“What changed?” she asked, gazing over at me with those big, innocent eyes.
I rubbed my chin. “Er…honestly? I guess it was because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. It took a while, but all the stuff you used to say when you tutored me…I guess it finally started to sink in. You always used to go on about how knowledge and education were important, and reading was the key to that. Y’know, I was really surprised when you didn’t end up going to college.”
“Well, I’m glad you got something good out of our study sessions,” she said.
Her voice had suddenly turned stiff, and I knew she was thinking about what I’d done to her after our last study session.
“Lucy…I know this is two and a half years too late. I haven’t brought it up before now because I figured you didn’t wanna hear it, and also I guess I was too much of a pussy. But I’m sorry for hurting you back then. I’m really fucking sorry. I’m worried I wrecked your life, and I think about it all the time. I’ve never been able to forgive myself, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I don’t want to see you like this ever again. You can do better.”
She sighed heavily. “You think I ended up with a tool like Jimmy because of what you did to me in high school?” she said.
I shrugged. “Well, yeah, sorta. I mean, if I hadn’t hurt you so bad and made you feel so shitty and insecure, you might have ended up with someone who treated you better.”
She looked over at the window for a moment. “Why did you do that to me? I always wondered.”
“Because I was an immature little asshole. I cared so much about my reputation that I let it get in the way of how I really felt. And when Mom married your Dad, I knew I’d probably have to see you a lot, so I was a dick to you to make sure you kept hating me like I deserved. That’s no excuse, though. Like I said, I don’t expect you to forgive me. I just want you to know I’m sorry.”
She turned away from the window and looked right at me.
“I won’t sugarcoat it, Patrick. I hated you back then. You really messed me up, and sometimes I even wanted to kill you. But it’s not your fault I ended up dating Jimmy. That’s on me. I was deluding myself into thinking he was a good guy.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “You and I were so young back then. We’re still young, I suppose, but we were only seventeen when all that happened. And now that you’ve explained why you did it, I have to say I kinda get it.”
“You do?”
“What you told me earlier tonight, about all the abusive guys your Mom dated and your experiences with that…you wanted out of that life, for both you and your Mom, and we both know your reputation has helped with that. It helped you become really confident and popular, that helped you get your first TV role, and now you and your Mom have a much better life because of it. So when you were only seventeen and wanted to make things better, I guess it made sense for you to be so desperate to protect your image. You felt like you needed it. Maybe more so than others.”
I’d never really thought about it that way, but she was right.
“It’s still no excuse for the way I treated you,” I replied. “Shit, Lucy, you’re always so nice and understanding. I don’t deserve it. That’s why I wanted you to keep hating me.”
“I don’t hate you anymore,” she said. “If you say you’re sorry, then I believe you. I don’t want to hold onto a grudge anymore. I have for so long, and it’s not healthy. And you need to let go of the past as well. Stop trying to get me to hate you.”
I looked down into her eyes, and I’d never wanted to kiss anyone so badly. But this wasn’t the time.
“You really helped me out tonight. So why don’t we call it even and try to be friends?” she said, holding out a hand.
I smiled and took her hand. “Sure. Friends.”
I knew I wanted a little more than friendship from her, and I had for a long time, but if all she ever wanted to be was friends, then so be it. It was better than holding onto the past like the stupid kid I’d been for the last two years.
“Well, now that we’re friends, you can do me a favor,” she said.
“Anything you ask for,” I replied with a grin.
“Stop acting like a tool at work.”
“Done. Now pass me that throw rug.”
She picked up the grey throw rug on the end of my bed and passed it to me, and I thanked her and headed over to the couch. It wasn’t very comfortable for someone as tall and broadly-built as me, but she deserved the big, comfy bed, and there was no way I wanted her sleeping anywhere else on this property tonight. I wanted to know she felt safe, and the only way I could do that is if I were right here with her.
“Night,” she said, curling up under the blankets. “Can I switch this lamp off, or did you want to read?”
“You can turn it off.”
She smiled, and then the room went dark. I tried to curl my body to get as comfortable as I could on the couch, and I saw my phone light up on the ground a moment later. Picking it up, I saw that I had another Insta-Snap message from that weird P.G. person. She’d sent me a few more messages since the initial one, but I’d just ignored them. They hadn’t really said much, and the photos had just been blurry images of different objects. I’d assumed it was just some random person who’d accidentally added me thinking I was someone else.
This one was different. The image was just a blank dark space, and the message was very obviously intended for me.
Patrick. You kissed the wrong girl...it should have been me.
She had to be referring to the incident today at the set, where I’d kissed Lexie instead of Ana while we were shooting that scene. How did she know about that? Shit, the girl sending me these snaps had to have been right there in the studio this morning. I frowned, trying to think of who it could be. Who did I know at the studio whose name started with P? And why would they be sending me these weird messages?
There was Pam, the wardrobe manager. Could it be her? Nah, she was married, and she seemed too old to care about all the latest social media apps. As I mulled it over, I heard a sound that almost made me jump out of my skin, but then I realized it was just Lucy snoring.
