by Kate Stewart
He harrumphs and slowly shakes his head. “This was about a kiss, right? That one was just for you.” He tilts his head. “But if you’re feeling needy,” he says with a sardonic hiss, “we can take care of that too.”
“Go to hell.”
“Tempting,” he utters without missing a beat, his eyes flaring with sick humor. “I like it warm.” He turns away from me and straightens his tie while I try to calm myself to the point of reason. Anger is getting me nowhere.
Scouring the hotel room, I see very few signs of life. The bed is freshly made but it doesn’t look like it’s been slept in. There is a pillow on the couch he’s squatting on and a blanket folded beneath it.
“Lucas,” I whisper at his rigid back. “I can’t keep going on like this. I need you to hear me. I’m fading. Please just give me some sign that you’re here.”
Without a reply, he walks over to the door and opens it before he picks up his script, dusts off the piece of sandwich that’s stuck to it, and resumes his seat. “Like I told you, not here.”
He doesn’t bother to look up as I stand there watching him sink back into the couch scanning his script. I’m not even an afterthought at this point. Making my way toward the door, I look back as he shells a pistachio before popping it into his mouth. He’s listening but no words will get through, and I’m past the point of caring, the raw betrayal too fresh in my chest.
“I’m so done, I won’t sit back and watch this fucking freak show anymore. You’re on your own, Nikki.” Walking toward the door, I hear the flip of a page and look back to see he’s already reading. I was screaming at a wall.
Shutting the door behind me, I look up and see several of the crew standing at the threshold of their own rooms and crowding the hall. It’s obvious they all heard, and they begin to part like the Red Sea as I walk down the corridor. Not bothering to look up to see the pity in their eyes, I march toward the elevator as a wave of humiliation wipes my every conviction away.
I’m just another Hollywood wife who got jealous, a wife who lost her husband to his career and a possible on-screen romance. Truth from fiction. A month ago, I would have said none of it was true, and I wouldn’t have cared who believed it. I feel the opposite of that now. I want to scream that my husband loves me, that what we have is rare, that we are the exception, that our love story is genuine, that we can’t be fazed, that we are unbreakable, but it’s no longer the truth.
I check into a separate room and fly out the next day.
“In Method acting, you can’t have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open.”—Dennis Hopper
Mila
Hollywood doesn’t respect the sanctity of marriage.
To me, that statement was always a cop-out. I never really believed that to be true because while the lifestyle is a worthy adversary to the fairy tale ending it often promotes; ultimately, it’s the people, its inhabitants, who make the life-altering decisions.
But maybe its influence is the most destructive because all I know is that in the past few hours, everything has changed and all due to the fact that my husband has been pulled heavily under.
It’s not the night I spent sobbing in the hotel room without a single word from Lucas, or the plane ride home that made me feel more alone than I’ve felt in years. It isn’t the mundane task of driving through traffic. It’s a simple errand that’s changed my mind. That combined with the fact that I’ve done everything in my power since I arrived back in LA to avoid the route back to a life I no longer believe is mine.
I stop at the light clicking my signal to turn on the road that leads home, to the place I once considered our safe haven. Where nothing outside the walls could touch us, the house itself a representation of what we built on faith. I have to leave him, of that I’m sure, at least until the film wraps. The more I pressure him to come back to me, the more damage is done to our relationship, which at this point, is nonexistent. But when a horn sounds behind me, I can’t bring myself to turn.
“Dame! Come here!” Lucas shouts from the bedroom. Running through the cottage, I see he’s still wrapped up in the sheet from our morning tussle, his laptop open. Crashing into him, I hear his grunt as I wrap myself around him. “Yes, husband?”
His voice is muffled as he tries to speak around me. “This laptop is expensive.” Rolling my eyes, I move to sit. He lifts up, opening his legs to straddle me, propping the computer on my lap.
“It’s beautiful. Whose is it?”
“Ours. It’s your anniversary present,” he says, flipping through the pictures the realtor sent. We’ve been holing up in my parents’ cottage and know we will eventually outgrow it. Though Lucas insisted on giving my parents well over the market value and kept it titled to them, for privacy and so my mother didn’t have a say. They had been thrilled with the additional income and even more thrilled that we wanted to keep it in the family because it was their only goal. We’d been looking for the last few months for something to make our own since we planned on having a family, but the cottage was our end game. Because of my love for my childhood home, Lucas vowed we would come back when our children were grown and live out the rest of our days here, old and wrinkled and just as happy. He said it made sense, and he was a believer of coming full circle. He said we’d be starting out at our finish line. I loved the idea of it.
“Look at the views,” he says, his breath hitting my neck as I actively scroll.
I’m wowed. “Oh, God, we could set up a table here and eat every night.”
“And this master,” he says, with a healthy amount of dream in his voice.
“This is just dreaming, right?” I toss a look over my shoulder. “This is a mansion.”
“No, beauty, I want this for us.”
“Lucas, I can’t afford to pay half that mortgage.”
“Let’s be realistic,” he says, “I make too much money for you to contribute half.”
