Breaking Autumn: A Bad Boy Stuntman Romance

by Jackson Kane

  “Sarah told me I could film here.” I looked up at him with upturned eyebrows. “She cleared that with you, right?” I was beginning to suspect that the studio didn’t have the greatest communication.

  “You can film everything—,” he said coolly, extending a pointed finger toward the L-shaped structure I’d seen last night. “Except for that building. That’s private. I don’t want you anywhere near that.”

  “OK, that’s fair.” I quickly agreed. I was more than willing to respect his boundaries. Having a stranger stay with you and film all your stuff was pretty invasive.

  “And you can’t film me.”

  He really wasn’t going to make this easy on me. How could I show what I was doing if I couldn’t show my trainer? “But—”

  “No buts. Those are the rules,” Dante sharply interjected, sending a nervous thrill up my spin. There was no room in his definitive tone, posture or demeanor for any kind of negotiation. That was how it was going to be. “Set that thing up in the corner and let’s get you warmed up.

  Why would a guy who was professionally on camera be gun-shy over a small internet series?

  This half of the gym had most of the trappings I imagined you’d find in a CrossFit gym. Not that I’d ever actually been in one. Hard rubber mats lined the floor near the squat and bench press areas. All manner of big round weights lined the walls, including bells—of both dumb and kettle variety. There were hanging rings, ropes and chains of various thickness, giant monster truck tires and of course some sort of torture rack with bars and more weights on either side. It was all equal parts impressive and intimidating looking.

  “Mobility work first, then strength.” Dante stepped on the rubber mat, stripped off the loose-fitting tank top, and cracked his neck on both sides. “I need to see what I’m working with here.”

  I tried not to gawk at the way his muscles bulged and flexed as he ran me through an extensive battery of stretches, both static and dynamic. He's my trainer. I repeated the words like a mantra, hoping it'd make me less nervous or at the very least less horny while I was around him. I exhaled hard, and bounced around to limber up; mostly I was just trying to shake out images of him tearing my clothes off.

  For the next whole hour Dante and I did kicks, jumps, push ups, and other exercises I'd never tried before. Fortunately we stayed away from all the weights, but by the end of it I was exhausted and pouring sweat.

  “How do you feel?” He asked, handing me a bottle of water, which I drained in one go.

  “Great,” I lied, wiping my face with a face towel. How was it so hot out and it wasn't even noon yet? Wasn't California weather supposed to be perfect all the time? Wasn't that why so many people back east moved out here, to avoid extremes of hot and cold? What the hell was this crap?

  “You ready to get started? Dante asked a few minutes later.

  “Started?” I asked collapsing into one of the black, padded, unfolded chairs beside by the wall. I must've misheard him.

  “Yes.” He'd been doing everything right along with me and had barely broken a sweat. He wasn't even winded! That didn't bode well for me. He pulled a red binder off a shelf, flipped through it, and started jotting a few notes. “That was a warm up. We're just getting started.”

  Warm up? A look of absolute horror washed over me. That was more intense than any work out I’d ever done in my life!

  “I—I need a break.” My pulse screamed in my ears.

  “Stand up.”

  “I will. I will. I just need a few minutes to get my breath back.”

  “You'll get a break when you earn it,” he said flatly.

  “That's a little much, isn't it?” I raised a skeptical eye at him. No one had ever spoken down to me like that. I get no pain, no gain, but I didn't join the Marines or anything.

  Dante snapped the binder shut and looked me over, studying me. I could only imagine what was going on his head. Whatever it was it cast storm clouds over his mood and visage. Lightning crackled behind his dark eyes. His jaw clenched, and pulled his lips into a tight frown.

  “Let's get one thing perfectly clear.” Dante said in a low voice as he walked around me, measuring my worth. “I'm not your friend. I'm not your costar. I'm not even the guy you fucked on a boat. I'm your personal trainer. I’m your sensei. I'm your nutritionist. I'm your stunt coordinator. And I only have four weeks to give you a believable on-screen action presence.”

  His heavy stare tore right through me.

