by April Fire
Grow up? Maybe. Finally. But not this time. The director gave me the hand signal to go for it, and I waited for a second to make sure the camera was rolling before I jumped. And then, blinking a couple of times and ignoring the familiar surge of fear in my chest that bubbled up whenever I took on a stunt this dangerous, I tipped myself over the edge and started falling.
Chapter Ten
Tennessee
“Where the fuck is he?”
“The hospital, on the edge of town.” Natalie waved her hand, apparently oblivious to the panic that was pulsing through my veins at what I’d just heard.
“You need to let me get out there,” I demanded, wriggling out from underneath her as she struggled to close a clasp around my waist.
“You only just got here,” she protested, but I guess she could tell from the look in my eyes that I wasn’t going to back down over this because she held her hands up and stepped aside. Like she knew she was never going to stop me.
“Go, go,” she waved her hand. “If it’s that important to you.”
I could hear the incredulity in her voice. I knew why it was there. After all, ever since I’d started here, I had been pointedly clear that there was nothing going on between Dominic and I, actively distancing myself from him whenever I got the chance. But now, as fear surged in my brain, I knew I couldn’t play that game any longer. I didn’t want to. All I needed was to be at his side.
I knew there had been an accident on set the day before but I had no idea it had involved him, or that it had put him in hospital. If I had, I would have already been there, at his side. I knew that what I was feeling was uncalled for, that there was no goddamn reason on Earth why I should have given a damn where he was or what his status was, but I couldn’t fight the feeling in my chest, like some irresistible attraction drawing me to his side. I threw off my gear, letting it hit the floor, and grabbed for my jacket so I could call a cab.
“Do you know what happened?” I asked, realizing that my hands were shaking as I dialed the number and lifted the phone to my ear. Natalie shook her head.
“Not a clue,” she shrugged. “I think something to do with not wearing a harness. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I breathed. If he landed wrong after going for such a high jump…
The cab company answered and promised to dispatch me out a car as soon as they could. I ignored everyone around me as I strode to the entrance gate of the lot, waiting for the cab to arrive. My thoughts were racing so fast that I was having trouble keeping them straight. Why was I doing this? He didn’t need me to rush to his side like this, didn’t need anyone but his doctors to make sure that everything was in hand. Why did I give a damn what had happened to him? Why was I putting my job in jeopardy for this? Why couldn’t I shake him? Why had he been on my mind since we had had sex a few days before, even though I’d been the one to turn him down? Was there still time to turn around on that?
The cab arrived and I ordered it straight up to the hospital. The driver seemed to sense my urgency and put his foot down, and we sped through the quiet streets – everyone was at work, doing what they were meant to, while here I was blowing everything off so I could run to the side of a guy I had sworn only a few days earlier I would never allow into my life again. My heart was thumping. How bad was it? Would he work again? Because I knew that this job was everything to him. He had given up so much – he had given up on me, on us for it. And if that was taken away…
We arrived, and I paid the driver and rolled out of the car and into the hospital. Heading for the desk, I looked around, as though I could sense where he was and go to him right away; he was in here somewhere, in some unthinkable state. He had never ended up in the hospital, not if he had any say in it. And that meant…
I hurried through reception, getting his name and room number from the receptionist and heading quickly through to the room he was being held in. When I got there, I froze at the door.
I had never seen him like that before in my life. He looked so – fuck, so broken, so vulnerable. His face was covered in bruises and his arm was strapped across his chest, and one of his legs was propped up in a thick white cast that I had been sure before that moment had only existed in cartoons. His eyes were closed as I stood there in the door staring at him, but they fluttered open after a few seconds and focused in on me.
“Tennessee?” he asked, and his voice was so small that I felt this punch to my gut as I realized how bad these injuries were. I nodded, moving towards him, trying to figure out once more exactly what I was doing here. We weren’t together any more, and yet for some reason I’d come running when he got hurt. He looked as surprised to see me there as I felt to be there. I placed my hands tentatively on the side on his bed and looked down at him; only a day or two before, he had been the strongest man I’d ever met, completely untouchable and invincible. But now, lying here in front of me, he looked so malleable, as though I could have broken him with just one touch.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and he managed to inch out his good hand to me to wrap his fingers around mine. I knew I should have pulled them back and cut this off before it started, but I couldn’t.
“I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my head.
“Couldn’t resist me,” he teased, wincing slightly as he tried to push himself up in bed.
“Hey, don’t move,” I ordered. “You don’t want to hurt yourself any more than you already have.”
