by Ren Benton
“And Lex needs to chew out whoever leaked his location.”
He wouldn’t know where to begin. “I gave Jim and Patty your office line for legal and media matters, and my mother if she can’t reach me otherwise. I didn’t give anyone the house number. I don’t even know it.”
Gin’s shoulders lifted. “Like you said, it’s not top-secret information. Your ex knows a guy whose cousin’s brother-in-law dated a girl whose stepdad hung drywall during the studio renovation.”
Lex squinted at her. “Does that sound at all plausible to you?”
“More so than when I thought it was a stranger and you implied basically the same thing.”
Ethan took her side this time. “It doesn’t have to be that convoluted. Patty knows everybody and probably has a dozen of Bob’s numbers, including this one, on her contact list. Someone new in her office, who will never work in the entertainment industry again, might have been seduced by the banshee’s screech to give out a number she shouldn’t have. Accidents happen.”
That explanation didn’t satisfy Lex any more than the convoluted one, but Gin seemed content to write off the entire incident — the call and the former girlfriend who wanted his head on a pike.
Maybe he was the only one surprised that a woman would bear him ill will.
Gin said, “Even if you successfully shut down all avenues that lead to you, there are too many back yards someone who knows you can cut through. There’s no mystery to solve, Velma.”
Because he considered the comparison an insult to Velma’s investigative competence, Lex pushed up his glasses with his middle finger.
Ethan gurgled. “Oh. My. God. I just noticed the specs. This is blatant sexual harassment in the workplace. I’m filing a complaint. Maisie will want a picture, for evidence.”
“I’m confident I will be exonerated by the investigation.” Lex held still for the photo snapping and made a deliberate effort not to look innocent because there was no surer way to look guilty as hell.
Gin jabbed a warning finger at Ethan. “Do not post that on Instagram.”
He muttered something about his private collection that Lex didn’t quite catch because Gin was pushing him into the hallway. Her hands flattened against his stomach would have distracted him from a body cavity search.
He covered her fingers with his to make sure they didn’t leave him. “Tell me where you want me to go. I’ll race you there.”
“Kitchen.” She stepped so close, her belly pressed against his knuckles. “I’m going to feed you one last meal before you’re found guilty of being unreasonably sexy.”
His neck heated like it was the first time a girl ever called him cute. His tied tongue couldn’t produce one witty or cool thing to say in response, but he sure wasn’t in any hurry to race away from her now.
Lex’s “help” impeded Gin’s efficiency in the kitchen, but the food was nonetheless on the plates half an hour after they set foot in the kitchen.
In a feeble attempt to compensate for getting in her way, he fetched a couple of candles from the dining room table and lit them on a burner.
When he placed them on the island, she fluttered her lashes. “How romantic.”
She’d never given much weight to more elaborate productions of romance, and rightly so. He knew now every extravagant gesture had been showing off what he could give her, and every public display had been showing off to others that he — Lex Perry, Drunken Loser — had won Gin Greene, the Brilliant, Brave, and Beautiful. The love in his heart was genuine, but his exhibition of it had more to do with his ego than her happiness.
They had yet to discuss the current state of their relationship, or whether what they were doing could even be called a relationship. He didn’t want to hear that they weren’t going anywhere, but he was a grownup who met important matters head on, at least according to his psychiatrist. “Is the sex to keep me docile and working?”
Gin choked on a bite of chicken. Since it was the coughing type of choking rather than the suffocating kind, he poured her a glass of water and let her deal with the problem as she saw fit.
When she could breathe properly, she said, “Sex makes you conceited and bossy.”
He made the queen of self-control lose it. Hell yeah, he was the fucking king, in the most literal sense. “You’re more than welcome to take a turn on top.”
“Then you’re even bossier. Not that there’s anything wrong with directing when it gets results. I’m just saying it’s not how I’d make you ‘docile.’” She laughed as if the word didn’t belong in the same conversation with him. “Want to know why I didn’t stop by to say hi at any of your shows?”
“Even more than I want to know how you’d make me docile.”
“I didn’t want to be anywhere near you because if you even hinted at the possibility of interest, I would have been sucking your dick in a bathroom stall five seconds later.”
His body’s reaction to the suggestion was typically male, but his brain made even more dramatic jumps. She’d wanted to see him but had been afraid getting too close would get out of hand. He shared that want and fear, and the knowledge he hadn’t been alone in it even when they were apart made his heart reach for things he wasn’t sure were attainable.
Because he didn’t want to derail her line of thought just yet, he kept his yearning to himself. He fluttered his lashes. “How romantic.”
“That was the best-case scenario. If you didn’t offer, all my hopeless desperation would have made me one of hundreds of panting women you rejected on your way to the dressing room.”
He knew more about hopeless desperation than she ever would. “I would have offered.”
Nothing as crass as a hummer in the john, but something pushy and overeager, like the rest of his life.
“You would not. You were always involved with someone.”
He’d always appreciated Gin’s faith in his fidelity. A lot of his relationships ended not because he cheated but because he grew weary of defending himself against accusations that he put his dick in every woman who stood next to him.
