I managed a smile, but it quickly fell. I stared down at my hands. “Did I make a mistake? Going public with Lee like that?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Finally: “Look, you’re in a tough spot. Everything you do is under public scrutiny, and you’ve learned it’s less of a headache to just be out in the open than it is to try to hide something. That’s not even a thing that normal people in normal relationships have to consider.”
“But I am a normal person in a normal relationship.” The words were supposed to be defensive and sharp, but they came out as little more than a pathetic whisper.
Quinn put his arm around my shoulders. “You are, but you’re also under a spotlight, and that pretty much cancels out anything normal in your world.”
He was right, of course. I knew he was right. Always had. But sometimes, it was still hard to accept that the price of my career was putting my private life into a fishbowl.
Quinn squeezed my shoulder. “You know what’s seriously bullshit about this?”
“Besides all of it?”
“Besides that, yes.” He withdrew his arm and took off his glasses. “It’s the fact that if he were the musician and you were the porn star, everyone would be telling him ‘nicely done!’ while criticizing you for being a bimbo who sells her body. I mean, a guy in your position can leave a club with a woman on each arm and go back to a hotel. Everyone knows damn well what he’ll be doing, but as long as nobody overdoses on anything, nobody gives a shit. Fact is, you’re a woman. You’re a woman dating a man who fucks for a living. Everyone knows you’re a grown adult and if you’re dating someone, you’re probably fucking him, but since he does what he does, it’s right in their faces.” He pointed at his eyes with two fingers. “It’s right in front of them. They can’t ignore it. Nobody can pretend that you two are all chaste and pure, and that’s just not acceptable for Olivia Taylor.”
I blew out a breath. “Yeah. It is bullshit. Question is, what do I do?”
“It’ll blow over eventually,” he said softly. “This shit always does.”
“Think it’ll blow over before Risen Star drops me?”
Quinn was silent for a long moment, usually a sign he had some sort of deep, profound answer brewing on the tip of his tongue. But this time, he just sighed. “I don’t know.”
Neither did I.
Chapter Eighteen
Lee
Going public with our relationship took the mystery out of it. There was no need to sniff around and search for evidence to prove that everyone’s suspicions were true. It was out there, an open book, no more are they or aren’t they?
That was a double-edged sword, though, because everyone knowing about our relationship meant…everyone knew about our relationship.
The crude comments came from every direction. Bloggers. Gossip columnists. Late-night talk-show hosts. People on the street and in restaurants and everywhere we tried to go. Of course it wasn’t unusual for people to gossip and speculate about celebrities and their personal lives, but it never failed to amaze me how my profession gave everyone license to dig even deeper into Rachel’s private life.
And yeah, we could go out in public now without worrying about people figuring out we were together. Now we just had to deal with people who knew we were together and decided it was their business.
Restaurants around Los Angeles were used to this kind of thing, and more than a few were very accommodating to people who desperately needed a meal without a camera lens peering through the bushes. A long time ago, I’d thought places like that were just catering to pretentious assholes who thought they deserved VIP treatment everywhere they went. After befriending—and briefly dating—a few people who lived in the fishbowl, I got it.
And now, I found myself in a position where taking advantage of it definitely wasn’t a status symbol or a chance to throw money around. It was a damned necessity unless we never left our houses. At least until the hype died down. Which it would. Eventually. I hoped. God, I fucking hoped.
Three weeks had gone by since the Rock N Rhapsody Awards. Rachel had been in and out of town—out more than in, thanks to her grueling touring schedule—but she was home for a few days. Tonight, we’d managed to slip into Kobe of Cali undetected.
She watched a lemon slice swim between the ice cubes in her water glass. “The suits at Risen Star still aren’t happy.”
“I don’t imagine they are.” I played with the edge of my menu. “But are they willing to grit their teeth and deal with it, or are they still pressuring you to end it?”
Rachel laughed bitterly and set her jaw as she looked out the window. “Ooh, they’re not ready to grit their teeth and deal with it.”
“Still?”
She nodded. “They’re still dangling my recording contract over my head too.”
Guilt twisted in my chest. “Jesus. What are they saying now?”
“Well.” She paused, pulling an ice cube from her glass and slipping it under her tongue. “Last week, they were a little less obnoxious about it, but then over the weekend, one of those ultraconservative parenting groups started a petition to have my music pulled from shelves and download sites.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Her cheek rippled as she tightened her jaw. “Apparently a”—she raised her hands and made air quotes—“’shamelessly promiscuous and amoral whore’ has no business entertaining teenagers or being a role model for young girls.”
I sat back in my chair, shaking my head. “Seriously?”
Rachel nodded. “It’s not everyone, and I’ve got support from fans, but groups like this are fucking loud and persuasive. So now Risen Star is on the warpath again.” She rolled the ice cube around on her tongue and then bit down on it hard enough to make me shudder.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “If they disapprove of you dating me, fine. But…promiscuous? A whore?” I leaned forward again. “Because of what I do?”
“Yep.” She didn’t look at me.
