“Now, Andrea.”
She flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and huffed out of the room, the Micah guy following at her heels with his gaze on the floor. Smart man.
Once they were gone, I turned back to Kelly. “Where is she?”
She dropped her cheek to her shoulder. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Come on!” I slammed my fist into the table, my breath tearing from my lungs like I was inhaling razor blades. “She must have been moved to a different film set. Rich wouldn’t have just let her quit.”
But Kelly simply stood there, her chin high, her hands folded in front of her calmly. She was like a different woman from who I met months ago.
My heart throbbed painfully from behind my ribcage. A curse slipped through my lips as I slid into a chair. I fell forward, my head dropping into my shaking palms. How the fuck did I get here? I know what Lucy wanted. What she needed. But I couldn’t fucking give it to her.
“Ash,” Kelly said, her voice surprisingly gentle.
“What?” I muttered from behind my hands.
“Lucy loves you.”
My eyes blinked open, snapping to stare at Kelly. “She said that?”
She regretfully bit her lip before shaking her head no. “Not exactly. But it’s pretty obvious.”
I snorted and shook my head before pushing off my knees and stalking toward the door. Kelly’s voice stopped me. Gone was the gentle tone from seconds ago. In its place was a firmness.
“What the hell are you so scared of?”
I sighed, pausing just steps away from my escape. “I’m not scared,” I snapped back. “I just can’t give her what she needs.”
I heard the clicking of her heels stepping closer. “Well, that’s just a load of bullshit,” she whispered, right behind me.
I spun around, face to face with her. “It’s not—”
“It is. It’s total bullshit. I know people walk on eggshells around you because you’re the director. Because you have your own office here at the studio.” She paused, taking a breath before adding, “And because of what happened to your wife. People watch what they say around you—and how they say it. But right now? You’re not my boss. At this moment, you’re just the man who broke my friend’s heart.”
I swallowed, momentarily taken aback that she called Lucy a friend and because she was being so forthright. She was right. People were always cautious around me. It began around the time of Brie’s death and it just seemed to stick as I got more and more temperamental on set. “What’s your point, Kelly?”
“My point is that your reasons for not being with Lucy aren’t real. This idea that you’re not good enough for her, or that you can’t give her what she needs is total bullshit. Let her decide what she needs. Let her decide what’s good enough for herself. And as for you? You need to dig deeper. Because there’s a reason beneath that—your real reason for walking away from an awesome girl like Lucy.” She paused, pressing her ruby colored lips together before adding, “And if you really are walking away from her… then you can’t keep showing up in her life. You can’t keep calling. It’s not fair to her when she’s trying so desperately hard to get over you.”
I stared in awe at Kelly, my mouth gaping open. I laughed despite the utter despair I felt in my gut. “How the hell did you get so wise?”
She rolled her eyes, grabbing a binder of designs off the table and moving beyond me out the door. “I’ve always been wise. You’ve just been too arrogant to see it.” Despite the harsh words, she sent me a wink before leaving me there alone in the costume department. I was surrounded by memories of Lucy. She was all over this room. I could see her hand-scribbled notes on the whiteboard. Her signature was on the invoices scattered on the table. Her design aesthetic in the careful choice of fabrics and outfits. I was surrounded by her and yet…
And yet I was utterly and completely alone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ash
Two days later, I took a half day off from the studio. I had planned for this months ago. Had told Richard that no matter what, I needed to be in Los Angeles with an afternoon free to pay tribute to my wife. He didn’t fight me on it. He never did. Year after year, we planned filming around this day. The crew was prepping to go on location to Georgia. In actuality, the characters were supposed to be in Florida, but Georgia had massive tax breaks for filming.
But for now? None of that mattered. Work didn’t matter. Filming didn’t matter. Prep for going on location didn’t matter. I may not have made the time for Brie when she was alive… it may even be the reason she’s no longer with me. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Not in life. And not in death.
