by Claire, Ava
“Unique.”
I made a face. “Unique?”
“You know,” he winked, with a smirk teasing his lips. “Special. You’re the kind of girl that doesn’t want to be romanced or wooed.”
I turned my back to him, lowering the flowers on the counter. They really were perfect. Wild and rustic, like the ones that grew in the woods behind my old house back in North Carolina. “So, you’re not romancing me even though you got me flowers?”
“When I romance you, you’ll know it.”
My skin hummed with need. When, not if.
“The flowers are my apology,” he said after a moment.
I arched my brows over my shoulder. “You don’t have to apologize for Solomon Cole. He deserved what he got.” And more.
“Oh, I’m not sorry I knocked him on his ass. In fact, he should count himself lucky that he’s still walking and talking at all.”
I smiled to myself. I knew it was twisted to derive pleasure from the visual of Liam pummeling that asshole, but I owned up to it. Sol deserved every blow.
“I’m sorry that I made a detour after I got fired and talked Tempest into sneaking me your address.”
I slid onto a stool and peered at him strangely until the weight of it hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d been so surprised to see him that I didn’t even consider the fact that my address wasn’t listed, so he had to either have connections or be really tenacious to figure out where I lived. Or crazy.
But I wasn’t unnerved. Maybe it was the fact that I was in a shirt with more craters and holes in it than the moon, hands covered in rubber gloves, and hair piled in a greasy bun, and he still looked at me like I was gorgeous. Or maybe it was something more, a sixth sense I had about him. I barely knew him, but something inside me knew I could trust him.
“You know what,” he broke the silence, “This is weird. I’ll go.”
“I’m not sorry.” I pulled off my gloves and tossed them on the counter beside the flowers. “I’m not sorry that you’re clearly stalking me.”
His dimples winked as he laughed. “Stalking you?”
“Mmhm,” I nodded, tracing my bottom lip with my finger coyly. Coy? I wasn’t coy. Mia Kent was the aggressor. Ever other fuckable guy who found himself in my apartment would already be naked by now. But Liam made me want to take my time. Savor every flirt. Every wink. Every breath.
“It’s cool.” I paused, remembering something Sol said. “But we should even the field.”
His eyes registered interest. “How so?”
“You know where I live, and the only thing I know about you is that your name is Liam and you have a mean right hook.”
He smirked, then nodded at the stool beside me. “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
He dropped onto the seat and popped his neck like he was about to step into the ring.
“Well, I’m formerly employed by Cole Productions. Worked for a tyrant for two and a half months. Before that, I worked as a waiter, a pool boy, and was this close—” He held his pointer and thumb millimeters from each other. “To becoming an escort.”
I arched my brow. “Now that sounds like a good story.”
His eyes sparkled mischievously. “Play your cards right, and I might tell it to you some day.”
I almost made a crack, but thought better of it when the light went out of his eyes, replaced by a darkness that only fame could create. Fame was a fickle bitch. People came to her with stars in their eyes, and for the precious few that felt her glow it was heaven unless their light was snuffed out. Those that never brushed success with their fingertips could go home and say at least they tried. Those that had it and felt it slip between their fingers were left with a hole no one, and nothing, could fill.
“You ever heard of Bitter Revenge?” He didn’t wait for the likely no, humming a few notes. “And I won’t lie, even though I tried to stick around and change your mind.” He closed his eyes and crooned in smoky beauty. “Our love was destined for goodbye–”
“Goodbye, byes,” I finished, my soprano voice finding the harmony.
His eyes fluttered open in surprise, and pain flickered across his handsome face before he stomped it out. “That was our big single. ‘Goodbyes’. They wore that track out.” He dropped a bitter chuckle, the notes of it jagged and cold. “Too bad they weren’t interested in anything else of ours.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, feeling guilty for bringing it up at all. “I know I loved that song,” I said after a moment. “Your voice was so haunting. Raw.”
