Breathe Into Me

by Michelle Betham

  “Sleep OK?” he asked as he tried to gauge her body language. She seemed a touch jumpy, a little on edge, and he was putting that down to the fact Aaron had arrived some time in the early hours of the morning, but he hadn’t yet showed his face at breakfast.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Three large gins with minimal tonic meant I was out the second my head the pillow. Want some grapefruit juice?”

  She shook her head, her fingers nervously fiddling with the edges of a napkin.

  “You sure you slept OK?”

  Quinn narrowed her eyes as she looked at her agent. “I told you, I slept fine.”

  “No late night visitors?”

  She narrowed her eyes even further as she stared at him, but whatever he thought he was going to see in there, he was seeing nothing. But then, she always had been good at hiding stuff.

  “If you’ve got something to ask me, Harry, just ask it. Don’t go all cryptic, I hate that shit.”

  He was about to say something when a studio press officer approached the table and asked him for a word, in private. He looked over at Quinn, but she was talking to Jodi now, so he left her to it and followed the press officer over to a quiet table in the corner.

  “What is it?” he asked, looking down at the photograph she’d just handed him. “Jesus Christ… OK. Can we try and contain this? Until I’ve talked to Quinn?”

  “We’re trying to see how many publications they’ve already sold it to, because we think it was taken by a guest here at the hotel, not paparazzi. And Carter’s already on it, trying to see if we can get some kind of trespass charge brought ‘cause whoever they were, they shouldn’t have had access to that floor. It’s reserved for the cast, crew, official press, etc.”

  “Could it not have been official press that took this?”

  “We don’t think so. The quality’s pretty poor, and besides, they know that if they were found out to have done this their reputation, not to mention their career, in Hollywood would be killed dead. They’ve all signed contracts saying as much.”

  “Just try and play it down as best you can for now, all right? I’ll go talk to Quinn. Can I keep this?”

  She nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  He headed back over to Quinn, who was alone now, picking at her eggs as she looked through the day’s itinerary. Harry threw the photograph down on the table and slid back into the booth.

  “Where is he now?”

  Quinn looked down at the photograph of Lukas outside of her room, she herself just visible in the open doorway. It must’ve been taken just seconds before she’d tried to shut the door in his face.

  “You want to tell me what this is?” she asked, placing her fork down on her plate, her eyes staring right into his.

  “I asked if you’d had any late night visitors…”

  “And I’m a forty year old woman who doesn’t need to be treat like a teenager.”

  “Then stop acting like one and grow the hell up, because this – this is everything I was afraid of.”

  “This doesn’t prove anything, Harry. Yes, he was outside my room. Yes, we were talking. Was he touching me? Was he even close to me?”

  “Did he stay the night, Quinn? In your suite? Did that happen? Because, so help me God, if you lie to me…” She just looked at him, and in that instant he knew. And he closed his eyes and breathed in deep and wished he’d brought his ulcer medication downstairs. “I don’t fucking believe this…”

  “Has this gone public?”

  He opened his eyes and looked straight at her. “Carter’s on it, but yes, it’s out there now along with, no doubt, several spurious stories where people have decided to make up their own minds about what exactly went on. And I’d put money on the fact none of them went for the ‘we were just chatting’ angle. I’d say none of them wrote lies, isn’t that right, Quinn? I bet all of them are just a touch too close to the truth.”

  “Has Aaron seen this?”

  “I haven’t seen Aaron this morning. But there’s every chance this is a story that’s already made it onto social media, TV… So, yes, he’s probably seen it.”

  She dropped her head, her fingers buried in her hair, and Harry could only watch as regret swamped her, that much was obvious. But it was too fucking late for that.

  “I warned him not to go there, and I told you to be careful. You ever gonna listen to me, Quinn? Everything I do, everything I say to you, it’s all because I am trying so fucking hard to stop shit from happening. But you seem to have some kind of self-destruct switch you just can’t leave alone, and there’s only so much I can do, sweetheart.”