He would have upheld his no-cheating policy if she’d come to him while he had another girlfriend, but she might not approve of his methods. “I have a breakup email saved in drafts for just such an occasion. I would have been free of entanglements at the tap of a button.”
Her eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “Wow. I’m glad I didn’t know that when I was the girlfriend.”
“No, no. You’re the ‘just such an occasion.’ Want to read it?” He patted his empty pocket — oh, right. He’d made a paperweight of his phone after breaking up with a woman so he’d be available for Gin. “I’ll tell you what it says. ‘Dear auto-filled name from the address book. I will treasure every moment of our time together, but that time is at an end because Gin is here. Have a nice life. Lex.’”
She chuckled, under the mistaken impression this email didn’t really exist.
Maybe it was for the best if she believed it was a joke. Sending it to any human being he liked enough to be in a relationship with would have been cruel in the extreme, but even knowing that, his only worry was how that cruelty would affect Gin’s opinion of him.
Similar to his other addiction, he didn’t care who he hurt in his pursuit of a fix.
“You would never be that cold to a woman.”
“I’ve been colder.” He’d needed fewer words to tell Melanie they were over, though he had enough decency to wait until the morning after Gin contacted him about the job to break the news in person.
Melanie had responded with equal chilliness, so her call the following day had been unexpected. He answered every call at first, in case she’d left something at his place on one of her few visits or was having a hard time and needed closure. Only when it became clear she was in denial that the relationship was over did he resort to ignoring her.
She’d found a way to get his attention in coming after Gin.
He would have to discuss his response to today’s stunt with Dr. Oga
wa so he didn’t lose his temper and make the situation worse. He should have mentioned the problem as soon as the calls started, but until now, they’d been an annoyance he thought would run its course.
He already knew the first thing Dr. Ogawa would say: Problems rarely resolve themselves while we look the other way.
Too bad he didn’t get half credit for knowing this stuff without putting it into practice.
But her counsel could wait until his scheduled check-in tomorrow. In the meantime, there was no rest for artists facing a deadline. “Do you have a minute to listen to the music for the final scene?”
Gin’s lips curled upward at the corners. “If that’s what it takes to keep you docile.”
Gin folded herself into the extra chair in the studio while Lex cued the proper scene. She couldn’t help but notice his sour expression. “What’s that face for?”
He scrubbed it smooth with his hands. “Nothing. I’ve just been watching this all day, and unhappy endings disagree with me.”
What ending was he talking about? “It’s not unhappy. The protagonist saves the day. It’s a classic triumphant hero’s journey.”
“I see how you set up the end from the first scene. Your development is flawless. The story couldn’t end any other way without betraying everything that came before.” The sourness crept back even as he described the evidence she’d done her job well. “But I’m a child and want the good guys to live happily ever after, not sacrifice everything to defeat the villain. It’s not winning if your life is destroyed in the process. I prefer victory with a side of happiness.”
In an ideal world, sure, but the world Gin wrote about adhered to the laws of reality. Wholly happy endings were for the Disney versions of fairy tales. “There’s happiness in knowing someone you love is safe and thriving.”
“Bullshit.”
His vehemence pushed her back in the chair.
“Being away from someone you love is terrifying. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to Sarah again? She won’t need Eve to look out for her at any point in the future?” He flung his hand toward the screen. “She’d be more useful at her sister’s side, actively loving her instead of blowing it all on one game-over gesture that separates them forever.”
Gin had struggled with that idea herself, but ultimately, there was no other course Olivia’s character could take to save the person she loved the most. Standing at her sister’s side wasn’t enough to protect her. Killing her abuser and taking all the blame and consequent punishment did. That was the only victory the merciless situation offered. “Someone else will love and protect Sarah.”
“Not like Eve will, and who’s going to love and protect her?”
No one. The storytelling gods never rewarded sacrifices that didn’t hurt. Half measures were for acts one and two. The third required absolute commitment to the goal, even at the expense of life, heart, and freedom — then immediately roll the credits before the audience thought too much about what that sacrifice meant for the future.
That trick wouldn’t work on an audience immersed day after day in the film, though. “It’s just a movie, Lex.”
He scoured her with a look. “A hero with the best intentions does everything wrong, has to let go of everything that matters, is plagued by guilt, and comes back to make it right. But I’m not supposed to take it personally when that hero loses everything all over again.”
She paused several seconds to absorb her shock that he had made the story about him. “At the risk of disillusioning you about your place at the center of the universe, you’re not Eve.”
He blinked, and doubt diluted the animosity. “I’m not?”
Bob always told her good writing made at least one member of the audience feel uncomfortably exposed by tapping into hidden feelings. He also taught her the way to do it was to drill into her own feelings until they bled. “I thought I was being laughably transparent. Think about it. Eve’s sibling... is going to die... unless she kills the murderer... before he gets the chance.”
He stared at the screen as if seeing it for the first time instead of the hundredth.
