by Frankie Love
He rummages around, I see a few leather-bound journals in the bag along with changes of clothes. He finds what he is looking for though, and tosses a magazine at me. I catch it, confused.
Flipping it over, I look at the cover.
“Holy fuck,” I say, glancing back at him, then back at the magazine cover. “You’re dead?”
He sighs. “I fucked everything up.”
I smirk. “You fucked me, alright.” Then I read the headline and my heart starts to pound, Sawyer Bennett, Hollywood Heartthrob, 1989-2017. Suicide and Sex... what put this megawatt superstar over the edge... “I don’t understand.”
“I have a few weeks’ worth of stubble, and wore a ball cap, but I’m just glad no one has recognized me.”
“I don’t understand, Benne—Sawyer. If you’re dead why are you here?” I look at the man lying naked beside me. I would never have recognized him. Movies have never been my thing, and catching up on Hollywood gossip is of zero priority to me. My life has been rooted in survival, not scandal.
“The fact that you don’t seem to know who Sawyer Bennett is, is fucking hot as hell, do you understand that?” he asks, getting out of bed, his morning wood stretched out to tease me. He heads to the kitchenette and begins making coffee.
I shake my head, wrapping the sheet around me and following him. “I wouldn’t have recognized you; but Sawyer, how are you here? What’s going on exactly?”
He flips on the pot and looks for two clean mugs. “Any sugar?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I just got here. I don’t have much. And I drink my coffee black.” I want to press him, ask more questions... what is a movie star doing here? And why is he supposedly dead?
“I suppose if you don’t drink it with cream or sugar, you’re not very sweet, are you?” he says smirking down at me.
I’ve flipped open the magazine to the pages that detail his life in Hollywood. “Ha, ha,” I say, raising a brow to him. “But you’re right, I don’t think I’ve ever been referred to as a sweetie.”
My words may sound easy-going, but internally I’m trying not to freak out about what is taking place in my cottage. Sawyer Bennett, an actor who killed himself a week ago by jumping off a bridge—according to this magazine—is alive and well and making me coffee.
“So..., did you want to tell me what exactly is going on?” I ask as he hands me a mug. There’s a small kitchen table and chairs, but we opt to sit on the bed, the magazine between us, the coffee in our hands.
He thumbs the pages, reading the story as if for the first time. My eyes travel over him, his ripped body, his dimples. I remember his wad of cash, his nice Chevy, his designer jeans rumpled on the floor. Suddenly I feel dirty—like the trailer trash girl I am. I don’t want him to see me that way, but when his eyes meet mine, I’m scared they already do.
“See my parents, here,” he says, pointing to a photograph of an actor and actress I remember seeing in movies when I was younger. “They are half the reason I faked my death.”
“Shit, Sawyer. Aren’t you scared of being found?”
He runs his hand over his jaw. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m a mess. A fucking fool, probably. I just confided in a stranger and didn’t even have the courage to tell my best friend. What kind of monster does that make me?”
I blink, not knowing a hell of a lot about courage. I ran without telling my own mother where I was going.
“It makes you desperate,” I tell him, reaching for his hand. “But...” I stop, not wanting to make this about me, yet scared of him being here. Of what that might turn into.
“But what?” he says.
I shake my head, trying to steady my nerves. “I’m scared of people finding you. If someone recognizes you, they might find me.”
Sawyer’s eyes narrow. “Who’s looking for you?” Sawyer’s trying to read me, and I’m doing everything I can to keep my face blank.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him because it doesn’t. “I’m across state lines and the only way anyone would find me is if I went back to see if my mom was okay.”
“She’s in trouble?”
I shake my head. “Not anymore,” I tell him. “I took care of all her troubles the night I left.”
7
The magazine lying on the bed between us confirms everything.
As far as the world at large is concerned, I killed myself.
I thought it would come as a relief, knowing I’m no longer tied to the shit that held me down, but damn, it’s still a lot to come to terms with.