  “I know.” She sat back, her body language screaming defeat. “I know, Harry, and I’m sorry.” She looked at him, and she shrugged, her expression one of realization; of how stupid she’d been. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is it he does that keeps reeling you back in, huh? How fucking powerful is he, really? Or are you just so weak that he doesn’t need to do all that much?”

  “That’s not fair,” she whispered, shaking her head.

  “What’s not fair, Quinn, is this – what you keep doing to yourself. To me. To Aaron.”

  She turned her head away, and he could see her eyes shining with tears and that broke his heart, but what the hell was he supposed to do? She did this shit to herself, it was her own fault. Hers, and Lukas’s.

  “It’s too late for tears, Quinn. We need to diffuse this thing before it becomes something it doesn’t need to be. We need to nip it in the bud…”

  “We need to lie.”

  He paused for just a second before he responded to that. “Yes. We need to lie.”

  “I’m not lying to Aaron.” She turned her head to face him again, and her expression was serious, she meant this. But no matter how much Harry had, in the past, fought for the truth to be told at all times, this time it was different. This time the truth could kill her marriage forever, and he didn’t want that for her. She needed Aaron. “I’m not doing that, Harry. I’m not lying to him again.”

  Harry shook his head, taking the photograph back and shoving it in his pocket. “I can’t let you do that, Quinn.”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him, a disbelieving laugh escaping her. “Oh, so, now you’re OK with me lying to him?”

  “No, I’m not OK with you lying to him, I’m not OK with any of this. But this is the position you’ve put us in because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

  “It wasn’t just him, Harry. I was there, too.”

  “You should’ve told him to go.”

  “I did.”

  “How many times, huh? One weak and pathetic attempt, was it?”

  “I don’t have to listen to this…”

  She tried to leave but Harry put a hand over hers, pushing her back down into her seat.

  “You know what we’re gonna do now, Quinn? We’re gonna do what we never got around to doing before. What we should’ve done, before. And this time it is going to happen, only, this time it isn’t going to be done in secret.”

  “No, Harry…”

  “I’m gonna go talk to Aaron.”

  “Harry, come on. He’s my husband…”

  “Well, he’s not right now, is he?”

  “That really isn’t fair,” she whispered, a steady stream of tears starting to fall down her cheeks.

  Harry sighed and sat back in his seat. “I told you this would happen, Quinn. If you let him back in. I told you he’d destroy you all over again.”

  “He hasn’t destroyed me.”

  Harry raised an eyebrow. “Hasn’t he? So, your once happy marriage would still be hanging by a thread if Lukas Drake had never reappeared back in your life? You’d be this miserable, would you?”

  Quinn wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and Harry watched as she flicked that switch he’d watched her flick so many times before. When she’d needed to. When Lukas Drake had fucked with her head. He watched as Quinn Baxter, movie star, took the place of
the sad and broken woman she’d been close to becoming just seconds ago.

  “You love Aaron, right?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then marrying him again should be something you want.”

  “Not under these circumstances. And when he finds out…”

  “He doesn’t have to know.”

  “He isn’t stupid. You really think he’ll believe all the shit you’re about to spin him? No, Harry, I’m not risking that, because he will find out the truth, eventually, and when he does he will walk away, this time. But if I’m honest with him from the start…”

  “He could still walk away, Quinn.”

  “I know.” She dropped her head, but only for the briefest of seconds, she was a natural at sweeping shit under the carpet when she was in front of the world, which was just as well, because she was about to be tested all over again. “So let me talk to him. Please. Let me try and save my marriage.”

  “There are people here employed to smooth crap like this over, Quinn, remember?”

  “This is my marriage, Harry. And it’s nobody’s job but mine to try and save it.”