“I am so sorry, Rachel.” I reached for her hand, and when I clasped our fingers together, she squeezed back, though not very enthusiastically. “There isn’t much more I can say, but…I am so sorry you’ve had to deal with this.”
“Well,” she said flatly, running her thumb alongside my hand, “as Rich told me the day after we went public, I made this bed.” She finally held on a little tighter, a little more emphatically, but still weakly. “I’ll lie in it.”
I put my other hand over both of ours. “I don’t want this to make you so miserable, though.”
“It’s not you. You know that.”
“And we both know you wouldn’t be catching so much hell if you were dating someone more…acceptable.”
Rachel looked in my eyes. “They’ll get over it. I want to be with you, and I’m not concerned about what other people think.”
If there was anything more heartbreaking than knowing she was going through all this hell because of me, it was her exhausted, resigned tone. The sound of someone who’d been beaten down and had just gotten tired of fighting it.
“Rachel,” I whispered. “I don’t want…” To lose you? To hurt you? To watch you get hurt because of me?
“If I didn’t want to be here,” she said, “I wouldn’t be.” She squeezed my hand. “What we’re doing? It’s worth it.”
I swallowed. “If it’s not, say the word.”
Rachel nodded. “I will.”
After dinner, we headed outside. On the way out, Rachel riffled around in her purse for her valet ticket, and I kept a hand on her elbow so she didn’t crash into anything.
But then I stopped. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Hmm?” Rachel looked up from her purse. Her face fell. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Sorry.”
I wished I was. The throngs of fans and an unnerving swarm of stalkerazzi were there, and they saw us.
I nudged Rachel toward the curb. “Let’s get out of here.�
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She swore under her breath and searched more frantically.
“Here’s the car,” I said as the valet pulled up beside us.
“The ticket. Shit, it’s—” She snatched something out of her purse. “Thank God.”
I shielded her as much as I could while she handed the ticket off to the valet, but it didn’t take long for people to close in around us on the sidewalk.
“Olivia, why a porn star?”
“Ms. Taylor, aren’t you worried about catching diseases?”
“How can you perform for young girls when you’re—”
I slammed the passenger door and cut off the voices, but Rachel had to be careful pulling out because part of the crowd had spilled onto the street in front of us. While the valets herded everyone off the road, Rachel eased out into traffic. This was one of those times I wished she had a bodyguard or a driver—she didn’t like an entourage, and driving herself made her feel more normal—so she could keep her head down until we were in the clear.
I never thought I’d curse the invention of camera phones, but tonight? Fuck every last one of them and the jerks who invented them. Every time I looked in any direction, someone had a phone pointed at us. Sometimes they had the decency to at least try to be surreptitious about it, but most of the time it was obnoxiously blatant.
I shielded my face with my hand, wondering what headlines and commentary would accompany these pictures in the morning. I’d go to my grave wondering how the A-listers—including Rachel—put up with this shit on a daily basis.
And deep down, I wondered how long she’d put up with it in exchange for dating me.
I’d never regretted my career, but now? Now I didn’t know what to think. What if that career cost me Rachel? What if it cost me the first woman I’d ever felt this way about?
Because no woman had had this effect on me. Ever. The pang of disappointment whenever I logged into the Xbox and didn’t see her username, and the little thrill when I did. The dull ache under my ribs when our schedules kept us from more than the odd text for a few days, and the… God, was that giddiness? That fluttery feeling when we finally reconnected.
I didn’t want to lose any of that. I didn’t want to lose Rachel. Even if I quit working in porn right then and there, the publicity and the backlash would continue. She’d still catch hell for me, and our relationship would still be hanging in the balance.
I didn’t know what to do.
Neither of us said much on the drive back to my condo or even on the walk up the stairs to my bedroom. Once we got there, she sank onto the edge of my bed, and her shoulders slumped.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
I sat beside her. “It wasn’t just me, baby.”
She didn’t speak, just leaned against me as I put my arm around her. After a long moment, she ran a hand through her hair, the gesture slow and fatigued as if it took everything she had left. “I’m exhausted.”
“I know.”
“I mean, exhausted. Like…” Looking up at me, she bit her lip and raised her eyebrows.
I touched her face. “Do you want to just go to sleep? We don’t have to do anything if you’re not up for it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’m pretty beat myself.”
We got undressed and got into bed. Slowly, lethargically, without an ounce of enthusiasm from either of us. Any other night, the sight of Rachel swimming in my Raiders jersey would have had me reaching for her and catching my breath. I did reach for her, but only for contact, not for anything more.
She felt small in my arms. Fragile. Huddled in on herself. I couldn’t even rest my arm comfortably on her waist because I was sure she’d somehow crumble under its weight. I didn’t pull it back, though. The tension in my shoulder climbed up into my neck, and I’d regret it tomorrow, but I didn’t want to let her go.
I closed my eyes, nuzzled her hair, and breathed her in. I didn’t have it in me to have sex tonight, but I still wanted to be near her like this, and I wanted to feel something. I wanted a few goose bumps on my forearms or a memory ignited by that familiar shampoo.
