by Ren Benton
Sleeping with him was an issue he didn’t want her to associate with contention. “I’ll move your bag to Liv’s room, then.”
There was an obvious relaxation of her expression, as if she’d been braced to defend against an argument about where and why she chose to make her bed.
Five years of therapy paid off in an instant with the ability to recognize how much unnecessary strain his unchecked reflex to be combative added to the lives of people he cared about. He could give her relief from that strain by simply thinking before speaking.
Gin preferred raw, unprocessed truth, but impulsive blurting wasn’t always the truth. Often, it was anxious and defensive and created situations that were the opposite of what was in his heart. Lex knew damn well when he was being dishonest. Three seconds of thought about the effect he’d like to have on her wasn’t the same as lying about who he was to manipulate her into loving him.
Ethan stuck his head out of the office and called down the hallway, “Did either of you take anything out of the freezer for dinner?”
Gin kept her eyes locked on Lex while she answered Ethan. “Lex suggested adding takeout to our list of errands. Any sign of Simone?”
“No, and it will take more than the threat of starvation to make me sad about it. I have enough Kit Kats stashed to survive doomsday.”
Gaze unwavering, Gin pushed away from the wall and took two steps that brought her toe to toe with Lex. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled.
He really had no choice but to bend and let himself be kissed.
Because he wanted to watch the point of this semi-public display of affection unfold, he had a closeup view of the unflinching stare willing the point into him while satin lips softened the blow. His pulse jumped with an irregular rhythm in response to the unsettling intimacy of the combination.
Ethan cleared his throat. “If this is for my benefit, I figured it out last night when Lex had sex hair.”
Lex rested his forehead against Gin’s, hopelessly snared in the emerald trap of her eyes and content to remain there. The display had been for his benefit, not Ethan’s, to demonstrate she wasn’t keeping him a secret from people who wouldn’t sell them out to the press. He hadn’t known how much being claimed would mean to him until she did it.
Says the man who wouldn’t even hold my hand in front of witnesses.
Dammit. He was going to hold her hand until it was sweaty and pruny and she begged him to stop.
Ethan said, “I won’t tell Simone, but you might want to put on some music when you’re doing the thing because you’re both kind of vocal. Also, some of us are lonely, so blasting some Depeche Mode would prevent my muffled sobs from spoiling the mood.”
Gin sighed as if regretting letting Ethan into the circle, but sex and music were equally near to Lex’s heart. “Got a playlist?”
Ethan retreated with a chipper “Sending it now!”
She gently banged her forehead against his. “This has become more of a group effort than I was looking for.”
“Does this mean the conference call with Maisie is canceled?”
“It’s only fair. You’d be underrepresented.”
“My mom and shrink will be happy to tag in on my behalf.”
“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more fun.” She gave him a push toward the studio. “Back in the dungeon with you.”
“In a second.” He hooked his arm around her waist and pressed his lips against the tender skin below her ear. “Remember, the dungeon is soundproofed if you feel like getting vocal.”
The fee for not returning the rental to the point of origin was enough to buy a used car, which struck Gin as unfair, since they were leaving the transaction without a car.
Lex applied his charm to her to keep her from expressing all of her thoughts to the clerk, pointed out the team couldn’t spare two of its members for half a day just to return a car to Denver, and threw money at the fee, including a generous gratuity for the inconvenience and yelling.
She was still fuming about corporate extortion in times of misfortune when Lex found the hospital.
“I don’t recognize it all in the daylight,” he admitted, “but it must be the place.”
The crowds gathered around every entrance suggested either a high-profile patient or an undead horde, and Gin assumed a zombie apocalypse would have been mentioned on the radio. “What, you want to visit your ailing loved ones without it being a media free-for-all? Should have thought of that before you became a star, kid.”
Lex circled the parking lot in search of the magic slot — far enough from other cars to permit maximum escape ability but close enough to the building to reach quickly if they had to make a dash for it. “Did you have to run that gauntlet when I was in the hospital?”
“Multiply by a factor of Baltimore’s population density.” The gauntlet had been ten yards thick, bodies packed as tightly as fans swarming the stage at a concert. The police moved the crowd along for obstructing hospital access, and it flowed back in waves, swelling in size each time. Even flanked by bodyguards, Gin had been shoved, screamed at, and spat on. Someone threw a half-eaten Big Mac that exploded against her chest, a bomb made of limp lettuce and sodden bread.
She wore that smelly, grease-stained shirt for two and a half days, waiting for Lex to open his eyes. His mother offered to get her a change of clothes, but Gin needed the reminder that even random strangers knew she was bad for him to give her the strength to say goodbye.
He settled for a spot near the least-congested door that let him pull through so the SUV nosed forward. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
No. “Liv needs her things. You don’t have to come.”
“You are not walking through that alone. The mob will be more aggressive if we’re together, but as long as we don’t get separated, it can attack only one side of each of us.”
The longer they sat, the more likely they’d be noticed, swarmed, and trapped.