“No, realistically, I could afford half of something less expensive.”
“But this is us, Dame.”
“It’s so beautiful. You know if you would have married Laura Lee, she could have afforded to go halvsies.”
“Halvsies?” he parrots with a soft laugh, as I try to squirm out of his hold.
“Keep looking.”
“No need, we’re going to look at it today, and then I’m putting in an offer.”
“I don’t want to fight,” I say testily. “This is too expensive for me to even afford the electric bill. You married a poor wine steward.”
“No fighting necessary. I’m making enough on this movie to pay for this outright. It’s an investment. My one and only and I want you to say yes, because you love me, because you trust me, and because you know this is the place.”
“Lucas, it’s too expensive, and we agreed we wouldn’t buy anything I couldn’t contribute to.”
“Do you want to move out of California?”
“No.”
“Then you need to give a little.”
“Oh, there’s something else?”
“Yeah, nowhere near LA.” He gives me the side-eye. “Mila, you had to squat at your parents’ house to stay in a decent place. Real estate is ridiculous here, and you know it.”
“Point taken, but we don’t need a multi-million-dollar mansion.”
“It’s an investment, one I’m actually not that terrified to make.”
“Guilt me why don’t you, so I can’t even argue with this!”
He grins. “You’ll make this place a home. And we’ll fill it with little brats.”
“I don’t like you going back on our agreements.”
“I get it, baby, but when I agreed to ditch that town home, the deal was we find a place of our own, one that makes us both happy until we start having brats.”
“Who says they’ll be brats? And you think I’ll be happy knowing I’m a kept woman?”
“They will be brats. Case in point, the look on your face. And God, that’s so sexy
, say ‘kept woman’ again,” he says with a laugh as I nail him in the head with a pillow. “Say it again. No wait, say ‘barefoot and pregnant.’”
“You’re a pig.”
“God, I’m getting hard just thinking of you naked on that kitchen island.”
“Lucas, focus. Go cheaper. It’s not that much of a stretch.”
“This is our house, Dame. If it’s anything like the pictures, it’s ours.”
“It would be your house. You would be the one paying for it.”
“Stop it. We didn’t sign a prenup for a reason.”
“Yeah, and that reason is temporary insanity on your part. This is serious, Lucas. What if we don’t work out?”
“Then you have this place. And I’ll give you 50 percent of what the house is worth.”
“How is that fair?”
“Trust me, you’ll earn it,” he swears, eyeing the screen. Rarely have I seen him this excited. “Dame, I want this for us. I want this space, I want you to cook dinner for me in this kitchen. I want this.”
The eagerness in his voice isn’t something I’m used to, and I can’t help but give into his logic. We’ll never be on even playing ground. He’s a millionaire, and I’ll be lucky to earn six figures every other year when doing well as a sommelier. There’s no contest.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“I just don’t want you holding this against me. And no laughing at my paychecks.”
He shakes his beautiful head. “You know me better than that.”
I do. And I trust him with everything I have.
“And don’t say we won’t last again. That’s some shitty talk, Mrs. Walker.”
“Because all Hollywood marriages last, right?”
“Stop it,” he says softly. “We will last. You have to know that deep down. We are different. We aren’t like anyone else. And I’m so proud of that. So proud.”
Feeling guilty, I flick my eyes to the carpet. “Sorry. You’re right. That was a shitty thing to say.”
“You’ve got entirely too much sass in that beautiful ass of yours. You know,” he says, his voice dropping low as he closes his laptop and tosses off the sheet, his expression telling me to run while I have the chance. “You could have a little more faith.”
Nervous laughter escapes me as he emerges naked from the bed and I give chase. Squealing through the cottage, I fake left then right, running through the house as my naked man chases me at a full sprint.
“I have faith!” I scream at the top of my lungs as he lunges for me and misses, smacking into a wall before pivoting on his feet lightning fast.
“How in the hell did you do that?” I screech as I make a run for the couch and he captures me before we both go over the lip. He lands at my back in the cushion behind me.
“I’ll never get the image of you running naked out of my head,” I huff in an attempt to catch my breath as he starts working my panties down my thighs, using his heel to drag them the rest of the way. Our chests are rising and falling rapidly as he whispers into my shoulder. “Sexy, huh?”
“More like disturbing,” I say as he bites into my shoulder. “I mean I guess your cock looks cute bouncing around like it’s homeless.”
“Cute,” he says with a grunt, pressing his new hard-on between my ass cheeks as a threat.
“Maybe I can knit it a little hat, so it doesn’t catch a draft as much as you run around here naked. I swear I married a nudist.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Maybe,” I say cheekily. I would absolutely hate it if he started wearing more clothes.
He lifts my hair with his fingers and nips at the back of my neck. “Well, I love you naked,” he says, lifting my T-shirt off and slowly pumping his cock through my legs, toying with me as my clit pulses.
“Please,” I say, grinding my ass against him. “No more playing.”
“You need to have more faith, Mila.”
