by D. R. Graham
“This is different. I don’t want to disappoint Hal. I need to go with no explanation so I won’t have to see his expression. Please. Take me with you.”
“I can’t. I ride a motorcycle, and I’m pretty sure the leather on your underwear wouldn’t do shit to protect you if we crashed.”
She smiled, obviously pleased that I was still aware of what she was wearing under the robe. “I’ll change.”
“No. Just finish the video, then take some time off.”
“Can you tell him for me?”
“No.”
“I’m serious. I can’t do it anymore. I would rather be dead than keep doing what I’ve been doing.” Her body continued to tremble and there was a wild, fearful look in her eyes.
“Lincoln, sweetie, is ten minutes good?” Hal stood with one hand in his pocket as if he was trying to seem chill, but the veins popping out of the side of his tomato forehead gave a different impression.
She stepped next to me and wrapped her arm around my waist.
Hal walked toward us and pulled her wrist. She clutched my waist and it turned into a weird tug of war. Huck had a similar reaction the day I left for L.A. and remembering how heartbroken she was when our grandpa finally pried her arms off me brought out a protective instinct.
“Come on, Linny,” Hal pleaded. “Let’s go back inside.”
“Let go of her,” I said and shoved his chest.
He stepped back, and his complexion turned purple. It seemed like he contemplated challenging me but turned to her instead. “Lincoln, what’s gotten into you?”
All she was able to do to respond was shake her head.
“Give us a minute,” I said and led Lincoln a few feet away to try to figure out if she was really as screwed up as she was acting. “Were you serious when you said you would rather be dead?”
She clutched at the roots of her hair and clenched her eyes shut. Eventually she shook her head. “I’m just really tired. I need a break.”
“Okay, but everything’s ready. Why not go back inside for a couple hours and finish the shoot? Take some time off after. Then everybody’s happy.”
She thought about it, wiped the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands, and asked, “If I finish the shoot, will you hang out with me afterward?”
“No.” Hell no. She was definitely screwed up. “You should spend time with your friends or family.”
“I don’t have any friends, and spending time with my family wouldn’t be a break. You and I could do something fun.”
A couple scenarios ran through my head at the thought of what she meant by fun, and none of them were a good idea for me. “You don’t even know me.”
“So? Every friend is a stranger before you meet them. We’ll get to know each other.”
Being a celebrity obviously sucked if her only choice for a buddy was an electrician from her video shoot. I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t need the complication. “I can’t.”
“Lincoln,” Hal said.
She reached over and held my hands. “Seriously. I need a break. I’m not going back in there unless he promises to give me time off.”
Not that I felt I should be the person to help her, but she obviously didn’t have anyone else to back her up. Even more obvious, she needed to learn how to speak up for herself, so I said, “Tell him.”
“I can’t.”
“Linny,” he said, barely retaining his patience. “How long is this break, honey? Everyone is waiting, and the clock’s ticking.”
“She needs some time off,” I finally said to put her out of her misery.
“And who are you?”
She squeezed my hand.
“Nobody,” I answered as I gave her an encouraging nod. “Tell him.”
She stared down at her bare feet. “Um, Hal, I’m totally exhausted. I’m being a crazy bitch to everyone. I can’t even think straight. I need some real time off or I’m going to lose it.”
“Okay. After the European leg of the tour, you can take a couple weeks and go to some tropical island somewhere. You can probably skip the Grammy Awards this year—even though they want you to perform and present an award and you’re nominated for three. It’s cool. We can schedule some R and R in for you. Whatever you need, Linny.”
Her fingers tightened around mine, almost painfully, and she lifted her chin to meet his gaze. “No. I need it now. I’ll finish the shoot if you promise to cancel the European tour.”
He smiled in a way that looked uncomfortable to produce. “Okay, Linny. Whatever you need. Let’s just get the shoot done.”
“Please stay,” she said to me.
I nodded to appease her. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She smiled, calmed by the small victory, before she walked toward the warehouse.
Hal shot a death glare at me. “What the hell did you do?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled, hoping to avoid the headache of dealing with a dick corporate type.
“You did something.”
“She had a meltdown and wanted to take off. I convinced her to stay to finish the shoot and then take some time off after. You’re welcome.”
“She can’t take time off after, genius. Do you have any idea how much money we’ll lose if she cancels the European tour?”
I shook my head, completely unsympathetic since his million dollar woes had nothing to do with me, and my patience for the Hollywood drama had already run out. “No, and I don’t really care.” I turned and headed to the parking lot.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Home.”
“She asked you to stay.”
“I’ve got better things to do.”
He seemed desperate as he scrambled to come up with something that would entice me to stay. “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars to stay until the end of the shoot and another five thousand if you can talk her into keeping the European tour dates.”
My mouth dropped open. I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard him right. “A thousand dollars to hang out here tonight?”