  “This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Millions of people would literally kill to be in your position right now so if this isn't what you want, then you say the word. I'll have you on a plane back home by the end of the day.

  “Now stand up if you want to stay here.”

  The thought of it all coming to an end so soon and losing that advance, a good chunk of which was already gone paying off Mom’s treatments, scared the hell out of me. My fight or flight instinct kicked on.

  No. I could do this. I had to!

  Reluctantly I rolled to my feet and was about to stand up when he clasped a hand on my shoulder, forcing me back down. He wasn’t nearly as gentle as Linda the hairstylist was.

  “Think hard about what you do next. This is not summer camp. It's boot camp.” Dante's brown eyes shimmered with deathly seriousness. “If you stay I own you until the very end.”

  A long sliver of fear slipped deep down between my ribs at what that meant. Dante didn’t seem like the kind of guy that made idle threats. I took a long breath, steadied my breathing and shoved his hand off my shoulder. Then I found my feet.

  Dante nodded and took a few steps back.

  “Now, we're going to do something called The Game. The Game is simple. You only have one goal.” He said the words with the disconnected frankness of a man reading aloud from the obituary of someone he didn't know. “Hit me.”

  “Excuse me?” I balked. He was messing with me. He had to be.

  “You heard me.”

  “What is this? Fight club?” Hit him? As in attack him? With my limbs? Nervous jokes welled up in me. “Y'know I’ve already told people I’m here so I guess I already broke the first rule of—”

  “Land one hit on me and we'll call it for the day. You can go back inside and relax. Now punch me.”

  “I don't know... I don’t feel comfortable with this—.”

  “I don’t give a fuck how you feel.” Dante's eyes narrowed. He leaned closer and yelled in my face “Hit me!”

  I didn't know if it was his abrupt coldness or the yelling or even just the maelstrom of emotions already swirling inside me, but I did it. Or at least I tried to.

  I balled up my fists and swung for him. He of course slapped my hands away and dodged.

  “Again,” he barked, cracking his neck in both directions and rolling his shoulders forward with the limberness of a professional boxer. “Show me you belong here, Autumn.”

  I swung again. And again he moved out of the way, slapping my hands wide.

  “Not everyone has what it takes.” His taunts were bee stings, spurring me on. Dante never attacked me back, just infuriatingly deflected my strikes and diverted my momentum. Sometimes he didn't slap my hands away at all to avoid me, he'd just pivot and shift his shoulders forcing me to miss by only inches.

  This was crazy! The fatigue in my limbs set my blood on fire. All I wanted was to take a damn break! Why was it so hard just to hit him once?

  “Is that it?” He slapped my hands away again, but this time when I stepped forward he stuck a palm on my chest and shoved me back a few steps. There was no remorse in him, if anything he looked at me with annoyance. “Get mad or give up. I don't have time for anything in between.”

  Stunned, I slid to a stop, my nostrils flaring at how I was being treated. What right did he have to be such an asshole to me? Before, I was tired and scared and got swept up in the moment, but now?

  Yeah. I was mad.

  I growled in frustration and charged forward. I slowly chased him around
the gym swinging and missing and getting shoved. It was more of a furious flailing than any kind of coordinated assault. I didn't care if it looked ridiculous; I was going to punch him in his stupid, handsome face.

  Every breath I sucked in was sandpaper. My lungs were on fire and at some point I even started yelling at him while punching wildly. I had one goal and everything else fell away. Sweating and shaking, my body was on the verge of giving out, but I pushed on.

  I was pissed, but not just at him for putting my through this. I was angry that my life didn't feel like it belonged to me anymore. The cancer and this acting thing kidnapped my Mom and me. I didn’t want to be here and I sure as hell didn’t want her to have to go the hospital every damn day.

  “Am I wasting my time with you?”

  “No!” I screamed, putting everything I had into one last punch; all the mounting pressure that had been building and weighing on me ever since that day on set. I wasn't even looking anymore. It was all a chaotic, emotional blur; a massive release of pent up energy that I didn't even think I was capable of.

