by Lissa Bilyk
I focused on his eyes, his soul-piercing, heavenly blue eyes. “I’m being realistic. What exactly is it that you’d want with someone like me?”
He placed both his hands on either side of me and leaned in close until I fell under the spell of his scent, smoky sandalwood and heady. Until his bright blue eyes, half hooded, filled my vision.
“One night of unbridled passion,” he said huskily. My insides flipped and I clenched my legs together to stop from toppling over in surprise. “One night of you and me, no strings attached; just mind-blowing sex and none of the complications.” His lips brushed my ear. “I’m good, Tori. I’ll make it worth your while.”
My breath caught in my throat and I swallowed hard. It physically hurt me to push him away, but I had to protect my heart.
“By now you know I think you’re the most gorgeous creature I’ve ever seen in my life,” I whispered as he closed his eyes and nuzzled his fine nose against my cheek. I closed my eyes, and my voice wobbled. “I’ve had a crush on you since my childhood. But even so, I deserve better than that, Cameron Campbell. I won’t be another notch on your bedpost. I won’t be just a fling. It’s all or nothing, for me. All or nothing.”
He drew in a sharp breath and stepped back. His eyes widened and his mouth twitched as he looked for the right words to what was clearly his first ever rejection - and by a fat girl!
I took the opportunity to slide out from under him, grab my bag, and make my escape. By the time I heard him yell my name, the elevator doors were closing and I was in tears.
Chapter Six
The next day I took the train to work. I told myself it was for two reasons: so I wouldn’t be alone with Cameron again, and so that I’d be wearing enough layers for the winter weather that if I did end up alone with him, I wouldn’t be able to feel any ‘accidental’ touches.
I launched right into my work as soon as I arrived and was busy helping sort the props with the props master when Cameron arrived backstage.
“Tori?”
“I’m busy, Cameron.”
“Can I please have five minutes? I’m sure Scott will understand.”
“No, Cameron, I’m busy. I have a million things to do. Go and sort out your costumes, I’m sure we’ll be starting as soon as John’s ready.”
“Is everything okay with you two?” Scott asked as Cameron disappeared into the recesses of the theatre without another word.
“Fine,” I said in a clipped tone, then tried to muster as much enthusiasm as I could. “We’re just busy today. It’s gonna be a big show, a big show!”
We ran all of Act One as a full costume dress rehearsal. I sat next to John in the auditorium making notes and tried to ignore the fact that while I crumbled inside Cameron seemed fine, his movements tight and controlled, his passion as Heathcliff ferocious, demonic. I closed my eyes every time he kissed Juliet.
After she died (spoilers) Juliet came to sit in the row behind me. She wouldn’t be able to do that at tomorrow’s run through, because that was our tech rehearsal, and she would be required to stay backstage. The set was complete except for painting, and everything seemed to be running smoothly except for effects and lighting. That was the cause of so much delay, and why Juliet found herself able to whisper in my ear, “He’s in a foul mood backstage.”
I tightened my grip on my pen until my fingers ached. I turned my head away from John and said quietly, “I’m not responsible for how he behaves.”
She shrugged in the gloom. “Just thought you should know.”
There was nothing I could do. As soon as the dress rehearsal was over John wanted to kick everyone non-essential out and do a dry run – a rehearsal of the technical aspects sans cast, including Christine backstage making all her important stage manager calls. As John was at the theatre, so would I be. He might want me to walk around onstage finding cues for the lighting guys. From what I’d heard during pre-production, dry runs were incredibly boring.
We broke for lunch and I disappeared from the theatre to take a walk outside and be by myself. The sky was grey and overcast as usual, but a bright wind that comes from impending rain rushed through the heaviness in the air. I grabbed a sandwich from a deli and made it back to the theatre in time to prep for Act Two.
John handed me a note about Juliet’s make up and asked me to run it down to her team. I stifled a sigh. If I was quick, I could avoid Cameron.
Juliet’s dressing room was chaotic as usual. I passed on John’s note and tried to slip away but she called to me as she saw me retreating in her mirror. “He’s in his dressing room – just tell him to not to manhandle me next time – I’ll get bruises!”
I did sigh this time. It was unavoidable. I knocked on Cameron’s door and waited. His hairdresser answered and visibly sighed with relief when she saw me.
“You’d better come in.” She stood back. He’d obviously mentioned something about me to his team. Or maybe more than just Juliet knew that I was mad for him.
He had his back to me but his face lit up in the mirror when he saw me. He glanced around at his team. “Uh, can you guys give us a moment, please?”
““I just came to tell you that Juliet’s going to bruise if you keep treating her so roughly,” I said. The three ladies paused and glanced back at him, but he made a shooing motion with his hands.
“I promise to be more gentle,” he said, rising from his chair and moving close to me. He wore his Heathcliff wig, a black shaggy shoulder-length thing. I ran my hand down one of his jackets hanging in the middle of the room on the rack. It was a beautifully tailored piece, and black, like Heathcliff’s soul.
“What do you want to say to me?” I said after a moment, nerves twisting my belly.