“So you do give a damn about me,” he remarked, cocking his head and looking way too pleased with himself for my liking.
“Well, I don’t want you crippled for life,” I replied. “If that counts as caring.”
“I’ll take it,” he replied, and his gaze softened and his fingers tightened around mine. “You know, I was hoping that you’d come.”
I leaned down, putting my head in my spare hand.
“You shouldn’t have,” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t even be here. I should be back at the set -”
“But you’re here,” he pointed out gently. “You’re with me. You came.”
“Yeah, and?” I shot back, already regretting coming out here and giving him the chance to speak to me like this.
“You still care about me,” he replied triumphantly. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I guess I don’t hate you anymore,” I conceded with a shrug.
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” he pressed, and I shifted in my seat. “After we fucked last week, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Tennessee, I think we’re – shit, I don’t believe in any of this crap normally, but I think we might be meant to be together.”
I snorted with laughter, unable to keep it in.
“Do you hear yourself?” I pointed out. “Who are you? I’ve never heard you say anything like -”
“I know,” he grasped my hand tighter, and suddenly he was serious, utterly and completely serious, all that playful energy that usually inhabited his face vanished all at once. “But I never felt it before. I never felt it till I saw you again the first day on set.”
I stared down at him, this man whom I had dropped everything to be with, the man holding my hand and telling me that he wanted to be with me and that he believed we were destined to be together. And my stomach curled into a hard knot inside me. I couldn’t do this again. That’s what the logical part of my brain was telling me, that I couldn’t possibly go through all of this again, that letting him convince me to would be stupid. I would only end up getting hurt just like I had the last time. But my heart was swelling with need for him, my entire body drawn towards his like an irresistible force was yanking us together. It always had been. After all these years apart, I still wanted him as badly as ever – physically, emotionally, mentally. I had loved Dominic, and I knew just how good it would have felt to slip back into that warm, comfortable place of love and acceptance once more.
I pulled my hand away from his, forcing myself to focus on that logi
c once more.
“It doesn’t work that way,” I snapped. “Not after what you did.”
“I was a kid, I was stupid -”
“You weren’t too young to know how much you meant to me.” I realized I was tearing up, right here in the middle of the hospital like some kind of idiot. “I loved you like fucking crazy, Dominic. And you – you just fucking left me. I never even got a chance to say goodbye. Do you have any idea how bad that feels?”
“I’m getting there,” he replied grimly, his face sinking as he finally seemed to accept what I was saying.
“I can’t put myself through that again,” I looked away from him. “You, breaking my heart.”
“I won’t,” he promised me. “This time I know better. I won’t go.”
“You can’t promise me that,” I shook my head. “I don’t want you to.”
“Please let me try,” he asked once more, and his voice was soft and I looked up again to see that he was staring at me with this imploring look in his eyes. I was so used to a Dominic who would dick around and play stupid and fail at being serious, but now I could see that this was something he really wanted, something he really meant. But it wasn’t enough. I was too strong for all of it now, no matter how tempting it would have been to fall back into his arms. He would have just left again, and I would have been back to square one, and I couldn’t face that again.
“I should go,” I got to my feet.
“No, stay,” he begged, but I turned away.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” I apologized, heading for the door. “I hope you start doing better soon.”
I pulled the door shut behind me, looked at the floor, and let the tears began to fall, as I walked away from the one man I had ever really loved for what I was sure was the last time.
Chapter Eleven
Dominic
I stood there, at the gate of the studio lot, scuffing my foot back and forth over the earth below. My heart was pitter-pattering in my chest as I tried to figure out just how stupid this was, on a scale of one to ten. Probably landing somewhere around the “very fucking extremely” end of the scale.
I should have left the day before. I had been released from hospital over the weekend, all but recovered, but had returned to set to have an awkward conversation with the director where he told me that thanks to my injuries I was a liability and they couldn’t have me working on the movie any longer. I couldn’t act like I was that surprised, but it felt like another fucking kick to the teeth after what had happened with Tennessee a few days earlier.
I was still a little battered and bruised, but I was getting better – well, everything except my leg, which was still strapped up. I was on crutches and would be for a while, which would put me out of commission on stunting myself for a while. Any other day, that would have been bad news, but while I’d been laid up at the hospital, I’d gotten an offer. The kind of offer that people like me dreamed about landing their entire careers.
A studio across the country, Tamblyn Executives, had offered me a position as a full-time stunt coordinator. It wouldn’t require me to do anything too strenuous while my leg healed up, and it paid better than any job I’d ever had before – plus, it was full-time and the contract extended for a full year with options to renew if I wanted it. I’d have been crazy to turn it down. And yet, here I was, standing at the entrance to this damn studio lot and waiting for the one person I wanted to see.