He nodded, impatient to get to the part where I agreed.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said.
“No. I’m not shitting you. There is an insane amount of money riding on her ability to perform. I need her to stay in one piece.”
“She’s worth nothing if she’s dead. You don’t need me here to tell you not to push her so hard.”
“I need you here to keep her calm. She obviously trusts you and wants you around.”
“Yeah, well you probably shouldn’t encourage that since I’m a complete stranger.” If his way of dealing with her loneliness was to buy her a friend off the street, I could see why she was messed up. “Find some girls her age that she can do teenager stuff with.”
“I need a temporary fix right now. All you have to do is sit around where she can see you long enough to get her through the shoot.” Hal inhaled in a stressful way and looked off in the distance for a while before checking the time on his phone. “Are you going to stay or not?”
I shrugged and thought about it. A thousand bucks to sit around and make a sixteen-year-old happy. There were worse things I could do for money, and since I needed three times what I made with Tomcat, it was kind of a no-brainer. Eventually, I said, “Yeah, what the hell.”
“Talk her into keeping the tour dates and you’ll have another five thousand.” The guy was slick. He had a tricky way of being pushy without actually sounding insistent. No wonder Lincoln had a hard time getting what she needed.
“I can’t do that. If she needs the break, you should give it to her. And if she’s lonely, you should find her some real friends, not throw random male contractors at her.”
His expression tensed at the implication. “I’m not throwing anyone at her. I’ll schedule in breaks and social time, but it will have to wait because she’s already under contract to tour. See what you can do to just get her through the rest of today.”
With absolutely no intenti
on of talking in her into anything beyond the video shoot, I followed him into the warehouse to make what I thought would be the easiest money I’d ever made.
Chapter Three
Lincoln nailed every one of the scenes in one take and made the director agree that they wouldn’t use the raunchy bed scene. They wrapped by midnight, and I waited around for Hal. He handed me the cash on the sly as if he were buying illegal firearms or something. I stuffed it into the inside pocket of my jacket and turned to leave.
“Lincoln wants to see you. It’s your chance to earn your next paycheck.”
I checked my phone to see if Liv had called. She hadn’t; which either meant she’d been called in to cover a shift at work, she was still pissed, or she was out with someone else. “I’m not going to convince Lincoln to do something she doesn’t want to do,” I said to Hal. “Give her a break.”
“She’s going to feel better tomorrow after a good night’s sleep. She’ll regret the decision to cancel. She just needs to hear that from someone other than me.”
I sighed and thought about it for a minute. “What makes you think she’ll listen to me? She doesn’t even know me.”
“I’ve never met a young woman who wouldn’t listen to what a guy like you had to say.”
I laughed since he had no clue who I was. “What exactly is a guy like me?”
“Do you want the money or not?”
It sounded like the tour was going forward whether she was okay with it or not, and whether I earned the five grand or not, so I figured it didn’t matter. “Yeah, I’ll try.”
We met Lincoln in a lounge area. She was sitting on a leather couch, texting on her phone. She had changed into jeans, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had no makeup on. It took me by surprise that her bare face was even prettier than her fake, dolled-up one.
She smiled when she saw me. “Hey, I’m wearing motorcycle appropriate attire.”
“Why?”
“So we can hang out.”
“Uh.” I glanced at Hal, then back at her. The cash felt heavy in my pocket. “It’s probably not, uh.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I don’t think—”
Hal interrupted before I could spit out an excuse. “Lincoln, I know you need a break, and I promise to schedule more down time for you, but canceling the European tour is going to be a huge problem. You have three endorsement deals that are dependent on the tour, and the contract for the cosmetics line was based on you promoting it overseas this season. The equipment has already been shipped over there. If we back out, we’ll have to refund all the tickets, pay the arena fines, and probably get sued.”
“Insurance will pay for that.”
“Yeah, but if you break the contract, they won’t work with you in the future.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should care.” He sat on the couch next to her, looking sincere—whether he was or not was hard to tell. “I don’t know if you realize this, but your mom is renovating the twenty-three million dollar house you bought her—I think you know what I mean by renovating—and your dad’s still flying high on coke at the casino’s high roller table every night. The preproduction costs on the tour alone are already over fifty million. You need to perform if you want to recoup the losses.”
Lincoln inhaled and pressed her lips together. She glanced at me and rubbed her temples. “I don’t need to perform. I can live off the endorsements I already have.”
“You can live off them until they dry up, but your parents are going to bankrupt you if you stop working.” He reached over and rested his hand on her back. “The other option is to stop financing your parents.”
She rolled her eyes, and the overwhelmed expression I’d seen earlier returned before she looked at me. “What do you think I should do, Mr. Brutally Honest?”
Hal’s eyes opened wide, eager for me to tell her to do the tour.
I was quiet while I thought about it. Then I shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“I want to quit.”
“Then quit.”