And it is also why last night was such a fucking gift. I was able to forget, disappear. I was able to fall into a woman’s arms who didn’t ask questions.
“Do you want to talk about why you’re running?” I ask Sadie.
She shakes her head, takes a sip of the coffee. “No, right now I just want to know if you’re headed out or planning on staying around.”
Her question causes my mouth to go dry.
“I’m not going unless you kick me out. I’m not ready to walk away from this yet. From you yet.”
The idea of leaving her after one night seems ludicrous. She’s more than a one night stand. She is fresh air and a new start. She understands me in ways I don’t think she realizes herself yet. She’s the first woman in my whole damn life who looked into my eyes and wanted me for what they saw buried there. Not for the things she saw on the fucking surface.
I don’t want to leave this woman. Not now, not ever. Something about her is raw in the most beautiful way. The sheet slips from her hold, and when it falls, her gorgeous breasts are on display, perky and huge and fucking delicious.
“You’re too good for me, Sadie,” I tell her, her curvy body is more than I deserve.
She shakes her head, sorrow written on her face. “No, Sawyer. I’m nothing but a disaster.”
“Not true,” I tell her, my thumb strokes the curve of her cheek, my hand holding her face.
“You know nothing about me,” she manages to say. “I’m not innocent.”
“I never said you were,” I tell her, taking her coffee mug and setting both of ours on the table, then I pull her into my arms, and promise myself I’ll never fucking let her go. “A beautiful wreck, maybe, but you’re nothing less.”
Her mouth is on mine in seconds. We’re both vulnerable like we were last tonight, raw and ruined and neither of us asking the hard questions The why and the how and the what’s next. We’re only seeking solace and we’ve found it in one another.
Our mouths part, her pussy is wet as my fingers slip inside. Her tongue is against mine, and her hands are in my hair.
“Touch me,” she moans against my mouth, as my fingers start to fuck her nice and deep. We’re both on our knees, her hand finds my rigid cock, and she strokes me with intention. She knows what I want as badly as I do.
“Oh, baby,” I groan against her, her hand feels so fucking right on my velvety rod.
Her cunt drips, and I press three fingers in her, banging her like she needs: hard.
“Oh, Bennett—Saw—fuck—” She loses her words, her breath, as she falls on her back. I grind my hand against her pussy, she’s so tight that my fingers get her off fast. The walls of her cunt throbbing in pleasure and I move harder against her.
“You like it rough, baby?” I ask, my cock fucking steel as she touches me.
“Come all over me,” she begs, as I finger fuck her into oblivion. Her juicy cunt explodes against my hand, her back arching in delight. I straddle my girl, my hands on her gorgeous tits, her nipples hard and begging for attention.
I stroke myself harder, ready to come all over my baby’s tits. Her eyes are heavy with pleasure as I shoot ribbons of come against her globes. My white cream coating her, and she opens her mouth, wanting to taste me. I fill her mouth with my cock, her lips tightening around me as if she was dreaming of swallowing my salty seed. I come hard again, and she gags in delight, her head bobbing, sucking me off until I’m finished.
<
br /> “Fuck, woman,” I moan, my cock obsessed with her mouth. My palms massage her perfect titties as I watch her lick my release from her lips.
Her eyelids flutter open, our eyes meet. Damn, I am a goner, completely sucked into Sadie’s vortex. I don’t want to go anywhere if she isn’t by my side, under me—on top of me. I want to be filled with her and her alone.
Maybe it’s the grief talking—becoming so fucking enamored with a woman after I’ve just lost everything should be a fucking red flag, but I can’t help it. When she looks at me I want to fall into those dark pools. I want to sink to the bottom of her ocean, I want to be lost in her forever.
I don’t want to be saved.
I want to drown.
And this time, I mean it.
“What is this?” she asks, gasping as our eyes lock. “What’s happening between us?”