  ***

  Aaron watched the TV, listened to the presenter as they accused his wife of spending the night with Lukas Drake, right here, in this hotel, in a room just a few doors down from the one he was in now. And all he felt was numb. And he wanted to feel anger. He wanted to feel something.

  His phone rang and he picked it up, looking down at the screen to see who it was. Rita. And he knew exactly why she’d be calling him, he just wasn’t sure he wanted to have that conversation right now. So he let it ring out for a little longer before he answered it, because she’d only keep calling him if he kept on ignoring her. He might as well get it out of the way.

  “What do you want, Rita?”

  “Have you seen the…? Oh. I haven’t gotten you out of bed, have I?”

  “No. No, I’m awake. And if you’re referring to the shit they’re saying about Quinn and Lukas…”

  “You don’t think it happened? You don’t think she spent the night with him?”

  “I don’t know what I think right now, Rita, OK? I haven’t seen Quinn yet, I haven’t talked to her…”

  “Don’t you see, Aaron? She can’t leave him alone, she really is that weak…”

  “You aren’t here, Rita. You don’t know the crap she’s had to put up with – the crap we’ve all had to put up with these past few months, it’s been crazy and tough and…”

  “You’re defending her?”

  “She’s my fucking wife, yes, I’m defending her.”

  “She’s making you look like an idiot, Aaron.”

  “You don’t know anything, Rita. What she’s been through, what she’s had to…”

  “Now you’re making excuses? For what she’s done to you?”

  “OK, I’ve had enough of this. It’s got nothing to do with you, all right?”

  “I care about you, Aaron.”

  “I know, and I’m grateful that you still do that, that you still care, but this has got nothing to do with you. Whatever Quinn did or didn’t do, it doesn’t involve you.”

  “You’d still take her back? Seriously? Even after this?”

  “We don’t know what this is yet.”

  “Oh, you do, Aaron. You just don’t want to admit it.”

  He hung up, throwing the phone down on the bed. Yeah. He needed to see Quinn, before this shit got out of hand.

  Leaving his suite he strode down the corridor, and that’s when he saw him, leaving his own room, and that anger he’d been wanting to feel, it was coming now, descending like a blinding red mist, until all he could see was Lukas and the crap he’d caused.

  Aaron’s fist connected with Lukas’s jaw before Lukas could even sense he was there, sending him reeling backwards, but that wasn’t enough. Aaron was pissed, he was done with this shit, with the chaos and the lies and the secrets that had caused his marriage to come crashing down around him. He was so fucking done.

  “Jesus Christ, Aaron…”

  Lukas cradled his jaw, dropping his gaze briefly as he tried to get his breath back, which just gave Aaron another chance, another opportunity to rain his anger and frustration down on a man he saw as the cause of it all. But Lukas, he could fight back just as hard, aiming a fist straight into the centre of Aaron’s stomach, which caught him a little off guard, winding him slightly, but he pulled it back, stood straight back up, and he stared at Lukas. He stared straight at him, right into his eyes, neither of them moving.

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  Aaron knew one thing for sure – Lukas wouldn’t lie to him. If he’d slept with Quinn he’d take great pleasure in telling him that news.

  “Yes.”

  Aaron shook his head; that anger was returning, it was taking him over, filling him with an almost burning rage that he felt in every fiber of his being. But it was Lukas who aimed the next punch, except, Aaron had suddenly lost the will to fight this man, reaching out to grab Lukas’s wrist before he could land that punch. And this time he laughed. Aaron laughed, a dark, humor-less laugh that he could see confused Lukas a little.

  “OK. You got to have her one last time, I’ll give you that. But that was it, that really was the last time you get to touch her like that, the last time you even think about her in that way or so help me God I will become your worst fucking nightmare.”