Lex took Liv’s suitcase from the back seat. Gin slung the strap of Liv’s purse over her shoulder on the side he’d be protecting to shield it from grabbers.
He extended his hand to her. “Buddy system.”
She captioned the photo that would result. “In a shockingly insensitive move, Perry-Greene act lovey-dovey on the way to visit the betrayed White-Church.”
“Anyone shocked that I’m insensitive at this point hasn’t been paying attention.” He scooped her hand into his and set off for the building with a no-nonsense stride. “Other than that part and the betrayal, I like the rest of it. It sounds like we’re getting married.”
A few quick steps couldn’t make her as breathless as trying to keep up with him on a five-mile run, so the offhand mention of marriage must have been the culprit. “Don’t even joke about the M-word in public.”
“Lack of privacy is an easily overcome obstacle.”
Not at the moment. One member of the crowd spotted them, and the tide surged in their direction.
The crush of attention made responding to Lex impossible, but Gin couldn’t help but remember he’d obliterated the last set of obstacles between them as easily as he plowed through this mob.
The nursing supervisor confiscated Olivia’s purse and suitcase. “I’ll see she gets these. She can have one visitor.”
Gin’s muscles had bunched tighter and tighter with each second of immersion in the hospital’s sterile gleam and perfume of disinfectant. At the nurse’s words, they went lax with relief. She looked at Lex. “If you want—”
“I saw her this morning. I’ll wait for you here.”
She left him in the waiting area and followed the directions to Olivia’s room. The blue paint on the door gleamed like the finish of a car, no doubt waxed so bodily fluids would bead and slide off.
Her gaze slid to the floor to check for stains.
Her hesitation was silly. She was a grown woman. Olivia was her friend. There was no reason to be lightheaded, sweaty, and queasy about seeing her.
Liv lounged on her side, facing the window, her back toward the door. She glanced over her shoulder at the interruption and raked Gin with dark eyes nearly unrecognizable without makeup. She told her phone, “I’ll call you back.”
Gin hovered just over the threshold, eyes darting from one clinical fixture to the next. Years spent in efficiency hotel rooms while on location should have desensitized her to impersonal accommodations, but hospitals were unrivaled in making beige a void of joy. The only vivid colors in the room were the blue labels on the bed, the color-coded outlets on a five-foot power strip mounted above the bed, and Olivia’s dark hair. She otherwise blended into her drab surroundings — a disturbing departure from her vibrant norm.
“Is it taking you back to Lex?”
Gin flinched at the unerring perception that made Olivia a masterful actress. “You don’t have tubes coming out of you, and you’re conscious.”
“Thanks to you. They tell me my midnight snack could have done serious damage if I’d digested more of it.”
“Wasn’t that the idea?”
Olivia rolled her eyes toward the window, dramatic even in avoidance. “Living with a perforated gut and brain damage wasn’t on the agenda. You obviously don’t want to be here. Did Lex put you up to it?”
Gin wanted to be there, if only slightly more than she wanted to be anywhere else. “It was my idea to come. We returned your car and brought your things, but—”
“They’ve been confiscated to search for drugs and sharp objects, naturally. By Nurse Salazar, I hope. She’s the only one I’d believe wouldn’t nick a souvenir.”
Gin’s spine stiffened like a spear. “Has someone harassed you?”
The feline curve of Olivia’s lips suggested a state of being supremely unbothered. “Quite the contrary, battle maiden. The younger ones let me get away with things they shouldn’t, which makes me question their commitment to duty, but there’s nothing malicious about it.”
Gin added being that obnoxious meddler who spoke to everyone in charge about the special security concerns of hosting a celebrity guest to her to-do list. “Do you need anything else?”
Olivia measured the wide expanse of floor between them with her eyes. “I need you to stop acting like I’m contagious.”
Gin’s fists bunched at her sides. “When I was at Lex’s bedside, waiting for him to wake up or die, I wanted to punch him.”
The other woman laughed.
Gin didn’t. “I wanted to climb on top of him and beat the shit out of him for what he’d done to someone I love. I feel the same way right now.”
Olivia raised her chin and tapped it with a finger. “Go ahead. I deserve it.”
Voice ragged, Gin said, “No, you don’t. You’ve punished yourself enough.”
And I didn’t stop you.
Absolving Lex of guilt was easy, but it was far from the first time Gin had been in this position. How many times did the people she cared about have to get hurt on her watch before she learned the warning signs? “I want to be more supportive, Livvy, but this is the best I can do right now.”
“Come here.” When Gin didn’t move, Olivia’s exasperation exploded. “You’re not going to hit me, Gin. Come here!”
A few steps led to clasped hands, then a tight hug, and eventually both women sitting side by side on the bed, leaning heavily against each other.
For a moment, Gin felt almost like a sister again.
Olivia rested her head against Gin’s. “I would have obliviously paid a rental fee monthly for the rest of my life while the car sat forgotten in Bob’s garage, but you saw a problem and solved it. That’s what I expect of Gin Greene, not empty platitudes and pats on the head. You comfort by eliminating discomfort.”
She sounded cold even when described in Olivia’s warm purr. “Like a concierge.”