I hadn’t turned it down yet, but I hadn’t taken it either. It just echoed too strongly everything that had happened between us before, when I’d up and left and gone across the country without a moment’s notice and left her behind once more. This time, I could play it differently. I could show her that that wasn’t who I was any longer. It was a hell of a long-shot, but it was one I would take if it meant that she would even consider giving me the time of day once more.
Because I loved her. There was no doubt in my mind that I loved her, more deeply and more crazily than I’d ever loved or would ever love anyone else. And I knew why she didn’t want me back – hell, in her circumstances, I’d probably have felt exactly the same way she did right now. Which is why I needed a big-ass gesture to win her back. Something she couldn’t ignore. Something that proved to her that this time, things would be different, that I wouldn’t push her away and leave her behind. That I would drop everything to be with her.
Suddenly, I spotted her, and grabbed my crutches from the spot they’d been leaning against the faux-stone wall and propped myself up on them. She was chatting to Natalie, laughing about something, and then they split off and Tennessee headed for the gates. And that’s when she laid eyes on me.
She came to a dead halt right there and then, staring at me for a moment, before she approached, walking slowly like I might be a mirage she might chase away if she went too quickly. She arrived in front of me, and reached out to touch my crutches before she spoke.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you on a pair of these,” she remarked, looking up at me with something like a sly smile on her face. I returned it, and my heart flipped in my chest. Okay. It was now or never.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, glancing around as though I was about to play some kind of prank on her. “I thought you got offered that job, at Tamblyn. Shouldn’t you be there?”
“Yeah, I should,” I nodded. “I should have been there yesterday, actually. That’s when I was due to get started with everything.”
“So what are you still doing here?” she asked, but her voice dropped slightly and I was pretty sure that she knew what I was about to say.
“I fucked up things so badly between us last time,” I began haltingly, not used to admitting my mistakes – they didn’t feel natural in my mouth.
“Yeah, you did,” she agreed, never one to back away from a little bluntness. I smiled and looked at my hands and then back up to her. God, this woman.
“And I want you back, Tennessee,” I went on. She opened her mouth, but I continued speaking, determined to get my piece out before she could turn me down once more.
“I’ll do anything,” I went on, and reached into the satchel bag I had slung over my shoulder that contained the contracts Tamblyn had sent me. I held them up in front of her.
“I haven’t signed these yet,” I explained. “And if you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
“What the fuck are you -”
“Wherever you’re going next, I’ll come with you,” I promised. “I don’t care where it is or what the job is or what you need from me. I’ll go. I’ll turn down the Tamblyn job and follow you.”
She stared at me, her eyes completely unreadable for a moment, and for a second I thought she was going to shoot me down. My heart dropped to my shoes, but I forced myself to keep my eyes on her. I had to know. If she turned me down now, I would do my best to forget her, I would move on with my life and do everything I was supposed to – but I didn’t want to. I couldn’t think of anything worse in the world than going through life without Tennessee by my side.
“You’ll turn it down?” she repeated, as though she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. I nodded.
“I’ll do anything,” I replied, and the two of us just stood there for a moment, staring back at each other, as though both waiting for the other one to blink. Well, I would be the one to do it first, if that’s what it took – because it felt as though for our entire relationship that the two of us had always been playing this game of chicken, this back-and-forth where neither of us wanted to be the first to come out with how we felt or admit how deep our feelings for each other ran.
“Tennessee…” I stepped towards her, and slipped my hand over her face. “I love you.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, as though that had been the last thing she’d expected from me, then closed her eyes. It was like she was reveling in the words, getting used to the feel of them in her head. I hadn’t said them in years, and hadn’t meant them since the last time I’d shared the
m with her, when I kissed her goodnight before I abandoned her and walked away from the best thing that ever happened to me. I still couldn’t believe I’d been that stupid.
“If I could go back in time and change everything, I would,” I promised her desperately. I knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but I had to be honest, had to tell her everything that had been cluttering up my head since that day at the hospital.
“Well, you can’t,” she replied bluntly, and for sure I thought that was it – until she reached her hand up to cover mine and looked me dead in the eyes.
“But you can start trying to make amends for it,” she went on, a smile cracking out over her face at last. Under her grin, I felt as though the sun had come out, wiping away the clouds of doubt that had plagued my head for the last few days. I laughed out loud, and she leaned in to press her lips against mine.