“May I kiss you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t complicate things.”
“What is there to complicate? I like you, you like me…”
“It’s a tangled web of complications to begin with, Cameron.”
“Call me Cam,” he said gently. He reached out and placed a long index finger under my chin, tilted my head back so I had to look at him. “Why did you rush out last night?”
I blinked. “It’s not personal. I just… you were confronting and I needed to get out of there. I don’t want to make this into a big deal.”
His mesmerising eyes bore into mine. “It is a big deal. I made a mistake.”
I scoffed and turned away, breaking eye contact. “Yeah, I know. Biggest mistake of your life. Your first rejection?”
He moved as if to grab me, but thought better of it, and brushed his fingers across my arm instead. I tried to supress a delicious shiver. “No, Tori, not that. I don’t regret asking you. I only regret the manner of my approach. I should have treated you like a lady. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m glad we sorted that out now.” I tried to act flippant, like he meant as little to me as I clearly did to him, but I wasn’t an actor. My shoulders crumpled and my head drooped as I thought about my own mistake, how I’d lost my one chance to be with him, even for just one night. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m very busy and important.”
He moved to block the exit. “I tried to go after you but you were gone by the time I got to the car park.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about this!” I hissed, desperate to slip around him before he could see me cry.
“Leslie said you were furious.”
“She what?” I stopped. I had swept past Leslie with tears streaming down my face. In what universe was broken-hearted the same as furious?
“She said you said you never wanted to see me again, and I said that was going to be difficult because we work together.”
“I never said that!” I yelled. “I was crying, you dick!”
Juliet popped her head around the corner. “The whole cast can hear you, guys.”
“Thank you,” Cameron told her, and shut the door before turning back to me and leaning against it, trapping me in the room w
ith him. My adrenalin spiked. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t incredibly turned on by this result, but my heart wouldn’t lie. I still wanted him. I liked how thoughtful and caring he was. He was incredibly sweet, and I’d fucked up everything already.
He crossed his muscular arms over his broad chest, clearly indicating he wasn’t letting me go anytime soon. “Why were you crying, Tori?”
I couldn’t hold back the sobs anymore. “Because I’m a stupid, lost, lonely little girl and I can’t do what you want me to do because I can’t bear to be hurt, especially not by you!”
He pushed off from the door and moved towards me with the slinky elegance of a big cat. “I won’t hurt you. I never will.” He took hold of my upper arms and squeezed just enough so that the pressure set sparks tingling to the tips of my fingers. He angled his body close and I tilted my head back to keep eye contact with him, showing him I wouldn’t back off, wouldn’t be intimidated. Tears slipped down my cheeks and he released one arm to wipe them away with his thumb, heat spreading from his skin to mine. Then he slowly lowered his head and, ever so gently, like two butterflies bumping in flight, he pressed his lips against mine.
I froze, completely unable to move. I had to tell him why I was so freaked out by the thought of a one night stand, but I was afraid the fog would lift from his star struck eyes and he’d see me for what I truly was.
Undesirable. Unworthy. Broken.
When I didn’t respond – I felt so wound up I might burst, and I had to hold completely still – he increased the pressure of his mouth and darted his tongue out to explore my lips. Without even realising it my mouth opened in response and I felt his tongue against mine. I made a little noise of surprise, and in response he dropped one hand to snake around my waist and pull me close while the other wound into my hair, anchoring me. My hands ran up his torso to rest on his ribs and I kissed him back, twining my fingers into the material of his Heathcliff costume.
The backstage bells rang. Instinctively I pulled away, but he held me too close. I felt panic welling in my breast and shoved at him, desperate to put space between us and get some air. I liked him holding me but I couldn’t handle him holding me still – it reminded me too much of things I’d rather forget. I pushed harder at him and he seemed to get the message because he released me, a goofy grin on his face. When he looked at me again, when he saw my eyes, his smile dropped.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t… I can’t do that.”
His lady-killer smile returned. “You seemed to enjoy it.”
“I can’t be vulnerable with someone I don’t trust.”
He looked like I’d slapped him. And maybe I had. While he stood shell shocked, I made my escape.
I didn’t see Cameron until John called everyone to the stage for notes, then dismissed them all with a warning to be on time tomorrow, if not early, because it was a ‘big, big day’ and the tech run would exhaust everyone. I avoided eye contact and pretended to be busy, and he left me alone.
Three hours later John dismissed me from the dry run, telling me to go home and get some sleep. Gratefully I picked up my bag and made my way through the ticket lobby. It was currently in the middle of its own transformation with draped charcoal-grey velvet covering every bare wall, branches of fake heather everywhere, and other plants I didn’t know hiding the program seller’s podium behind crumbling, ruin-like rocks. It bordered on the Gothic for a Yorkshire-based Gothic play, and it looked splendid, even only half finished.
After admiring the transformation, I pushed open the heavy door only to be battered in the face with wind and rain and almost knocked off my feet as the door tried to close on me. I wrestled with it and slipped outside to huddle under the old theatre’s overhang. I dreaded having to walk to the train station in this weather, and in the dark! I kicked myself for leaving my car at home.
