by Lara Archer
Onyx was right—there’d been a deep freeze between them all day today. There might be a permanent frost. But at least frost was better than acid hatred, so he was just going to have to keep things icy.
So he packed up the lanterns and the cameras, and before he knew it he was back up on the mountain again with Amber, the two of them working in stiff silence as Jake and Ruby played out a complex scene of anger and metaphysical contemplation and lust.
It had been one of his favorite scenes in the script, and he’d been looking forward to filming the actors as they brought it to life, but he found himself working on autopilot, his brain a dull gray fog. He was more than happy to give up Camera 1 duties to Onyx, who thankfully was actually kickass at the job.
Amber seemed to be just going through the motions, too. Thank God Jake and Ruby had found their groove, and were making magic happen on their own.
Before he knew it, the scene was done, and the crew was packing up again to head back down to camp. He wanted nothing more than to reach the safety of his cabin, and silence, and the oblivion of sleep.
But as he picked his way down the trail by lantern-light with cameras strapped to his back, he heard familiar footsteps hurrying up behind him. And felt a hand close over his bicep.
“Whoa, cowboy,” Amber said.
His feet nearly slid out from under him.
Her voice sounded as unsteady as he felt, but she seemed determined in that immoveable way Amber could be. “Nick, we really need to talk. Please.”
He sighed. Why couldn’t she just leave it be? “I don’t know what to say.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, and her voice sounded strangely flat and weary, so not like the woman he’d known so long. “Let’s just start and see where it goes. We can’t keep going on like this. It’s just going to get worse, and it’s not like we’re fooling anybody. Even Eli asked me what was going on.”
Nick’s heart sank, but there was nothing he could do. He owed it to Amber to be straight with her. “Fine. Let’s just get back down to—”
“No,” she said. “Here. Right now. Outdoors is better than indoors. No…bed.”
“Ah,” he said. “Good thinking.”
“There’s a side trail here to a little clearing. I checked it out earlier. We can sit there and have some privacy.”
A short clamber up a stony trail, and they reached a circle beneath the pines, where the moon shone down on them and shadows leaned in quietly all around. They found some fallen logs to sit on and slid all the camera bags to the ground. His heart was pounding.
Amber sat for a few moments without speaking, regarding him quizzically. The moonlight made her glow pale as a pearl, her freckles washed away. She looked ethereal, like a fairy-world version of Amber, a mystical creature of the woods.
More untouchable than ever.
His blood thumped loudly in his ears. Damn it all—no matter what, he still wanted her.
He wanted to reach over there and drag her against him. They didn’t need a bed—pine needles would be more than soft enough, and the stars overhead made a finer covering even than the blue sky that arched over them that first day.
He wanted her—and was terrified of her. Terrified for her, if any part of her happiness was in his hands. Because he knew what he was.
“Okay,” she said, licking her lips nervously. “Let’s try the talking thing again.”
They stared at each other through the darkness.
But neither of them seemed able to say anything.
Which was ridiculous, given how long they’d known each other, how close they’d grown over the years. Damn, they’d talked about everything at one time or another—their childhoods, their dreams, their fears, their favorite passages in books, their beliefs about God and death and politics and who made the best James Bond. Even their love lives, for pity’s sake. They’d never had secrets.
“Come on,” Amber said with a sad little laugh. “This is you and me, Nick, we should be able to keep a conversation going.”
He nodded, but no words were coming to him.
“How about this?” she said, and her voice shook a little. “Tell me just one thing. Last night, you said I was the most important person in the world to you.” Her skin looked even paler than before, almost translucent. She looked like she might blow away in the breeze if he said anything to hurt her.
God, what was he supposed to say? He hadn’t meant to reveal that to her in the first place. It wasn’t going to make any of this any clearer or easier.
His tongue was a rock in his mouth, blocking his thoughts inside.
“Did you mean it?” she said.
Without warning, she reached out and wrapped a warm hand around one of his. And that small pressure was all it took to make the words burst out, like she’d cracked open a dam.
“Yes,” he said, and he hated the rawness in his own voice. “Yes, of course I meant it. That’s the one thing I do know. You’re the best thing in my life. If anything ever happened to you, I swear, I’d just drop down in the dirt and die.”
“Jesus, Nick—” Tears were starting to sparkle in her eyes.
His guts twisted at the sight. “But everything else, Amber—that’s where the hard part comes. I’m fucked up, I told you that. If what you want is—” His fingers closed on hers convulsively. “I don’t know what you want me to be, Amber. But I’m not someone who can…love anyone.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You and I—”
“Should never have crossed the line we crossed.” He let go of her hand now and rested his forearms over his knees, staring at the dirt beneath his boots. “You need someone who can be loyal, and make a family with you. The kind of thing you grew up with up. A wholesome life. And I’m the relationship equivalent of trailer trash.”
“You are not—”
His head snapped back up and he stared her in the face. “When was the last time you saw me stay with a woman more than a couple weeks, tops? You think I even remember half their names? I don’t even remember their faces. I screw them, we have a good time, and then I’m out the door and don’t call again. It’s how I’m wired. I don’t know how to—I don’t have anything else inside me. I’m not capable of more than that.”