“Thanks,” he said with a weak smile. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “We went from being asked on tours, interviews, commercials to—” he stopped. “Well, you know how the story ends.”
I nudged him with my knee and waited until he looked up at me to speak. “Who says your story is over?”
He regarded me with understandable skepticism. “No one’s beating down my door, and I doubt Sol was making an empty threat about making my life hell.” He leaned back, his eyes distant. “I’m sure the last thing you want to hear are my songs about sorrow and regret.”
I offered him a wry smile, the truth hanging in the awkward silence. I could sit there and listen to him talk about anything. Or just sit and watch him. With everyone screaming and scrambling for a piece of me, talking about what would happen with my career and if my addictions cost me said career, and then my mom, Jenna...I would rather stay where I was with this dark, beautiful stranger and listen to the whisper in the back of my mind. A hope that maybe I could have something normal. Something more than a fleeting tryst to sate my desires or a fleeting romance to sate the cameras.
I traced the line of his profile, a dark shadow of stubble brushing his strong angular jaw. When his head tilted in my direction and he flashed me a mischievous smile, my heart drummed to a fevered pace. His eyes flickered with heated awareness. He felt the same buzz; the same electric need. The overwhelming desire to bridge the short distance between our bodies and find out if the kiss would be as earth shatteringly amazing as I suspected. He took the first step, leaning in, tongue sweeping his bottom lip...and I lurched from the stool.
“Where are my manners?” I stuttered. I put the island between us, using hospitality as my cover. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
Liam chuckled but played along. “Water would be great.”
I felt his eyes on me, and liquid desire pooled in my panties. It taunted me. He wanted me. I wanted him. It would be so easy to melt into his arms. It would probably cure me of the romantic notions that had me nearly dropping the glass before I could hand it to him. He grasped it in his hands, his fingertips grazing my skin, his lips lush and inviting.
“Fuck it,” I whispered. I pulled him by his shirt, his lips crashing into mine. His smell, a warm intoxicating musk, flooded my nostrils as I tasted him. He tasted of mint and promise and sex. I dropped my hand to his crotch, his cock pressed against his denim fly, and he pulled away.
My lips were still pursed, but my face scrunched in confusion. He had no such confusion as he straightened himself and rose to his feet.
I couldn’t have been wrong. He’d kissed me back, tongue thrusting into my mouth to duel with mine. And I’d gripped hard, delicious proof that he wanted me.
I wiped my mouth, cheeks ablaze. “I thought...don’t you want me?”
He gave me an incredulous look. “Of course I do, Mia. You have no idea how badly I want to bend you over the counter and just—” he stopped, lust racing across his handsome face, finishing the thought.
I hooked my finger through his belt loop and brought him back where he belonged. Firm muscle pressed against me. “Well, if you want it, and I want it—”
“Then what’s wrong with getting to know each other?” He cradled my cheek, gazing into my eyes with a look that made my heart beat wildly. It was a look that spelled trouble. My life was complicated enough without adding falling in love to the equation.
I separated myself from him,
ignoring the twinge of sadness in my chest at the loss of contact. “Getting to know each other?”
He nodded. “I know the Mia the world knows. The actress. The singer. But I want to know the Mia underneath it all. The Mia that deserves to be loved.”
My heart wanted the same. To have something good, something that lasted.
Something that would be ripped away, because nothing good lasted.
I blacked out the light his words inspired and left nothing but dismissal in my eyes. “You should go.”
His mouth twitched into a scowl. “Are you for real?”
I put on the performance of my life. “Look at my face. You tell me.”
His eyes raked over me and hardened to emerald jewels. He said nothing more, leaving me as quickly as he swept me off my feet.
My apartment was quiet. Too quiet. Even after I turned on the TV and turned Pandora on full blast, I couldn’t drown out the part of me that wanted to go after him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I woke with a start, the world clicking back in place as my eyes readjusted. I expected the soft comfort of my blanket, one of the few pricey furnishings I owned that I actually felt was worth every cent. But the only thing I was wrapped in was a denim jacket and nothing else. No shirt, no pants, no underwear.