To dispel any errors of interpretation, she spelled it out for him in ragged-edged words. “I’d have gladly spent the rest of my life in prison if I could have stopped Fogle from getting to Ryan. I wish this was a true story. I’d take that ending in a heartbeat.”
Superficial trappings aside, every one of her movies was about the same thing — her stand-in failing, then failing harder, but promising to make it right if the viewer stuck around for the last act. She never got to live happily ever after, but she made sure somebody else was better off than at the beginning.
Gin couldn’t pull that off in real life. Failure relentlessly dogged her into the third act. But at least onscreen, no one ever died because she wasn’t paying attention.
Onscreen, her sacrifice was enough to protect those she loved.
His bleak stare suggested she looked as shitty as she felt. “You deserve a happier ending, Gin.”
Olivia overdosed while Gin was starry-eyed about Lex. Lex poisoned himself while she ignored his addiction. Ryan died because she bitched one too many times about stress hurting her output.
Someone else always suffered in her pursuit of a real-life happy ending. She’d spent two nights in Lex’s arms — retribution couldn’t be far behind. “You should call Matt.”
He grimaced. “I thought we’d dropped that.”
“I mean to take you home.”
His departure date had been burning in the back of his mind like a hot coal since before he arrived. He’d spent hours trying to come up with a way to move it back and gotten nothing but scorched fingers for his trouble. Like hell he’d let Gin casually kick it forward on a whim. “I’ve got a whole week left.”
“Six days,” she corrected, her face a serene mask he recognized as her I’ve made a decision face. “You’re done with everything I asked you to do here. The rest was gravy.”
“I’m not done.” Fuck her decision. Apart from the unfinished theme, he’d taken the entirely wrong approach to everything else he’d written, making it personal instead of paying attention to Gin’s message. The first third of the movie might be salvageable, but the rest had to be reworked or trashed.
The professional crisis wasn’t what pissed him off, though. He tossed fifty songs for every one that made it onto an album. Wasted time was a cost of doing creative business.
What pissed him off was that he woke her up by making love to her, and a few hours later, she was trying to send him packing and justifying it by claiming half-finished work was good enough.
His music was the wrong thing to pick a fight with him about. It was done when he said so and not a minute sooner. “What I brought you down here to listen to has to be completely redone if you meant there to be any kind of triumph in that ending. If you want an audience to believe that, you need every bit of help I can give you because it’s fucking depressing on its own.”
He knew as the words came out of his mouth it was a cheap shot and he’d regret it later, but his heart stung and the only thing he could take a swipe at to retaliate was her movie, even if he was dead wrong and watching it once without inserting himself would prove it was every bit as hopeful and inspiring as she’d intended.
“Lex, everything I’ve heard so far has been perfect, and—”
“You only think so because you have nothing but silence for comparison.” His ears rang with emotionally discordant notes as the sound streamed through in his head. All the way back to the beginning, he’d have to inject a little light, a note to refer back to later when the mood darkened.
A memory of hope.
He’d done it completely backwards — which he’d considered and discarded as a visit-extending plan on day one. Even when he tried to be good, he earned an eviction notice.
He returned the favor. “Get out of my studio. I have a score to rewrite and only six days to do it.”
Her bare foot shot out to kic
k his chair. “I don’t want to get rid of you, asshole.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I’m scared!”
She sucked in her breath as if she could retract that admission from the air.
Her outburst took the piss out of his attitude. She might worry to excess, but she faced every boogeyman fearlessly. “What are you afraid of?”
He knew her pauses to select the best words. This one looked more like a struggle to find any, and the ones she dug up made little sense. “You’re going to be punished for being near me.”
Media shitstorms were an irritant, but they’d both survived enough of them to know even the worst of them didn’t do lasting damage. “Gin—”
“Don’t you dare tell me everything will be fine or you’ll take care of it or any other bullshit platitude you can’t back up,” she warned in a fierce rasp. “You don’t know what tomorrow holds. You can’t guarantee a happy ending.”
“You’re right. I can’t.” His audience was too smart to believe him if he tried. He hooked a foot behind a rung of her chair and yanked it toward him so their knees clashed hard enough to bruise. “But I can guarantee you won’t be alone, whatever surprise tomorrow springs. I won’t be drunk. I won’t be in a coma. And I sure as hell won’t be driving away and leaving you to fend for yourself one second sooner than I have to.”
“It’s my problem to deal with.”
She thought every problem was hers and only she could save the day, which left everyone around her feeling useless, and he wasn’t letting her get away with it this time. “When was ownership transferred solely to you? Last I checked, two corners of this alleged sordid love triangle were my exes. That makes two-thirds of this problem mine. And in case you’ve forgotten, I brought in a bonus ex who’s dying to tell a microphone what an asshole I am, so my share of the problem is way bigger than yours.”
“Why do you want it so much?”
He’d spent the first three decades of his life dodging responsibility and letting others clean up his messes — his mother, Jim, Patty, Gin. He would never be able to repay them, but he could stop adding to his debt by dealing with his own problems. “I hate it as much as you do. But I’m not abandoning you to be picked at by scavengers, and if you suggest it again, we’re going to fight.”
