Raven and I advocated hard for those performers—and we still do, albeit separately now—but I never ever thought that it might happen to someone close to me, someone I love…
Oh God. If something like that happened to Devi today, there will be no end to the hell I will rain down on everyone even tangentially connected. Hell and handcuffs and blood and money, and I will personally see to it that Bruce himself is castrated.
You don’t know what happened yet—set the mental castrating knife down.
“Yes, Bruce Madden,” she sniffles. “He was...oh God, Logan, he was awful.”
“Did he…?” I can’t even get the question out, because I’m asking two questions—did he assault you? and if not, did you still fuck him? But even in my protective rage, I can’t bear to ask anything that makes her feel for one second like she’s to blame or did anything wrong. Whatever happened was one hundred percent that shit-bag’s fault. “Did it happen during the shoot?”
“I couldn’t even start the shoot. But then he found me while I was trying to leave…” She breaks off abruptly and starts sobbing, the kind of sobs that tell me that words can’t happen right now, and so I just hold her and rock her, stroking the back of her head as she cries.
Then as I’m rocking her and murmuring reassuring words, something else hits me and hits me hard.
Devi booked a het scene. When Devi kissed me goodbye this morning, she was driving off to go fuck another man. And even through the veil of my rage at Bruce Madden and my desperate fear that she’s been terribly hurt, another emotion surfaces, ugly and undeniable.
Jealousy.
I remember our first fake date in the park, when I saw that Sinner’s Playpen was calling Devi, and I remember her asking my advice about doing more mainstream porn, and I remember telling Tanner that of course we were both professionals and would keep filming all the scenes we wanted to. And somehow none of that matters right now, because before now it was all in abstract, just things that could potentially happen, things that didn’t feel real. I told myself and everyone else it was okay.
But it’s not.
It’s not okay.
Because I’m holding this woman in my arms, and I want to be the only one to hold her, fucking ever, and you know what? That goes for the female performers who get to fuck her too, because I want it just to be me me me, and have her all to myself.
I try to remind myself that it’s just sex, it’s just fucking, and it doesn’t mean anything, but if it doesn’t mean anything, then why didn’t she tell me about it? Why would she keep it a secret?
And then the twin sister to jealousy shows up.
Suspicion.
I hate it. I hate every inch of that emotion, I hate feeling it crawl over my heart and rifle through my thoughts, wondering if there’s some reason Devi kept it a secret, wondering if I’m going to wake up one day soon to find Devi posting pictures of herself with some Italian. I hate wondering if I care about her more than she cares about me, if she’s been fucking other guys all this time, if I’m about to have my heart broken again.
And then I shut it down—all of it. The jealousy and the suspicion and the rage. I don’t have a right to care if she’s fucking other guys because I’ve been fucking other girls, and even if I hadn’t, “sort-of boyfriend” isn’t a term that has to mean explicit monogamy. We never talked about being exclusive.
We’re porn stars. We shoot porn. We fuck other people. That’s just how it is.
And right now the woman I love is hurting, and that’s where all my attention needs to be. I can figure out the rest later.
After a few minutes, I feel her begin to relax in my arms, her tears slowing and her breathing returning to normal. She wipes at her face with her hand, and it comes back black with mascara. She pulls back to look at my shoulder and chest, which are smeared with the same.
She barks out the kind of laughter that only comes in the midst of tears. “I got your chest all messy.”
“We can fix that,” I say as cheerfully as I can while I’m still trying to contain all of the residual bitter pangs of jealousy and the over-protective boyfriend instincts that are telling me to go burn shit down. I stand up and carry her into my bathroom and set her down on the wide bench in my shower.
My shower is big—the size of most people’s ent
ire bathrooms big—and has a million showerheads and jets and nozzles that I don’t normally use, because, as you may have heard, we don’t have water in California anymore. But today is an extenuating circumstance, and I turn everything on, hot as it will go.
Devi blinks at me from the bench, suddenly very young and forlorn-looking. And then all of my jealousy and suspicion melt completely away, washed down the drain. Instead, I feel an overwhelming need to shelter her and protect her, to erase whatever bad thing has happened, but it’s too late for that. I can only hope to atone for not being there, for not being able to help her.
I approach her slowly through the water, ignoring the way my jeans are getting soaked. You’ve probably already guessed this, but I don’t mind getting my clothes wet—a porn habit, I guess. But I leave my jeans on for another reason: I don’t want Devi to think that I brought her in here to fuck her. I don’t want her to think that this is about sex or about me, or about anything other than helping her feel better.
She watches me with curious, tired eyes as I get closer, until I’m over to the bench. “Can I undress you?” I ask.
She bites her bottom lip and then nods. “Yes, please.” Her voice is barely audible over the hiss of the water.
Steam billows around us as I work her damp T-shirt off of her body. My dick jolts as I see she’s not wearing anything underneath and those delicious tits are just hanging out, ripe and plump, but I move my focus elsewhere, helping her out of her flip-flops and then her denim cutoffs, tossing everything to the edge of the shower.
Once she’s naked, I take her elbows in my hands and guide her to the waterfall showerhead, where I make her stand while I go get a washcloth and body wash.
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