“I think that whatever comes next, I want it to happen with you,” I tell her, pulling her onto my lap.
“We just met.” She bites her bottom lip. “And you don’t know me at all.”
“I know we’re both lost. We both didn’t believe anything good could happen from being found.”
“Is that enough?” she asks, looking so small and so fucking fragile in my arms.
“I know I’m clinging to someone I have no claim to—,but I’m not letting go yet. I don’t know what we could be; but right now, I just want to be lost with you.”
She nods through her tears. She’s not ready to tell me what broke her, but I want to be here holding her as she puts herself back together.
Maybe this is a disaster waiting to implode—but everything I lived for is already ruined.
Maybe it will take death to be found.
8
I don’t know if anything good will come out of whatever is happening between Sawyer and me, but I don’t want to ask too many questions and break the beautiful relief we’re offering one another.
For the next few days, we do nothing but fuck and talk. We talk about everything: the trailer park where I grew up, the mansion in the Hollywood Hills where he spent his childhood. Our lives are polar opposites yet our bodies respond to one another like we’re meant to be.
“I only went into the business because my parents pushed me,” he admits in the very early morning hours after the bar is closed and the moon is swollen in the night sky. “It’s all they wanted for me...fame.”
“You never wanted it for yourself?”
“I wanted to make them proud.”
He makes me pancakes at three a.m. when I come in with sore feet and good tips. We eat the stacks, naked in bed, the truth of our stories heavy, the maple syrup on our lips lightening our hearts just enough to be honest.
“And were they proud?”
“They were obsessed. And yet it was never enough. They pushed me into contracts, into promotions, into deals until there was nothing left of me. And it still wasn’t enough.” His words are painful to admit, it’s clear in his glassy eyes and his broken heart. I don’t press him for any more because really, isn’t this enough? The space we share in this bed where we can reveal our deepest sorrows without judgment, without recourse?
I think it is.
He lifts a bite to my mouth. I eat it, the butter and the sugar helping the words we need to share surface. They have to if we want this thing between us to become more than a fling.
If there is any hope in a forever.
“And your parents?” he asks. “Did you make them proud?”
I shake my head. “Pride in me was never on the table. I was no one important. No one hung their laurels on me. I went to school. I helped with bills. I kept my head down low enough to avoid any sort of friction. I never knew my dad. My stepdad, though, he was the worst kind of man. The kind of man I never wanted attention from.”
Sawyer doesn’t look away. “What did he do to you?”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t me he hurt. It was my mom. He knew I’d bite if he tried to get close to me. But my mom,” I say softly, shaking my head. “She never hurt a fly in her life. She wouldn’t know how to bring out her claws if her life depended on it.”
“And did it?” Sawyer asks. “Did it depend on it?”
I blink back tears, and we forget our pancakes and get lost in one another. He knows without me saying it, that yes, my mom’s life did depend on it. He knows what kind of man my stepfather was without me having to say the words that hurt to remember.
Sawyer kisses the sharp memories away, and we continue tiptoeing around the darkest truths...what had me running and what forced him over the edge.
For him it’s something with his parents—but it’s the scandal at the club which his best friend Cal ran, that convinced him he was only going to cause his oldest friend more pain. I’ve scoured the magazine article for clues, but there are lots of missing pieces to the puzzle that is Sawyer.
We’re in a tangle of sheets late one afternoon, and we’ve just finished fucking, Sawyer’s cock is still buried in me, our limbs are still entwined when he asks the question I’ve been expecting.
“So, did you ask your boss what the deal is with his Small Town Fuck Club?”
I laugh, remembering Dusty’s words. I replay the conversation for Sawyer.
“What the fuck were you doing down there?” Dusty asked.
“You made me curious. I sent people your way all night. I had to know what was down the hall.”
“And you stayed?” Dusty asked. When I told him yes, he frowned. “I don’t want you to do anything you might regret.”
“Since when did you start caring about me? You’ve been giving me a hard time since you hired me.” I pushed back.