“Maybe,” I gasp out, his length nudging me from beneath. He slides his palm from my belly to my sex, tracing the pad of his finger over my clit, back and forth, using my slickness to ready me.
He’s everywhere, his hot mouth melting me into a wanton puddle beneath his magic hands. I don’t realize how big I’m smiling until it fades and I moan as he drags the head of his cock through my pussy from behind. “Oh, God.”
“Now we’re talking.”
My smile returns. “You were just waiting for that.”
“It never takes long. You’re always talking to either the Father or the Son when I’m the one doing all the hard work.”
“Cute.”
He presses into me in one swift thrust. “Is this…cute?”
“Jesus, Lucas.”
“Make up your mind,” he grunts, burying himself to the root and pinching my nipple.
“Fuck, yes,” I murmur. He pumps into me slow, slipping his arms through mine and gripping my shoulders to use as leverage to go as deep as he can go.
“Play with your clit, baby,” he urges. I slip my hands between my thighs doing his bidding. “Fuck, that turns me on so much.”
“I’m going to come.”
“Hold on, Dame,” he murmurs into my hair. I can feel how turned on he is, his chest is drawn tight, his movements becoming less controlled.
“Fuck me, Lucas,” I whisper, getting lost to him as his thrusts quicken, and we both brace ourselves before bursting into a state of moans and exhales.
Lucas holds me to him, his arm around my neck as we both come down. His whispers surround me in a warmth more inviting than the sun streaming through the windows giving us a spectacular view of the rose garden and the hills surrounding us. He rests, still inside me in the protective hold I’ve come to crave as much as anything else.
“I love you, Mila Walker. You are my whole life. I’ve never wanted anything more than to make you happy.”
“You do,” I say, twisting to give him access to my lips. “You do.”
Sobbing, I make a quick turn off the road and park at a shopping center. Unable to think past the pain, I dial the number and pray for an answer.
“Mila?”
“Amanda,” I croak into the phone.
“Oh, no, honey, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Our marriage won’t last through another week of filming. He’s gone too deep, too far removed from the life we built, and if we have any hope of a future, I can’t subject myself to any more rejection. For this, he didn’t want a partner.
“Lucas, he’s…I don’t know what he is. I need to talk to you.”
“Okay, where are you?”
“You’re here, in town?”
“Yeah, I came back for a casting call.”
“I’m parked at the shopping center just down from the promenade. Will you meet me?”
“Sure, give me thirty minutes.”
I hadn’t realized how much time had passed until Amanda knocks on my window. I’d been staring off into space and jumped when she rapped on the glass. When I get out of my SUV, I hug her tightly to me, fully identifying with the loss of the past four months, for her, for Lucas, for all of us.
“I didn’t fully understand before,” I tell her tearfully as she hugs me close. “Now I do,” I sob as she grips me tighter. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Mila, you were a better friend than anyone else. You couldn’t know. No one knows unless they have to go through it themselves.”
I can hardly speak as I unload on her and she does her best to console me. “I can’t handle this. I’m losing him.”
“Mila, you’re scaring me, what’s wrong?”
“I suppose I have a highly developed capacity for self-delusion, so it’s no problem for me to believe that I’m somebody else.”—Daniel Day-Lewis
Mila
Casey and Bonnie Morning Radio Show
Casey: This just in, Bonnie, our golden couple may be in trouble.
/> Bonnie: Uh, oh. What’s going on with Lucas now?
Casey: A source on the set of Silver Ghost, Walker’s new movie, says Mila Walker was on location yesterday in El Paso.
Bonnie: She’s always with him on location, so what went wrong?
Casey: Rumors are circulating that tensions are running high and it’s getting a little bit risqué. Walker is filming opposite of Adriana Long.
Bonnie: Not another set romance?!
Casey: Could be.
Bonnie: Come on, Lucas, you know better than that. I think Mila’s prettier than Adriana. She’s had too much work done. So, what happened?
Casey: Apparently Mila left the set furious and the drama went down in Walker’s hotel room shortly after filming wrapped for the day.
Bonnie: Oh, no, Casey, not those two. They always look so in love.
Casey: Right? Let’s hope these two can get it together.
Casey: I guess we’ll see, it wouldn’t be the first set romance to ruin a marriage.
Bonnie: We’re rooting for you, Lucas and Mila.
Pulling into our drive, I turn off the radio and bury my head in the steering wheel. That news will broadcast on every entertainment medium by the end of the night. Over the years we’d been extremely careful to avoid that type of speculation, and even with Lucas doing his absolute worst, I was the one to bring the shitstorm to us. I wonder if Lucas was trying to warn me out of the hotel so the rumor mill wouldn’t start. Had I overreacted?
So, he kissed an actress and made it look convincing. That was his job. But we agreed. We agreed on nothing that intimate, so why would he go there? I’m sure he’s attracted to her in some way. Maybe Wes directed it that way, but Lucas knew that was a hard limit for me. And to twist the knife further, I felt threatened because we hadn’t been intimate, in what felt like forever. That made it even more inexcusable. And I was officially, at that moment, sick of his career being a reason for anyfuckingthing.