No memory of anything except the hollowness after Liam left.
I shot to my feet, panic pumping through my veins like lava. The room had a muted amber glow. Rays of the sun, shunned by blankets. I didn’t want to look away from the stained material secured over the windows with thumbtacks. I’d been this effed up once before and woke up in a similar place. A house notorious for an open door policy as long as you had the cash. I knew that once I turned from the window, I’d see firsthand how far I’d fallen.
I ripped off the band-aid, turning to face the place I called home the night before. Pizza boxes, beer cans, and liquor bottles littered the floor, creating a collage fit for a junkie’s diet. Scattered in between the garbage were people in various states of undress. Men, women, my age to much older, most snoring, some disturbingly still.
My eyes shot to a low buzz near the front of the room. An absurdly large TV with mega speakers was the cause of the noise, some video game frozen on the screen. I maneuvered through the sea of sleeping bodies and trash, spotting my shirt and leggings. I didn’t even bother finding my underwear. I just wanted to get out of there before anyone woke up. Sober, they might recognize me.
I was halfway out the door when a prone figure on the couch said something. “Where you headed, sexy?”
My stomach flopped when the man rose to his feet. He was tall, with an intimidatingly muscled physique, paired with a tattoo racing up his left arm. Since he didn’t look ratty and disheveled and was the only one sleeping on the couch and not the floor, he must have been the dealer. And from the way his eyes snaked up and down my body, I had a sinking feeling that he had something to do with my missing underwear. When he licked his lips, I almost retched.
“I’ve gotta get to work,” I lied, flashing him a nervous smile. “Take care.”
My heart pumped madly in my ears as I threw the door open and fled down the hall. The sound of crying babies, the musty smell of a poorly maintained building, and the overwhelming aroma of human waste collided with my senses. I didn’t breathe again until I stumbled onto the stoop. Big gulps of oxygen carried me along the sidewalk and through the steel gate that reminded me of a prison. The tiny, irrational voice in my head wondered if the man would come after me. I took a quick survey of my pockets and knew he’d already bled me dry.
No wallet. No phone.
Trying to keep it together, I ducked into a Starbucks and caught the door when a customer exited the bathroom. Even though the last thing I wanted was to look at myself, I shot a look at the mirror. The girl that blinked back at me wasn’t as wrecked as I thought. My eyes were bloodshot, skin a little pale, but washing my face and pulling my dark hair into a perky ponytail helped. When I left the bathroom, I almost felt normal. Two teen girls on the couches near the back were whispering and holding their phones in a suspiciously photographic way, so I booked it out the exit. Flipping up the collar of my denim jacket, I hailed a cab and slid into the backseat.
The smart move was to go home, try and piece together what happened, then begin the long process of canceling my debit and credit cards. Instead, I told the cabbie to take me to Whitmore and Creighton. He didn’t bat an eye when I said I’d run in and get the fare from my publicist. The whole ride he stole looks at me in the rearview mirror, and I figured it finally hit him. That, or he was committing my face to memory for the police sketch.
The security guard at the front desk gave me a once over and had the phone to his ear before I even got to the desk.
“She’s on her way down,” he told me. He craned his neck, his eyes stopping on the cab. He opened a drawer and pulled out a credit card. “Don’t forget to tip.”
I thought the walk up to see Leila would be my trudge of shame, but this topped that. They were so used to sketchy celebrities that the security guards could spot one a mile away.
I paid the cabbie and hustled back into the building as one of the photographers perched in the huddle a few feet away got wise, calling my name. When I cycled through the revolving door and saw Leila strutting from the elevators, I almost turned back to the paparazzi. I could deal with their probing questions, but I hated to disappoint Leila after all she’d done for me. She wore a gold sheath dress that intensified her brown eyes, turning the irises caramel. She evaluated me and her face fell.