I packed myself a small picnic. The same meal Brie and I had shared the afternoon I proposed to her... an assortment of cheese, turkey, salami, Marcona almonds, Castelvetrano olives, and a bottle of cheap Pinot Noir. Because when you’re young and in your twenties, you always think Pinot Noir is the refined wine to drink. I chuckled to myself. It was the same exact Pinot we’d had all those years ago, a six dollar bottle from the grocery store.
The hike itself didn’t take me long, only around thirty minutes as I neared the halfway point to the top of Runyon. There were no picnic tables. No benches. But I sat down on a small patch of grass, and pulled out the snacks and wine. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have bothered pouring myself a glass—lips to bottle, I would have chugged that thing straight. But this was our anniversary. And if Brie had been here with me, we would have poured the red wine into little plastic cups and clinked them together.
I squeezed my eyes shut, picturing what Brie would look like now. After seven years of marriage. As a mother to a five-year-old. I pictured her here beside me. Imagined what our little girl would have looked like, playing in the grass beside us, picking dandelions and tying them together to make a necklace. Would she have had Brie’s curly hair? My blue eyes?
I held my plastic cup of wine out toward the sky. “Happy anniversary, babe.” Then, I took a swig from my wine, ignoring the prick of tears stinging my eyes.
Hey you. I heard Brie’s voice in my head, clear as day. Happy seven-year itch.
I smiled at that, almost laughing because it’s exactly what she would have said. But then, those words rang truer in my heart than they should have. Seven years and my heart had finally chosen someone else. No. It hadn’t. I was resisting that. “I miss you,” I said, letting my words dissipate in the hot, dry air as though it was a single drop of water and the Los Angeles sun could make it disappear as though I’d never uttered the words.
I miss you, too. But staying miserable and alone won’t bring me back.
The tear slid down my cheek and I ignored it, taking a bite of cheese.
The sun beat down on my bare shoulders, burning them, but I didn’t even care. I wanted the pain. I wanted to be punished.
I closed my eyes once more as a soft breeze brushed over my face. In the distance, I heard the pounding of footsteps—runners making their way up the trail. I heard the hum of mild chatter and somewhere along the trail, a child’s laughter cut through the ambient noise. My eyes snapped open at the sound. “Kelly said my excuses are bullshit. That there’s another reason why…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words aloud. To admit to my dead wife, here in our sacred place, that I was falling for another woman.
That Kelly is a smart chick.
So, she agreed. Or at least, my subconscious did.
Dig deeper.
“I think… I think that by letting myself be with someone else—”
Love someone else, Ash. Say it.
“I think that by letting myself love Lucy, it will somehow take away what you and I had. By loving Lucy, I’ll have to let go of you. Say goodbye to you. And I’m not ready for that. I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready. And that’s not fair to her. She deserves what you and I had—the first love. The lasting love. But you’ll always be this presence in my life and I don’t
think she can handle it.”
She can’t handle it… or you can’t handle it? Because you’ve never even given her the chance to try. You didn’t even give her the option.
No, I guess I didn’t. I grabbed a few almonds and popped them into my mouth, chewing in silence as I twirled Brie’s ring on my pinky. I couldn’t go back in time and change what happened with Brie. And I wasn’t able to move on. I was stuck in limbo. Torn between the husband I once was and the husband I could potentially be again.
You need to apologize to her.
I snorted at that. Apologize? I’d tried that already and failed miserably. I needed to do more than apologize. I needed to open up a vein and bleed my past all over her. I needed to show her how sorry I was. I needed to show her I was really ready to move on. If I was ready to move on.
I leaned forward, digging my fingers into the dirt and watched as the reddish grit covered portions of Brie’s ring. My throat grew tight, clogged with a hollow sort of misery. Was it time? Time to bury her ring, five years after I buried her body.
I looked up and through my tears, the Los Angeles horizon was distorted, like I was looking at it through a warped piece of glass.