Hal cringed and ran his hand over his bald head. Lincoln smiled at the realization she had my support, but she still wasn’t ready to take my advice. She flipped her phone around in her hand repeatedly as she considered her options. “My parents burn through a lot of money.”
“So, cut them off,” I said matter of factly.
“I can’t.” She sighed.
Hal seemed affected by her frailty, and he pulled her in for a hug. It was hard to tell if he was concerned about her interests or his own. “Why don’t you take the night to sleep on it?” he suggested. “You can make your decision in the morning.”
She squeezed him back and nodded against his chest. “Thanks.”
He kissed her forehead and stood. “I need to head out for drinks with the people from the movie studio. Ask Mario or Lucy to give you a ride.”
She nodded to indicate that she heard him, but she didn’t seem keen on the plan.
“You have that radio interview tomorrow at ten,” he reminded her.
So much for giving her the night to make her decision. She buried her face in her hands and groaned from the stress.
He backpedaled. “Never mind. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Just go get some rest. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”
“Okay,” she mumbled, more as a way to get him to leave rather than an actual agreement.
Hal made eye contact with me but didn’t say anything before he left out the exit door.
I watched Lincoln for a while and then asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She stood and put her jacket on. “You can stop pretending you care. It was obvious by how your face blushed and how you stumbled over an excuse that he paid you to stay.” She pushed out the exit door.
I followed her out of the warehouse into the parking lot. It was completely abandoned. She glanced around, slightly alarmed for a second before she pulled her phone out of her purse. She called someone who, based on the conversation, wasn’t available to come back and get her. The second person she called didn’t answer.
“You want me to give you a ride?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it. I can call a cab,” she said without looking up from her phone.
“You’ll be waiting over an hour. Guaranteed. And since I won’t let you wait alone, it’s probably easier if I just take you.”
Her eyes lifted to meet mine before she glanced around the dark, deserted lot. She contemplated for a while. Then, without actually agreeing, she walked toward my bike.
I handed her my helmet.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Your head is more important than mine. Where do you live?”
“I don’t want to go home,” she said.
“Where do you want to go?”
She slid her ponytail elastic out so she could put the helmet on. “The beach.”
I watched her hair fall down to the middle of her back before I clipped the chin strap for her and said, “It’s too late to go to the beach.”
She shrugged and took a deep breath of the night air. “So?”
“So, I’m tired and I don’t feel like going to the beach. Just tell me where you live.”
“No.”
It had been a long day, I really was exhausted, and Liv was not going to be impressed. I was definitely not in the mood to play games with Lincoln. “Then call a cab. I’ll wait until it gets here.”
She crossed her arms, and her eyebrow rose accusingly. “How much did Hal pay you to stay?”
“A thousand dollars,” I said and straddled the seat. “And he offered me another five thousand to talk you into doing the tour.”
She moved to stand near the handlebars and studied my expression in disbelief. “I don’t understand. You told me to quit. Why would you do that and throw away five thousand dollars?”
“Because that’s what you said you wanted to do.”
Her mouth didn’t register the smile, b
ut an appreciative expression flashed through her eyes when she realized I hadn’t sold her out. She glanced at the empty lot one more time before she came around and got on the bike. Her hands slid across my waist, and she leaned in to hug me. It had been a long time since I’d had a woman on the back of my bike. I missed the way it felt.
“Where do you live?” I asked over my shoulder.
“Ironically, although I’ve paid for three houses in the Los Angeles area, other people live in all of them.”
I started the engine and shouted over the rumble, “Where are you staying?”
“The Beverly Wilshire, but I’d really rather be anywhere but there.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t want to be alone.” She sounded genuinely sad, not like she was trying to get her way, but like the world was actually an incredibly lonely place for her.
I didn’t say anything, but I decided that I was going to hang out with her for a while. I stopped for gas and then headed to the Coast Highway. There wasn’t much traffic that late at night, so I rode well above the speed limit. I thought she would be holding on in fear, but instead, it seemed like the faster we went, the more relaxed she got.
After we’d rode for over an hour, I pulled into a beachside parking lot and cut the engine. She hopped off and removed the helmet. Her grin couldn’t have been bigger if she tried. “Oh my God, what a rush. The wind blowing through my hair, the power of the engine, the knowledge that I’m completely unprotected. It feels like freedom. I love it.” She spun around and took off.
I chuckled at her adrenaline-fueled enthusiasm and leaned on my handlebars to watch her run through the sand toward the shore. Once she was away from the light of the parking lot, I could only see her faint silhouette created by the quarter moon. She removed her shoes and kicked at the waves for a while before she made her way back.
She spread her arms and inhaled the ocean air. “This is so relaxing. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Her gaze met mine, and she bit at her bottom lip in anticipation of what I was going to say next.
I knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but I said, “It’s almost two in the morning. I should get you back to the hotel.”