  Crack.

  My fist connected. Did I finally hit him? When I opened my eyes I saw that the part I hit was his open palm. Dante caught my fist... His fingers wrapped around my knuckles and I dropped to my knees. I was spent.

  I failed.

  “That's it. You're done,” Dante said, wiping the sweet from his forehead. “For now.”

  Chapter 12

  Autumn

  “Ready?” Dante's hands flexed over the steering wheel.

  “No,” I mumbled through a mouth guard, staring down the length of his quarter-mile racing track.

  “Life's funny that way.” Dante stepped on the gas anyways.

  The Ford Focus took off down his track toward a spot on the pavement he had me spray with the hose earlier. The modest-looking four door sedan Dante drove us in was the same make and model of the one we'd use on set for this stunt. He didn't push all that fast, but my heart was still in my teeth anyways, anxiously waiting for what was coming next.

  “I don't know what the conditions are going to be on set yet so were going to practice on both wet and dry pavement. When you do this, you absolutely have to keep the car under forty-five miles.”

  “Forty-five. OK,” I said, my knuckles were white from the death grip I had on the sides of my seat. That shouldn't be hard. Ten miles an hour was intimidating to me right now.

  “Otherwise you run the very real risk of flipping the car.”

  “Joy.” Fucking hell.

  The vibrations throughout the car set my bones to chattering as we rocketed toward the stunt's top speed. Just before we entered the water-slicked section of the track I watched the speedometer climb. Forty...forty-five...forty-six. Wait. Fifty. Oh God. Fifty-five!

  “Quick brake to transfer weight to the front of the car and...” Dante quickly slowed us back into that forty-five mile an hour sweet spot just as we drove into the wet pavement. Dante said something else too, but I didn't hear him. In my head everything quietly slowed, except for the rushing pump of blood in my ears: that was only getting louder.

  Dante wrenched up on the emergency hand brake and jerked the steering wheel hard to the side. The force of the car's ass-end whipping around pushed me hard into the door. I squeezed the seat even tighter, worried that I was somehow going to be flung from the car. If my GoPro Camera hadn’t been screwed into the dashboard it would’ve flown out the open window.

  The tires screamed bloody murder. There was this moment of weightlessness as we drifted forward like reaching the apex of a rope swing set only sideways and along the ground.

  He reapplied the foot brake while rapidly turning the wheel the opposite way; counter steering. When we were facing the opposite way we started he dropped the E-brake and smoothly drove us out of the spin. “E-brake down and drive out.” Dante eased us to a gentle stop. “You can stop screaming now. It's over.”

  “What the hell was that? You said forty-five. We were pushing sixty!” I pried my hands from their death grips only to bury them between my legs to keep them from shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

  “It looks better when you come in hot. You can always slow it down before the spin.” Dante started driving back to the first position. “Besides I said you. I know what I'm doing.”

  “Great.” The word dripped with sarcasm. “So follow all the rules except if you don't feel like it?”

  “Pretty much.” Dante shrugged. “With this many variables, stunt driving is more of an art than a science.”

  “Huh. Pottery, upholstery, figure painting… I don’t remember my art teacher going over stunt driving. I must’ve been sick that day.”

  Dante gave me an amused look. Despite his stoicism there was always a self-satisfied smugness beneath the surface whenever we did any actual stunt training. He really was incredibly talented with all this stuff, and he knew it.

  The last several days bled into each other like a weeklong triathlon. The strength training each morning was brutal—and Dante was a drill instructor from hell—but the skill training later in the day was something else entirely. The fight choreography, high falls and now car stuff was all so terrifying and exciting, all the while Dante became more patient and instructive. He felt like a different trainer.

  He was a hard ass and a complete prick, but there were also flashes of childlike excitement in him when he was performing a stunt, or showing me how to do something. He was too focused on what he was doing to smile, but I could tell by the pinch in the corner of his lips that he wanted too. The more I saw that wonder in his eyes and the concern over my safety the more apparent it became he was wearing a mask.