The tears were spilling over her eyelashes now, and her breathing hitched. “How do you even know what I want?” She didn’t sound sure herself. “Maybe I don’t want family. The whole white picket fence thing. Right now, I don’t feel like I understand anything about myself.”
“You just got out of a very long-term relationship. Of course you feel confused. And wanting to try some experiments. That’s all it was between us, okay? An experiment. And now it’s done.”
“I don’t know, Nick. What if—”
“There’s no if. Not with me. Because you’re somebody who’s going to want commitment. In the long run, anyway. If you don’t have it, you’ll regret it. I know that. I know you.”
She looked at him intensely, her eyes still wet and bright. “You know me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then you should know I know you, too.”
“I—I know you do. Better than anybody, Amber.” Where was she going with this?
“And I know you care about me.”
He swallowed hard. A heavy weight was pressing down on his chest. “Yes.”
“You say you’d—you’d fall over dead if I wasn’t there.”
“Yes.”
She put her hand over his knee now, squeezing gently. “For God’s sake, Nicky. If you really know me, you should know I feel exactly the same way about you.”
His heart seemed to stop beating at that.
She touched her other hand to her chest and then to his. “There’s like a cord that stretches between us. Right here. And I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could break it.”
Hot and cold rushed over him at once, a great terrible wave of hope and fear and something that felt like rage. “I know what could break it
. I could break it.”
“Nick—”
“And I don’t think I could survive that.”
He couldn’t sit still any longer. He leapt to his feet, throwing off her hand, kicking up leaves and dirt and pine needles as he backed away fast.
“Look, kiddo,” he said. “We have to forget what happened in the last couple days. Try to figure out how to be friends again. Because I can’t do both at the same time—sex and caring about somebody. They’re just in two different categories for me. They have to be in two different categories.”
“Why?”
“Sex equals...leaving.” His fists clenched shut. “And I don’t want to leave you.”
She stared at him, confused, her brow contracted. “Then don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. Don’t leave.”
She made it sound so simple.
And it made his body ache to hear it.
But the thought of hurting her, and of losing her, was so much worse.
“Shit, Amber,” he said. “Think for a second. We were up there in the meadow together, and the next morning I was fucking Ruby Torres.” The lie hurt coming out of his mouth, but it didn’t matter. It might as well have been the truth, and Amber needed to believe it. “Remember that? That’s me. That’s what I do.”
There was nothing she could say to deny that, and they both knew it.
He slapped a palm to the left side of his chest. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m broken in here. Cracked. Deficient. Born with a general malfunction of the heart. Yes, I can be a good friend to you—somehow, miraculously. I’d die for you, in a millisecond. But I can’t be a—a lover. I just can’t.”
A spasm of pain crossed her face as he spoke, and then he just couldn’t take it anymore. He snatched up the straps of his camera bags and yanked them up over his shoulders in a clatter of metal and plastic and headed back down the hill without another word.
He left the lanterns behind.
Amber would need them to find her own way safely down.
Because that was the only way she ever would be safe, safe and happy—without him.
Chapter Six
Amber made it through another morning of filming before she had to escape behind the Ranger’s Station and just lean against the split-rail fence there underneath the aspen trees and try to breathe. She could get through this. Somehow.
You were just experimenting, Nick had said.
Everything he’d told her kept echoing through her head, weighing down her heart.
Sex means leaving. You know what I am. We were together in the meadow and the next morning I fucked Ruby Torres.
I’m broken in here, he’d said, Deficient. And clearly he really believed it.
Was it true? She knew he cared about her as a friend—truly, and deeply. But was he really just not...wired for more than that?
Her stomach hurt. Her body felt heavy, and at the same time she thought she might jump out of her skin. Just above her head, an aspen branch bobbed in the breeze, shivering its heart-shaped leaves at her, taunting her. She snapped off a twig and began stabbing her thumbnails along the veins of the leaves, shredding them into tiny green strips.
Maybe Nick was right after all. About everything. Maybe she was the one who wasn’t seeing clearly. No question, she was going through a huge change, cutting loose from old ties and trying to figure out where her life was going next. She had every reason to be confused.
She didn’t like to consider the possibility, but maybe the whole reason her relationship with Nick had worked so well for so long up to now was that sex and romance had always been out of the equation. She’d been committed to someone else all these years, and Nick had always treated her like she was a different species from his long line of hook-ups, and never laid a hand on her.
He’d always been perfectly clear, hadn’t he, about his boundaries and his limitations? He had every right to be the way he was. And he wasn’t the one who crossed the line. She was the one who’d messed with the formula. So she couldn’t blame Nick if he didn’t respond the way she was hoping.
But, God, it just sucked.
Apparently, she could only have smart, funny, wonderful Nick in her life if she kept her hands off of him. Forever. And she wasn’t sure she could manage to do that anymore, now that she knew what it felt like, now that she realized how much she wanted it. It was like that old story... Who was it, Aladdin? Who found a cave full of gold and jewels and tapestries, but if he touched even one bit of treasure, it would turn to dull sand and bury him alive.