“But better because we don’t have to tip you.”
“A concierge wouldn’t have left her post.”
Olivia sighed. “If you’d been in the way, I would have taken my bottle of wine and my bottle of pills to bed with me. You wouldn’t have known until you came to get my lazy ass up for dinner eighteen hours later, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Why?” That one word left a lot of room for interpretation. Why were you so determined? Why now? Why here? Gin would settle for any answer.
“I’m always being sent or taken somewhere, always being told what to say and how to look, always being directed.” Olivia flipped a blanket a slightly different shade of beige than the walls over their legs and smoothed it along with the bitter edge in her voice. “You grew up wearing the same leash. You know what it’s like. I had to prove it’s my life.”
“To throw away?”
“If I want.”
Gin had balked against her leash with mutiny, not self-destruction — but she’d had Ryan by her side the whole time, batting away the repercussions of her rebellion. If she’d been left to fight an entire industry alone, her story might have taken a different turn. “That’s terrifying, Liv.”
“I terrify myself sometimes. That’s why I’m not going home with you. I agreed to a voluntary admission at some Beverly Hills feelings spa. The delicious women here are shipping me out after my mandatory observation period.”
“Don’t hit on your nurses.”
“Oh, all right, but let me have the psychiatrist to console me. She’s all fluffy compassion on the outside, but when I challenge her, she’s made of unyielding steel. It’s the best of both worlds in one hourglass—”
“Please don’t sabotage your care by compromising the integrity of those providing it. You’ll force them to pass you off until you find someone who’ll be happy to hurt you.”
Olivia’s head settled on Gin’s shoulder. “At least I’d know what form of abuse to expect from one who fucks his patients.”
She deserved so much better than waiting to receive a type of abuse she understood. “Not everyone will let you down, Liv. Give somebody a chance to be decent.”
Olivia’s hand angled up to pat blindly at Gin’s cheek. “Sweet little hypocrite.”
Of all the accusations Olivia could have hurled at her, that one made the least sense to Gin. “Excuse me?”
“You have two partners with equal shares in your business, you do half their jobs, and you won’t let them touch any part of yours.”
“Not because I don’t trust them.” Maisie and Ethan — and everyone else at GemGam — each did the work of half a dozen people at a major studio. It would be unfair for Gin to ask them to do more. “A lot of my job is sitting around thinking. I have time to take burdens off of them.”
The hum of agreement in Olivia’s throat sounded patronizing. “What about Lex?”
“I’m not doing his job!”
“You would have.”
“If I had to. A backup plan is common sense, not a commentary on lack of trust.”
Olivia straightened to give Gin a regal look down her nose. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll put my faith in strangers when you stop being afraid to become dependent on the people you love because someday you might have to carry on without them.”
The guest room looked exactly as it had the day Gin and Ethan arrived, but Olivia had left her mark on it in some elusive way, as if her overabundance of presence had soaked into the walls during the three nights she’d slept within them.
Gin stared at one of those moonlight-frosted walls now. One night earlier, Olivia had looked at the same view and thought it would be a good time to swallow a few dozen pills.
Gin’s mind was far from restful, but she couldn’t blame the setting. Her mind kept returning to Olivia’s shot at her independence, the implication being it was some kind of character flaw.
People left. They died. Those left behind had no choice but to carry on. What was she supposed to do, sit in a dark corner and cry about it?
Only once a year. The rest of t
he time, she was too busy carrying on because when she didn’t, she dragged everyone around her to a halt to ask how she was feeling and if she needed anything and when she thought she might get better because life needed her to carry on. Everybody fell behind along with her.
Too many people depended on Gin for her to be the broken cog in the machine. Her job was keeping all of the cogs turning, even if she had to stick her fingers in and move them by hand, but she didn’t interfere when they were spinning on their own.
Maisie might disagree.
She made a rusty quarter-turn from her side to her back. The only way she could give Maisie more responsibility would be to hand over a new screenplay — which Gin would be delighted to do if she possessed such a thing.
She’d have to confess soon, before Maisie got it into her head she was being left out because Gin didn’t trust her.
She rolled to her other side, putting her face closer to a pillow that still held a trace of Olivia’s perfume.
She punched the blankets away like they were attacking her. She’d never get any sleep in this bed. Lex wouldn’t like it, but the couch would torment her less.
To keep her migration quiet, she turned the doorknob with the stealth of a teenager sneaking into the house after curfew, eased the door open, and released the knob with the same caution.
The door to Lex’s room was open several inches, spilling light and the hiss of his shower into the hall.
To make sure the lapse in bedtime security was his doing and not a breach with impending molestation, she pushed open the door a few more inches. His covers were undisturbed, the bed empty. She encroached on his personal space to peer into the attached bathroom.
Lex sat on the edge of the sink, fingers curled around the edge of the countertop. He was fully clothed in the same time-faded jeans and black henley he’d worn earlier, to all appearances in no great hurry to jump in the shower. His midnight eyes drilled into her as if she’d shown up late for an appointment.