But all I got was a sinking feeling in my gut.
It was the first time I’d held Rachel like this—her warm body molded against mine, our fingers laced together over her stomach—and didn’t feel a thing.
I was just as numb, and more than a little tense, when I walked off the set the next evening. How I was going to make it through the rest of the shoot, I had no idea, but I’d find a way. Fortunately, Marta was here.
As I stepped into the room that was, for the time being, my dressing room, Marta looked up from her paperback. “How are you feeling?”
I replied with a taut shrug and untied the white bathrobe. “I’ll live.”
She patted the table. “Something going on with Rachel?”
No point in trying to get the truth past her, so I just said, “Yeah.”
“No surprise there,” she said. “You two have been all over the news lately.”
The weight of the world pressed harder on my shoulders. It took all the energy I had left to strip out of the robe—I still had on boxers—and lie on the massage table.
Marta went to work. “Wow, honey. You really are tense.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt it.”
“Something else going on?” she asked. “Besides being hounded by the media and all of that?”
“That’s pretty much it,” I said. “Never thought about how stressful that would be.”
“Seems like it would be hell,” she muttered. “Is it worth it?”
She had to have felt all of my muscles tense beneath her hands.
Was it worth it?
“I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “Lately, I just… I don’t fucking know.” I lifted my head off the doughnut pillow and turned toward her. “I think today was the most difficult day I’ve ever had on a set.”
“What do you mean?”
I swallowed. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel. And the fact that what I do—what I was trying to do all day today—is the reason she’s taking so much heat right now.”
“But if not for your job, you and Rachel never would have met.”
“I can’t decide if that would have been a good thing or a bad one.” I sighed. “I feel like I should let her go, but I can’t help thinking that would be the biggest mistake I’ll ever make.”
“It’s a tough call,” she said. “If you let her go, you might regret it. But if you get back together with her, and the record company dumps her over this, then she might resent you.”
I swallowed, but didn’t speak.
After a moment, Marta said, “It’s really fucked up, if you think about it.”
“Which part?”
“The part where everyone’s calling her a whore, saying she’s dirty, diseased, ruined for life.” Marta clicked her tongue. “You’re the one fucking women for a living.”
With anyone else, I might have been insulted by the comment, but it was just typical blunt Marta. And she was right. I had sex with other women on camera, and for dating me—monogamously—Rachel was the dirty slut.
“Hooray for double standards,” Marta grumbled.
“No kidding.”
I released my breath as she continued working on my shoulders. “Some of the girls at the set think I should be flattered that Rachel’s taking this much of a risk for me, but…” I trailed off, shaking my head. “I know what it’s like to fight tooth and nail to break into a career, and she’s fighting tooth and nail to keep a career half the people in this town would sell their souls to have.” I looked at Marta. “If she loses that because of me, she’s going to resent me forever.”
“And if I know you,” she said softly, “you’ll hate yourself over it too.”
I lowered my gaze and nodded. “Yeah. I will.” With all the shit she’s been through because of me? I already do.
“You really do have some serious feelings for her, don’t you?” Marta asked.
“Probably more than I should.”
Any other day, Marta would have made sure I knew just how true that last part was. She’d have told me I was an idiot for letting myself get this attached and emphatically warned me against carrying on.
But she said nothing. She didn’t need to.
Deep down, it didn’t matter what I did. If I walked away, I’d hurt Rachel. If she stayed with me, we’d damage and possibly destroy her career. Every path ended with her getting hurt and us going our separate ways. The only variable was how much damage was done to her life and to our ability to stay friends.
No matter how much I wished otherwise, there was no way Rachel and I could make this work.
Chapter Nineteen
Rachel
Some things were worse than being mobbed by obnoxious stalkerazzi and fans with no sense of privacy.
Being alone didn’t usually bother me. Being away from someone I was dating? I could handle that.
But tonight, while I sat here on my couch in my silent, empty home, Lee was Buck Harder. He was on the set, probably fucking the hell out of a woman with an equally comical stage name, giving her everything he had so people could buy the DVD or download the video and jerk off.
It hadn’t bothered me until now. Not really, anyway. I knew about it, and I wasn’t crazy about it, but it was part of being with Lee. I could tell myself that Lee wasn’t Buck Harder, but the fact was, Buck was as much a part of Lee as Olivia was a part of Rachel.
And right now, Lee, the man I was falling for so much harder than I should have been, was probably fucking another woman. In front of people, and cameras, and in front of a world that also knew he was dating me.
I hugged myself tighter, rubbing my hands up and down my arms like I could brush away this dirty, creepy feeling. Not because my boyfriend was a porn star, but because of what people thought. What they said. What must have been going through every one of their minds whenever they saw me onstage or heard me on the radio.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I rested my elbows on my knees and dug my fingers into my temples. God, I just wanted to not care for a little while. A few hours, maybe an entire night, of just not giving a fuck. One night where it didn’t matter that the world disapproved of the man I was dating.
The Princess and the Porn Star Page 21