  Lukas’s mouth curled up into a smirk, he wasn’t even fazed by Aaron’s threat, which was fine. That was nothing more than Aaron had expected. But that threat, it wasn’t an empty one. Aaron Rogers had a reputation for being one of the nicest men in Hollywood. One of the most approachable, one of the kindest, most respected actors out there. But Aaron Rogers had a secret of his own, a dark secret, one he would never share, because he’d been told not to. Warned, not to. For his own good. A secret that, if unearthed, could more than likely end his Hollywood career. His marriage. He could lose everything. A secret he’d never told a soul, the only other people who’d known had died a long time ago. A secret that could’ve destroyed his life, if he’d let it. But he’d done as he was told, and he’d turned it around, and Lukas Drake wasn’t about to take that life he’d worked so hard for away from him. But if pushed, Aaron would fight for what was his. He’d done it before. Quinn Baxter wasn’t the only woman he’d saved…

  Twenty-eight years ago Aaron Rogers hadn’t existed. Twenty-eight years ago Billy Myers had. Twenty-eight years ago Billy Myers shot a man. Killed him dead. He’d been eight years old. Just a child. But when he’d run inside that Sunday afternoon because the weather had turned and he hadn’t much fancied shooting hoops in the rain; when he’d run inside and found his uncle raping his own mother, that’s when Billy Myers grew up; when he grabbed his father’s gun, the one he knew he kept in the bottom of the sideboard, and shot his uncle through the back of the head, watching as he slumped forward onto his screaming mother, his blood and brains splashed all over the wall. And all Billy could do was stand there as he felt the gun being taken from his hand while all around him all he could hear were voices and sirens and his mother’s never ending screams.

  His father took the fall for what Billy had done, died in prison of a heart attack just a few days after Billy’s fourteenth birthday. He’d told Billy never to tell a soul what had really happened. He’d told him to look after his mom, to keep his head down, grow up to be a good boy, and that’s exactly what he’d done. They’d moved to a place where no one knew them, changed their names, kept themselves to themselves. And that’s when Aaron Rogers had been ‘born’. But when his mom had died of breast cancer when Aaron was sixteen, that was when he’d known he’d needed another new start. Something different. Something he’d always, secretly, really wanted.

  His whole life he’d loved losing himself in the world of movies and TV; enjoyed the escapism it provided from a world he’d tried not to be too big a part of. But now he wanted to be a part of it. He wanted to help bring that esca
pism to others while still living it himself – he’d wanted to be an actor. He’d wanted to play pretend for the rest of his life. So he’d moved to Los Angeles, took acting classes, created a whole new circle of friends; hung out in all the right places. By the age of nineteen Aaron Rogers was a TV star. Three days after his twentieth birthday he’d started shooting his first movie. And the rest was history. His secret remained intact. And there wasn’t another soul in the world who knew about his past. There wasn’t another soul who ever would.

  Twenty-Eight

  Quinn noticed every head turn as someone walked into the restaurant, and she craned her neck to see who it was. But Harry was ahead of her.

  “It’s Aaron. Do you want me to…?”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “OK. But you should really let me…”

  “I said it’s fine, Harry.”

  He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender and stood up, leaving the booth just as Aaron arrived.

  “Actually, Harry, I’d like you stay,” Aaron said, much to both Quinn and Harry’s surprise. “Just for a second. There might be something else you need to deal with.”

  “Something else…? Jesus! What the fuck’s happened now?” Harry sighed, sitting back down.

  “Let’s just say me and Lukas, we’ve had words. A few punches were thrown, he may have a bruised jaw…” Aaron dropped his head, and Quinn felt her stomach knot itself up so tight she could barely breathe.

  Harry just let out another sigh as he beckoned another press officer over. “OK… Did anyone see you?”

  Aaron looked up and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just seeing red, y’know?”

  “And where’s Lukas now?”

  “In his suite. Cleaning up.”

  “Did he fight back?” Harry asked as the press officer approached, leaning in so Harry could inform him that the situation they’d been in before, it had just gotten a touch more complicated. Yeah, there were times when he really loved his job.

  “He threw a couple of punches, hit me in the stomach.”