Shit, she sounded like a freight train. She’d been crying a bit earlier after what happened with Jimmy, so her nose was probably all blocked up. If I was spending the night in a room with any other girl, I would have left straight away if she started making sounds like that, but I grinned instead. With Lucy, I didn’t care. She could bring a goddamned chainsaw into my room and start hacking up trees while I slept, and I wouldn’t mind as long as I knew she was alive and safe.
That was all that mattered.
CHAPTER NINE
PATRICK
“So how’s things with Lucy going?”
Alex took a draw of his menthol cigarette as he waited for my response, and I finished the last gulp of my coffee before replying. I was on a break from shooting part of an episode, and he’d met me at a nearby café.
“Good. I finally took your advice and said I was sorry the other night when all that shit went down with her boyfriend. She said she believes I’m sorry, and now we’re working at being friends.”
He nodded. “Glad to hear it. What ended up happening with that psycho boyfriend of hers anyway? Ex-boyfriend now, I assume.”
“The police tracked him down and booked him. I hope the fucker goes to jail forever.”
“Yeah, same. It was lucky you were there to stop him. How’s work, anyway?”
I shrugged. “It’s okay. Although fuckin’ Lexie Greyson thinks I want her.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Because I kissed her the other week when we were filming.”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because her character’s name is Lucy, and I was trying to get a reaction out of the real Lucy. This was before we decided to be friends. I was just being a fuckhead.”
“Sounds like you actually wan
t to kiss the real Lucy.”
I stiffened at his words and pretended to be extremely interested in the bottom of my empty mug. I hadn’t told him that I’d already kissed Lucy in the pool that night. I hadn’t told anyone. That was weird, considering I’d always been happy to verbally document my sexual exploits to all my friends in the past. But this was different. I’d only kissed her, nothing more, and it hadn’t been some bullshit, overly-sexualized one night thing. Hastily changing the subject, I looked up at him.
“Oh, by the way, I’ve been meaning to ask. Your friend Phoebe…is she still around?” I asked.
“I don’t really talk to her much anymore, but she’s still around, yeah. I think she’s working on a few TV sets as a hairdresser, but I haven’t seen much of her since she got married. Why?”
“I’ve been getting these weird Insta-Snap messages from someone with the initials P.G. It’s a chick, and whoever she is, she’s obviously been on the Six Angels set when I’ve been there, judging by what one of the messages said. I tried messaging back to ask who she is, but she sent me some bullshit reply and didn’t tell me. I thought it might be Phoebe, but I couldn’t find her on Facebook to ask.”
“Yeah, she deleted her Facebook profile a while ago. But I dunno, man. Her last name doesn’t start with G. I’ll ask her anyway, but I very much doubt it’s her.”
“That’s cool. Thanks anyway.”
“No worries. So back to Lucy…now that you guys are friends, I gather you’re going to make her job a bit easier?”
I laughed. “Yeah. No more fucking around. I’m gonna keep my head down, take this ‘cleaning my image up’ shit seriously and finish this season of Six Angels without getting fired.”
“Any leads for after that?”
I shook my head. “Nothing yet. But I’m thinking of taking a break from acting for a while when it’s done. Maybe I’ll go to college or something. There’s tons of online courses you can do these days.”
“Wow. Never thought I’d hear you say something like that,” he said, a twinkle in his eyes. “But that’s good. Happy for you, man. Any idea what you want to study?”
“Nah, that’s the problem. There’s heaps of shit that sounds cool.”
“What about something like screenwriting? You already have heaps of acting experience which might help, and obviously you already have connections in the industry as well.”
I nodded my head slowly. “Yeah. That might be an idea. Writing and making movies would be cool. There’s so much trash out there these days. Remember that zombie panda movie that came out a few months back?”
He snickered. “Fuck. Yeah. That was godawful. What was it called again?”
“PanDead – Undead Panda Apocalypse.”
We snickered at the ridiculous title, and a group of young women in bright, tight dresses walked by us, offering me dazzling white smiles. They giggled and made lewd suggestions as they passed, and an overly-perfumed promise of sex drifted in their wake; a promise of more mindless, hedonistic fucking.
I gritted my teeth. I was getting really sick of these chicks. Yeah, I was famous, but did it ever occur to any of them that maybe I was tired of the endless procession of women offering themselves up to me like it meant nothing? Did it occur to them that perhaps I wanted something more than a quick fuck in a cheap hotel room?
A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have been thinking like this at all. Hell no. I would’ve been loving the attention as I always had, and I knew exactly what the issue was now. Lucy. She’d gotten into my head, especially since I’d rescued her from Jimmy. When she hadn’t been living with me, I’d been able to pretend she didn’t exist, although of course she’d always existed in my mind and any fantasies I had on my lonelier nights. But now…now we were friends and colleagues. She was always around me, right there in the flesh, and it was impossible to ignore the creeping realization that I still felt something for her. Something serious.
Something real.
As I considered that, another thought burrowed its way into my mind and refused to leave. Somehow, I knew that Lucy was going to break me.
I just knew it.