I slumped my shoulders, preparing for the lecture. The insistence that I go to rehab. “Let me save you the – oh!” She wrapped both arms around me, pulling me in for a hug. Shock turned me to stone, but the warmth and care in her embrace melted my heart. All my life, I’d kept people at a distance and listened to my mother when she told me not to let people get too close or it would make me weak. Believing those words left me starved for someone that got me and left me vulnerable for a guy like Scott to swoop into my life. But I knew now that what Scott and I had wasn’t friendship. This, no strings attached, was what being a friend was all about.
Leila held me at arm’s length. “No offense, but you look and...” she sniffed. “Smell like...”
“Death?” I offered with a weak smile.
She didn’t mirror my smile. “Come up to my office.”
By some massive stroke of luck, we were the only two in the elevator. I’d been so dazed that my senses had been dulled, but they were fully awake now.
My head felt like I’d been clocked by a 2x4. My body shook and rattled like I was cold, even though the tiny area of the elevator was warm and suffocating. Tiny puncture wounds at the crease of my elbow itched. Tiny marks that meant only one thing.
I covered my mouth, a sob rising in my throat.
“I’ve never. Only pills...oh God!”
Leila sprang into action and closed the elevator doors as soon as we arrived on the executive floor. She punched P for the parking deck.
Tears burned my cheeks and I swiped them, eyeing her with confusion. “Where are we going?”
“The hospital,” she answered darkly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
This place didn’t feel like home. Home was the back of taxis, zipping Mom and I from the airport to our apartment near the studio. Home was my trailer on set, the only place where I was in charge and could tell Mom I needed space so I could work on my lines. Those hours alone were precious. They were mine.
The living room was filled with my family. Cousins, uncles, aunts, and even Jenna. This new girl had my sister’s white blonde hair and summer sky eyes. She even answered to my sister’s name, but she wasn’t my sister. In the year I’d lived in LA, the wild tomboy that had shunned all of my mother’s attempts to tame her was domesticated. When the boys asked if she wanted to play outside, she just rolled her mascaraed eyes and turned her attention back to her cell phone. I had watched her sna
p at least four selfies since I’d been home and my eyes followed her as she left to straighten her hair with her overworked Chi, like she was expecting company at any moment. The worst was the outfit. She was twelve and she was rocking cutoff denim shorts that were so tiny they were practically denim panties.
Jenna was the best part of coming here and playing happy family, and thanks to Mom, I didn’t even have that to look forward to anymore.
When Jenna got up to check her reflection for the millionth time, I followed her. I stayed back a few feet, expecting her to turn to the guest bathroom, but she soundlessly moved up the stairs. Maybe my sister was still in there somewhere after all. She wanted to escape, too.
The festivities downstairs muted my steps, and I decided to turn around and give her peace. She didn’t have a trailer she could hide out in – but then she ducked into the upstairs bathroom. I frowned, and when I heard a familiar retching sound, my heart stopped.
She was purging.
I forced open the door. The little sister I thought I’d lost looked up at me, tips of her bone straight hair dripping wet, clutching a toothbrush. Her eyes shined up at me, big and desperate.
“Don’t tell Mom.”
*
The doctor had a sense of humor.
“We’ve gotta stop meeting this way, Miss Kent!” He winked at me, his teeth too white and perfect. Everything about this room was perfect, from the designer linens on the bed and mini fridge stocked with organic food and drinks to the flat screen TV on the warm colored wall. If it wasn’t for the hospital gown and beeping machinery, I might’ve forgotten I was in a hospital altogether. But here I was, being inspected by a comedian with Chiclets for teeth and ice-cold fingers, with Leila a few feet away, chewing her nails to stubs.
“Good news is, your tox screen has come back fairly normal with some exceptions. Tell me what you can remember.” His chilly fingers gripped my bicep as he prepared to check my blood pressure.
I winced as the arm cuff tightened. “I don’t really–” The squeeze approached unbearable and a memory flitted through my head. “Liam left and I remember gripping the counter. I didn’t want to go after him. I couldn’t.”