It’s time, Ash.
A shaky breath trembled in my chest as I wrapped my fingers around the now gritty ring and wiggled it off my pinky. Digging with my hands, I dropped it a few inches into the dirt, then covered it. Using my finger, I wrote our initials, then poured a bit of wine around it, smiling through my sadness. Smiling through my tears.
I loved her ring. I loved wearing it. It didn’t feel like a shackle, binding me to her, but rather a sweet memory of my first love.
I finished what wine was left in my glass, and corked the bottle, packing up the nearly untouched food. As I stood, my stomach wobbled and my eyes fixed onto the freshly disturbed mound of dirt that only I knew held her wedding band.
It hurt like a motherfucker leaving a piece of her here. “Is this the right thing to do?”
But there was no answer this time.
I took a deep breath. This was her spot. I could still visit her whenever I wanted.
I wiped my eyes of the remaining tears and slung the backpack over my shoulders.
From the outer pocket of my backpack, the corner stub of my flight information stuck out where my assistant had printed it for me earlier that day. A thought breezed through my mind as I snatched my phone and started googling places near where we were filming in Georgia. Would she let me gift her something so grand? Would she even accept my apology and come back to work for Silhouette? There was only one way to find out.
As I made my way back down the canyon, I was on the phone with the airlines. They would hold the reservation for forty-eight hours. It was much faster going down and as I exited Runyon, I made my way to the final stop for my anniversary tradition. The coffee shop on the corner where Brie had insisted we had earned ourselves a peanut butter cookie.
I was pretty sure I looked like shit as I pushed open the glass doors. Sweaty. Dirty. My fingernails caked in red clay dirt. But inside? Inside, I felt hope for the first time in a couple of weeks. Maybe this could be the gesture that wins Lucy back.
I waited patiently in the busy line to get my iced coffee and peanut butter cookie, the final homage to Brie when across the café, I heard a familiar voice. “What? You never showed her The Wizard of Oz? Shame on you, Daddy.”
Lucy. My heart leapt inside my chest, slamming against my ribs like a caged lion fighting its way out of the den. I left my place in line, following her voice. And then, I froze.
Because there in the café was my Lucy with a little girl in her lap. And sitting across from her was Erik Larson. A Dominant I recognized from LnS.
And she’d just called him Daddy. White hot anger seared through my veins like my blood was replaced with lava and it felt like I was seeing red. She couldn’t have moved on already… could she? So soon? And with another Dom in my community?
“Don’t worry, baby girl, we’ll change that soon,” Erik said. He smiled at her. At my Shorty. My face flamed and I knew I should walk away. Call the airline and cancel her flight. Turn in the opposite direction and let her have that life that I could never have.
But something in me snapped. Seeing her with a child. With another Dom in the community. Happy. Playful. The same fucking Judy Garland banter we’d had.
And I couldn’t look away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lucy
Erik’s daughter, Mackenzie, or Mack for short sat in my lap coloring. I’d bought her a Golden Age of Hollywood coloring book that she was going to town on.
I had to say… even though I’d only been doing this nanny thing for a week, it was fun. Not always easy, but Mack was a sweet girl and Erik was a great boss. Even if it was only temporary.
“Where’s Daddy?” Mack asked me for what felt like the millionth time that afternoon.
I turned my wrist over to show her the face of the watch. “He’ll be here any minute. He said by five o’clock… which is when the big hand hits the twelve.”
True to his word, Erik showed up right at five o’clock and Mack squealed when she saw him. But when he tried to pick her up she whined. “No, Daddy! We’re not done coloring yet!”
He slid his hand down her tangled pigtails, “Baby girl, Ms. Lucy needs to get going, I’m sure.”
I waved my hand at him. “I don’t mind staying a few minutes longer.” I took a sip of my iced coffee which was only half-finished. “Besides, I need to finish my coffee.”