CHAPTER TEN
LUCY
“This place is bullshit.”
Patrick whispered in my ear as we stood in the back of the Health Freak Café, checking out the chalkboard menu behind the counter. I rolled my elbows and gently nudged him.
“Shh. Don’t let anyone hear you talking like that.”
“Why? As a celebrity, I feel like it’s my duty to warn people away from crap like this. Look at what that dude is drinking. It’s straight up seaweed!”
He pointed towards a tall blond man in a suit who was sipping on an organic juice, and I hushed him again.
“You need to be seen promoting a healthier lifestyle than you have in the past. So we’ll grab something to drink here and post a picture or two on your Instagram and Facebook accounts, and hopefully people will pick up on that.”
“How very subtle. So I can’t grab a burger and a beer before we go hiking?”
I giggled. “No. Definitely not.”
Today, Patrick had a day off filming, so we were going hiking along the Beaudry Loop, a trail over in Glendale. It was all part of our plan to clean up Patrick’s image – if he was seen getting out and about and doing healthy stuff, then hopefully that’d help.
We finally decided on two Berry Banana Blast smoothies and headed over to the counter, and the perky brunette behind the counter widened her eyes as she saw us.
“Oh. My. God. Patrick Archer?”
“That’s me,” he replied, flashing her a lazy grin.
She squealed and jumped up and down, and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. I’d never understood why people got so star-struck around famous people. They were just people.
“I loved you in the last season of The Werewolf Diaries,” she said. “When you saved that girl from the abandoned shifter school just before it burned down…oh my god! You’re totally awesome.”
“Thanks. Always happy to meet fans,” he replied. “Anyway, can we grab two Berry Banana Blasts?”
“Of course,” she said with a simpering smile. “Would you like me to put some wheatgrass energy boosters in them? It’s usually an extra three dollars, but for you, I’ll throw it in for free.”
Patrick grinned and held up a hand at her, then leaned over to me. “Do we want the energy boosters?” he asked in a low voice. “We might need them to have enough energy to run the fuck away from this health nut place and never come back.”
I smiled and spoke up to the girl behind the counter, ignoring Patrick’s jibes. “Sure, we’d love the wheatgrass shots added. Thanks.”
“Awesome. I’ll call out when they’re ready,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes at Patrick as she wrote down our order.
I elbowed Patrick again once we’d taken some photos and left the café with our drinks. “You don’t need to be so rude!”
“What? She didn’t hear what I was saying.”
“Yeah, but someone else could have.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, maybe they need to realize how pretentious they all are. Kale quinoa muffins are not lunch!”
I shook my head. “That’s what people these days are into. You know that. You’ve gotta play that angle up. That’s the point of this hiking trip today.”
“Don’t remind me,” he groaned. “We aren’t even there yet and I’m already tired.”
“Oh, please. You spend enough time in the gym. You’re probably way fitter than I am.”
As we drove up to Glendale, I looked over at him and smiled. Things had definitely improved between us since the other night when we’d finally talked and got everything out in the open. He was being a lot easier to work with, and we’d well and truly taken the first tentative steps in our friendship. My Dad had been pleased to see us finally getting along, and I swear he’d practically half-squeezed Patrick to death in a hug when he’d heard how he had defended me from Jimmy. Speakin
g of Jimmy…as far as I knew, his parents had bailed him out of jail, but he was still awaiting a court date to stand on trial for what he’d done to me. Bastard. He could go to prison and rot there forever for all I cared.
As I recalled Patrick laying into Jimmy with his fists that night, I felt like I understood him a lot better now. I knew exactly why he’d always acted the way he had, and it had ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be to forgive him for his high school transgressions. It had honestly felt like a massive weight off my shoulders when I accepted his apology, and I hadn’t slept so well in ages.
“Do I park here?” he asked, slowing down near the edge of the road.
I looked around. “Uh…yeah, this’ll do. I still can’t believe you’ve never hiked before.”
“Well, it’s basically just walking around on hills, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s fun!”
“We’ll see about that,” he replied with a grin.
We headed over to the start of the loop. The trail was a smooth dirt fire road, and I checked my watch as we began the hike.
“It’s around six miles, so we won’t be here all day, but we’ll try to go pretty slowly anyway. I’ve let some people know that we’re doing it, so there’ll be some opportunities for them to take photos of you.”
“Cool. Lucky I wore these sexy shoes.”
I laughed as he kicked one of his feet up, displaying the dark brown hiking boots I’d bought for him the day before. “I hope you wore sunscreen too. There’s not much shade on this loop. Oh, by the way, some of the parts are pretty steep. Just be careful. We don’t want to fall over and hurt ourselves.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll catch you if you fall.”
He made a grand sweeping gesture with his arms, and I shook my head with mirth.
“Please. You couldn’t catch bird flu at a chicken farm in Hong Kong.”
He arched a brow. “Oh, I see how it is. I thought we were friends, but you’ve betrayed me all for the sake of a witty one-liner.”
We both laughed, and ten minutes later we ran into a group of young hikers on the trail, heading the opposite way.
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