As I steeled myself to step into the rain a sleek black car pulled up in front of me and the window slid down.
“Get in,” he said.
I cast a look at the sky, black overhead with the threat of snow, my face pelted with freezing rain, and thought better of refusing.
The inside of his car was warm and comfortable. “The rental?” I said.
He nodded, and pulled onto the road. “What’s your address?”
I told him. “Have you been waiting outside this entire time?”
He didn’t answer, but I saw a muscle in his jaw twitch.
I tried again. “Rehearsal ended three hours ago.”
“I couldn’t see your car so I figured you caught the train in an effort to avoid me.”
Now it was my turn to not answer for a minute. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Cameron, what I said earlier-”
“It doesn’t matter!” he exploded, before wrenching control of his emotions. After a long moment with me staring out the passenger window, he said, “I shouldn’t expect you to believe me when I tell you that I’ve changed. I’m not the stud in the magazines anymore. It’s so easy to find a casual encounter in London – I’m tired of that. I want more than that.”
My heart fluttered, but my head was sceptical. Was this his new approach, now that he knew what I wanted? I give myself to him, and he leaves the next day and never calls?
“I want you to come on a date with me. Dinner, a film, whatever. Hyde Park. Blackpool. Paris. I don’t care – anything! Something where you can learn about the real me, not the me the tabloids love, and I can learn about you, and everything you’re afraid to tell me.”
“You think it will be that easy?” I didn’t mean to sound rude – I was genuinely curious.
“I don’t know: I’ve never dated anyone before.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“And you only know about me what the tabloids tell you and what I told you last night.”
“I don’t think this will work,” I said, trying to take the sting off the second rejection. “We’re too different, you and I. You’re a celebrity and I’m a nobody.”
“Can’t you tell that I don’t care about that?” he snapped, slamming an open palm down on top of the steering wheel. “Damn it, woman, you make it so hard for me to think clearly, sitting there smelling like heaven. I just want to reach over and-”
He didn’t finish the sentence because I turned my face away from him. He put the hand that had been about to touch me back on the steering wheel.
I took a steadying breath. “It’s flattering that you think you’re attracted to me, Cameron, but I need something more than that. Not a one night stand, no matter how good you think you are.”
“So date me!”
“Not when I think it’s only an excuse to get into my pants.”
“I very much want to get into your pants, but did you ever stop to think that if I just wanted to get off I could, as you so elegantly pointed out last night, basically pick a girl off the street to fuck?”
My face burned with shame. Of course he was right – he was so far out of my league that even his asking me on a date didn’t seem real. He probably meant it as a compliment – I could have anyone I want but I choose you!
But all I heard was, I could have anyone I want, why are you playing hard to get?
Except that I wasn’t playing hard to get. I was protecting my heart that could so easily be broken by a notorious playboy.
He pulled over and before the car had completely stopped I had ripped the seatbelt off and leapt out. I remembered my manners enough to shout a thank you before I slammed the door shut, then I ran to the safety of my apartment where Cameron Campbell would never set foot because it was a shithole and he was a glorious god who could have any woman he wanted.
Why would he want me?
A minute later my phone chimed.
I’m not giving up on you. I’ll woo you like the days of yore if that’s what it takes. I’ll prove myself worthy of you. Heathcliff’s got nothing on me.
Chapter Seven
I’d spent the night buried under three blankets cuddling Bronte and talking to her about my problem. Of course, she didn’t care – she only cared that I cuddled her and shared my body heat because I didn’t want to waste money on my gas heater, and my apartment was freezing.
I briefly thought about running back inside and pretending I no longer existed, but he’d seen me, and even wrapped up in a beanie, turtleneck, vest and scarf, he couldn’t hide his thousand watt smile. I smiled in response as I walked gingerly down the wet steps of my apartment building and made my way to his car. He didn’t seem mad, even with the way I’d left things last night. Even with all the horrible things I’d said to him over the last couple of days.
Maybe he really was being genuine. It was so hard to tell with a man who lied for a living.
“Is this your wooing me?” I teased, taking the cup he offered and sipping it gratefully. It was hot chocolate, sweet and bitter and rich. I was touched that he remembered my preference.
“I’m taking you to work and I’m taking you home. We don’t have enough time for a date, so this time I have alone with you will have to do.” His eyes darted to my apartment and I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain as he fought back from suggesting we go inside.
I was so glad he wasn’t mad at me for how I’d treated him yesterday. I leaned up on the tips of my toes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
During the car ride he peppered me with questions about my childhood and school life, carefully skirting around my parents’ deaths. I fired back with equal aplomb, wanting to know more about his parents, his brother, and his old farm. A sheep farm in rural NSW, it had been difficult for their parents to find a buyer. The drought had been merciless and they’d lost most of their flock, and therefore most of their stock. The farm barely struggled along before Cam stepped in to help out financially and turn it into a crops farm rather than livestock. After a few seasons of good crops and the good luck the end of the drought brought, they’d managed to find a buyer and move to Sydney where his brother attended a private school.