Erik gave me a grateful smile. “Thank you.” Then, he looked at Mack. “One more page, then we leave, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“We’ve got to choose a really good page to end with.” I said, helping her flip through the pages and stopped on a scene from Wizard of Oz of Dorothy and crew with their arms linked for the iconic song of the movie. “Here we go!”
“Who’s that?” she asked, with her little lisp, pointing at Dorothy.
“Silly goose!” I dove my fingers into her sides and she squirmed laughing. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who Dorothy Gale from Kansas is!”
But she only met my question with a blank look and a shrug.
“You haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz?” I asked. Okay, I might have been overreacting a bit, but come on.
She shook her head no and my jaw dropped as I looked up at Erik. His face had turned pink and he was scratching the back of his neck. “What? You never showed her The Wizard of Oz?” I clicked my tongue and wagged my finger at him. “Shame on you, daddy.”
“Shame on you,” Mack repeated me, not looking up from where she’d already started coloring.
“Don’t worry, baby girl,” Erik said, brushing his knuckle down Mack’s pudgy cheek. “We’ll change that soon.” He looked beyond my shoulder, his brows knitting. “Ash?” he asked.
“Ash?” I repeated, spinning in my seat to find Ash there, just outside of the ordering line and staring directly at us.
“Who’s Ash?” Mack repeated us, her eyes still glued on her coloring book.
I squeezed her in a hug and slid her onto Erik’s lap. “Is it okay if I take off?”
Erik nodded, but gave me a careful glance. “Of course. Is everything okay?”
For a moment, I was caught off-guard by the question, but them remembered he and Ash both frequent LnS. Of course he knew Ash… or at the very least, knew of Ash. And that meant…oh, crap. It meant Ash probably knew him. Knew he was a Dom as well.
My eyes fluttered closed briefly, and when I looked over my shoulder at him, I could read his thoughts as easily as if they were my own. He thought I was moving on already. With another Dom.
Which, on one hand, I had every right to move on with anyone I chose. But it’s simply not what this was.
“Everything’s fine.”
He gave me a worried smile as I stood and he hugged Mack closer. “Thanks for this week, Lucy. We won’t need you at all next week because s
he’ll be with her mother at D-I-S-N-E-Y-L-A-N-D.”
“No problem,” I confirmed, and gave Mack another wave before crossing the café to where Ash stood, now with his back to me.
I’d barely approached when he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here.”
“It’s okay. For as big as our city is, it can be pretty small sometimes, too.”
“Isn’t that the fucking truth,” Ash said, not bringing his eyes to mine. “I only come to this coffee shop once a year.”
I looked back and forth from his red-rimmed eyes to the window, where I could see the outline of Runyon Canyon. Today must be his anniversary. I dropped my gaze to his hand where he wore Brie’s ring and I gasped—actually gasped—when I saw his bare finger. The skin around his pinky paler and slightly indented from years of wear. “Ash,” I whispered, “Where’s your ring?”
My throat knotted when he didn’t answer my question. “Are you and Erik together?”
Something about how he asked that tore my heart in half like tissue paper. “No. I’m his new nanny. For his daughter.” I fought the urge to add, not that it’s any of your business. He was in enough pain as it was without me adding to it.
His sigh of relief was like a salve for my nerves. “Can I walk you to your car?’ he asked. I hesitated for a moment until those crystal clear eyes met mine. “Lucy… please.”
I nodded and as we pushed open the heavy glass doors into the hot, dry air, I pointed up the road where I had parked a few blocks away at a playground I had taken Mack to earlier that day.
We walked in silence for almost the entirety of the first block. It was Ash’s heavy sigh that pulled my attention away from where my flip-flops hit the pavement with each satisfying thwack.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Ash said. “I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you about Brie, about how we met, about her laugh, and how when I made her laugh hard enough, she would do this funny wheezing sound. I want to tell you about what a wonderful woman she was. But also how she was far from perfect.”
Role Play (Silhouette Studios) Page 37