  So who was he really? The uncaring dick, or…something else.

  “I'll show you one more time then you're going to try it.” He said.

  “Wait a sec.” That's insane! He wanted me to do this already? “You're going to teach me how to like, regular drive first, right?”

  “What?” Dante braked to a hard stop and gave me a severe look. “You can't drive? At all?”

  “That was like the first thing I told them!” My eyes flared bitterly, despite not knowing exactly who I was angry at. “They didn't tell you that! I don't even have my driver's license.”

  “How do you not have a license?”

  “I live in a major city and work from home! What the hell do I need one for?” I shouted back defensively.

  Dante sucked in air and rubbed his face with both hands. We sat in uncomfortable silence while he figured out what to do next. Eventually he exhaled, unbuckled and opened the car door. “Ok. Looks like I'm teaching you how to drive.”

  “Right now?”

  “You have other plans?” Before he slipped out of the car he cocked his head toward the door for me to get out and switch with him.

  “No, but—” I got out of the car to finish so I wouldn't have to shout to finish my thought. “Can we take a little break first?” I didn't want to come out and tell him that I was still a little rattled from what we just did, although screaming my lungs out probably gave him a pretty good idea of my mental state at the moment.

  “At least five hours have just been added to our day.” Dante shook his head. “We’ll stop only for food. Breaks are a luxury we don't have time for today.”

  I groaned, trudging over to the other side of the car. “You can teach me how to drive in five hours?”

  “Of course not. We can't burn a day on that. But I can teach you forward, reverse, shifting, turning and how to use the E brake. All the components of this stunt.”

  “What about the rest of it?” I protested.

  “The rest isn't in the shot,” Dante replied. “It doesn't matter.”

  “It's not in the shot.” That was always his response when I tried to do more or dive deeper into what we were doing. That or, “We don't have time for why.” Dante's mindset was if it's not on camera, then we're not doing it. And yeah, I understood that to a degree, we were under a serious time cru
nch, but still... It was hard not to be frustrated!

  After a thirty second tutorial where he pointed at things and told me what they did, he had me start the car up and begin driving. Shakily and slowly I did laps around the track. How many people could say they learned how to drive a car from a real-life stuntman?

  Yeah, well I can't either.

  Dante only showed me the relevant pieces.

  Stunt work wasn't like any skill I'd ever learned. Aside from general fitness for body preparedness, none of what Dante showed me had any cohesive structure to it. It wasn't like dance lessons or martial arts. It didn't feel like a full thing. I was putting a puzzle of the Eiffel Tower together, but using pieces from different boxes like cars, animals and outer space. It was impossible for me to see how it all came together.

  We did things until we didn't any more, then we moved on. Imagine learning the foot placement in Salsa, followed by most of the strings of a guitar, then how to perfectly flip pancakes correctly in a pan, then finally how to just take off in a plane. That grab-bag of disconnected bullshit was stunt training for me so far.

  I was terrible at it and it was driving me crazy!

  We didn't have time to get back to one-eighties before Dante was forced to call it for the day. If left to his discretion we'd have been out there till midnight training, but as per the contract, once a week Dante had to share me with my acting coach, Reggie.

  It also didn’t help that the day ended with a massive blowout argument. He went over everything too fast and I didn’t have enough practice to learn anything. I don’t know why he pushed so hard, but the most frustrating part was that we both wanted the same damn thing!

  To make me ready for this film.

  After Dante stormed off I headed back to the house. It wasn’t long before I heard him banging away in the building I wasn’t allowed in. The guy practically never slept. It was nuts, he never seemed to get tired.

  What the hell did he do in there all hours of the night?

  Me, on the other hand. I felt like silly putty that someone worked over with a baseball bat. The second I closed the bedroom door behind me, I stripped clothing off me with every step. Every muscle in my body ached from exertion. My sluggish legs moved as if they were underwater and filled with sand. All I wanted was to lie down for a few weeks, but that wasn't an option. Glancing at the clock I had just enough time to take a shower and call Mom before Reggie showed up.