Dusty shrugged. “You are one of my own now, and I gotta look out for you. Hell, you live in the cottage twenty yards from my house. I need to make sure you’re okay.”
“You’re worried about me?” I was shocked. I can’t think of an older man who has ever looked out for me. One who ever asked if I was doing alright. A part of me wanted to wrap my arms around Dusty in a bear hug and thank him for caring.
Instead, I pushed my lips forward and gave him a hard time. “I should be worried about you. You’re the one running a sex club in the middle of nowhere.”
He laughed. “True enough, but hell, people go down there because they want to escape. It’s nothing but harmless fun. The way I see it, people spend way too much time worrying about bullshit that doesn’t mean anything. If you can let loose on a Friday night with someone who makes you feel good, why not? Not the worst business in the world.”
“I see your point, but stop avoiding the question, Dusty,” I pressed. “What is a sex club doing in your basement?”
“I have a habit I like to call Mexico all winter. How the fuck do you think I pay for that? With this dive bar? Hell, no. If you want something in life, you’ve gotta grab it. I wanted winter at the beach, and I knew sex would pay the bills.” Dusty told me it’d be best to keep the news of his twice-a-month-club to ourselves. He doesn’t want folks in Resting Hollow knowing about his underground enterprise.
Sawyer laughs when I tell him Dusty’s reasoning. “Sounds smart,” Sawyer admits.
“I expected something darker, shadier, didn’t you?” I snort. “What does that say about us?” I ask, standing up and pulling on clothes for my shift.
“It says we’re jaded as fuck,” he laughs. “But honestly, if that’s all the drama in Resting, I can see why Cal’s girl, Jules, loved her hometown so much. It’s refreshing, right?”
“It is.” I kiss Sawyer hard on the lips. “But you’re kind of a breath of fresh air too, you know,” I tell him. “I mean, when we aren’t wallowing in our pasts, we have a good time.”
“Would you go back to the fuck club?” Sawyer asks, watching me run eyeliner across my lids, then press nude lipstick on.
“With you?” I grin. “Sure. But it won’t be open for another week and a half. You gonna stick around that long?”
“You kicking me
out?”
I shake my head. “No, but eventually we’re gonna need to figure out what happens next. You can’t live your life hiding out in Dusty’s apartment. Eventually, you’ll need to go outside or you’ll turn into a vampire.”
He smacks my ass, kissing me again as I grab my purse. “We can make a plan after I hear all your secrets, Sadie. I still don’t know why you’re running.”
I nod, kissing him back. “You’re right. Tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
I nod. “Unless there’s better story I have for you by then.” He wraps his arms around me tightly, and I sink into his hold, letting myself believe that he truly is someone I can trust with my deepest secret.
After all, he has trusted me with his.
9
I’m hungry as fuck, and all I want is an order of those damn tater-tot nachos. It’s only halfway through Sadie’s shift, and the idea of seeing her sashaying around the bar in her booty shorts and her tiny apron is enough to motivate me to leave the tiny cottage.
The last few weeks have been more emotional than I expected and maybe that makes me a fool. To think that faking my death wasn’t going to have consequences, but damn, it’s hard being so alone in the world. If I didn’t have Sadie right now, I’d be swaying in the goddamn wind.
When I knock on the back door of the kitchen, Dusty opens it up right away. He is this big old dude who comes off as brash, but I’ve come to realize he is just all show. He has a tiny chihuahua he takes on walks every afternoon and seeing him walk that little ass dog is enough to know he isn’t as big an asshole as I thought.
“What are you still doing in this town?” he asks. “Sadie says she knows you from back in the day. You planning on sticking around for a while?”
It’s a relief to know Sadie has kept things private, and the backstory she has used is the best one either of us could come up with as to why I’m staying at her place. I have my ball cap on now and keep my eyes off his. Thankfully, his bar is popular and he doesn’t have time to bullshit with me for long.