Still clutching the piece of aspen branch, she pressed her forearms into her belly and doubled over, trying to make the sick feeling go away.
A second later, though, footsteps came crunching over the gravel towards her. Damn, apparently misery was about to get a little company.
“Oh, hey!” a female voice said.
Shit. It was Ruby Torres, of all people. Looking stunningly gorgeous of course. Though she was wiping the corner of one eye with the heel of her hand and, now that Amber took a second look, Ruby’s eyes looked a little red, like she’d been hit with allergies—or like she might just have been crying.
Misery for her, too, I guess.
Good Lord, what was up with everybody right now? Wasn’t life supposed to feel simpler and more serene out here in nature?
“Sorry,” said Ruby, stopping in her tracks. She must have gotten a good look at Amber’s expression, because she half-pivoted to go back the way she’d come. “Didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just trying to—”
“Find some privacy?”
“Yeah,” she said ruefully.
Damn—under all the flash and glamor, the diva had an awfully vulnerable side.
And she may have slept with Nick, but she couldn’t have known Amber had any claim to him. Last they all met, Amber still had a fiancé—and Nick clearly didn’t take time to update her before inviting her to bed.
Amber waved her over. “Might as well join me.”
Ruby hesitated a moment, glancing at the shredded leaves on the branch in Amber’s hands. She raised one perfectly-groomed black eyebrow. “Whoa. What’d that tree ever do to you?”
Amber looked down at the tattered mess she was holding. What should she say? Just taking out my frustrations about my best friend screwing both of us within 24 hours?
“It killed my father,” she said instead, in her best Inigo Montoya imitation. “It had to die.”
Ruby actually laughed at that, and ambled the last few feet closer. She propped her notorious derriere against the fence at Amber’s side, and they stayed there in silence while Ruby gazed around, taking in the picturesque sight of green garbage bins and storage sheds and the rack of black solar panels hidden back here.
“Mierda,” she said after a bit. “This feels like hanging behind the bleachers in high school. Like when everybody snuck off from History class, you know?”
Amber couldn’t help smiling at the idea of Ruby Torres ever doing something as mundane as cutting class. “It was Chemistry for me,” she admitted. “I always liked History.”
“Figures. You like stories,” said Ruby, glancing over. “You went to college and everything, right?”
“Yeah. Oberlin. With Nick, actually.” She hoped her voice didn’t hitch too obviously when she spoke his name.
“That’s awesome,” Ruby said softly. “I always wish I’d gotten to go.”
And damn. Ruby’s face looked so wistful, it was hard not to feel for her.
“Well,” said Amber, “you started making movies young.”
Ruby gave her hair a restless shake. “Yeah. Real young. And I wouldn’t have had the money to go anyway if I didn’t make the movies.” The set of her jaw was tight. “Geez, right now, I wish I’d never quit smoking. Situations like this are why cigarettes were invented.”
Somebody had been making life tough for Ruby, too, apparently.
Nick, probably.
Not something Amber really wanted to discuss, but
it seemed churlish not to ask. “What situation is that?”
Ruby shrugged. “It’s complicated.” She let her hair slide forward to curtain her face, apparently finding something fascinating to stare at in the row of garbage bins. “How ‘bout you? What’s got you hiding out back here in the boondocks?”
“Also complicated.” She let her mangled bit of branch fall to the ground.
“Yeah,” said Ruby. “Life’s like that, right?” She leaned back her head and stared up at the clouds. “I seriously do want a cigarette. Got one on you, by any chance?”
“Sorry. Non-smoker.”
“That figures.” Ruby’s red lips quirked. “You seem like the wholesome type.”
Wholesome. Same word Nick had used for her. Who did everybody think she was, Anne of Green Gables? She was the director of Junkyard Baby, for pity’s sake—the New York Times called her work “gritty” and “unflinching.” And “darkly hilarious,” too. That had always been her favorite part.
Ruby shifted her weight against the fence. “Guess you don’t have a flask, either?” She didn’t sound too hopeful.
Hell. “Not on me,” Amber said, feeling any claim to hipness draining rapidly away. “Trust me, booze is mother’s milk on indie shoots. But Wild Mountain National Park is really strict about prohibiting it.”
Ruby raised her eyebrows again. “What, you couldn’t smuggle in a case of beer?”
“I couldn’t risk losing my filming permit.”
“Gotcha,” said Ruby, and gave her tongue a click, and Amber could swear she could hear her thinking, goody-goody.
A little pang went through her chest. Oh, God, was that the real issue with Nick after all—did he think she was too wholesome, too much of a Good Girl for a Bad Boy like him? Did he think she’d bore him quickly? That she had what it took to be a friend, but not to be a lover?
She felt a little dizzy. The smell of her junior high gym during school dances came back in a rush—anxious sweat and strawberry lip gloss and Binaca—along with a very old and long-unfamiliar sense of insecurity.
Ruby Torres was definitely messing with her mojo.
Amber gave herself a shake. No. She wasn’t boring. Nick never seemed bored with her—not when they were working on a film, and not when they in bed either.
