by Witt, L. A.
The episode we were currently filming was one of the more sedate pieces in the series. Though that didn’t really say much—Hunter Easton definitely hadn’t written the first several books with a TV show’s budget in mind. And I suspected he’d written the last couple with the budget in mind—specifically to raise Finn Larson’s blood pressure a few notches.
But at least by Wolf’s Landing standards, this episode was pretty mellow, which meant Natalya wasn’t running herself quite so ragged.
Lucky her. I was, as per usual, in and out of meetings, on and off the set, alternating between tearing out my hair and wanting to tear out the other producers’ throats.
Toward midafternoon or thereabouts—I’d lost track of time—I finally had a break. I had more meetings later, but took advantage of my downtime by strolling through each soundstage to see how things were going. If I didn’t keep my finger on the pulse of every episode, I’d get blindsided by crises, so I did everything I could to minimize that. Plus it gave me an excuse to swing by wherever Natalya was working. Even if we didn’t have time to chat, a glance at her was always enough to lighten my mood.
I stopped to check on some last-minute repairs being performed on the interrogation room set—I’d fucking told the bean counters we couldn’t cut corners on building materials—and then paused to survey the room and crew. The actors were playing on their phones or staring at scripts. A makeup artist was putting some finishing touches on a “wound” on Ginsberg’s arm.
And Natalya was chatting with Daniel Moore.
I halted so abruptly, I thought I heard Jeremy stumble behind me. I didn’t look at him, though. My gaze stopped on Daniel and Natalya and didn’t move.
Daniel was new to the cast, playing a small role in the next three episodes before returning in an upcoming season for a recurring role. And wouldn’t his fans lose their minds when they realized his character eventually had a romantic arc with Gabriel? Half the fans would love seeing Daniel and Carter making out on the screen. The other half would probably . . . not.
We’d kept his role under wraps, though. People knew he’d been added to the cast, but his role was a carefully guarded secret. The speculation was already beginning. After all, it had become almost a running joke that everyone attached to Wolf’s Landing was either queer or would be before long.
“The wolves don’t bite you and turn you into a werewolf,” one incensed blogger had said last summer. “They turn you gay.”
Daniel, however, would’ve stunned the hell out of me if he were anything but straight. He’d played a gay man in a film last summer, and the sex and kissing scenes had been convincing, but offscreen, he was as straight as the day was long. When interviewers asked if it bothered him to get physically intimate with another man, he’d shot back that no one ever asked him if it bothered him to play the ruthless serial killer in his previous film.
“Kissing a man raises questions,” he’d said, “but when my character chokes someone with his bare hands and dismembers the body, I get awards.”
He’d worked his way through the ranks of some of Hollywood’s leading women and was forever in the tabloids for breaking up and making up with this or that actress. I didn’t know if he was single or not right now.
What I did know, however, was that one woman on the set of Wolf’s Landing had apparently caught his eye.
He leaned against a worktable where Natalya was making adjustments to a rig. Though she broke eye contact to continue fussing with straps and buckles, she kept glancing at him. And he never looked away from her.
Let those eyes move down the front of her shirt one more time, buster, and you won’t need makeup to look battered and bloody.
Not just because I’d break his arm. Chances were, she’d tear his arm off and beat him with it if she thought his gaze was going somewhere it didn’t belong.
Except . . . except she did catch him a couple of times. Once, he had the decency to look sheepish. The second time, neither of them seemed to acknowledge it either way.
He said something, and she laughed.
From any other woman, it might’ve come across as just a friendly laugh, but Natalya was notoriously stoic. Some of the guys joked—when they were way out of her earshot—that she’d invented the resting bitch face. That smile, though—the one she was doing just now with Daniel—was more than a friendly one. It was that same smile that had made me grit my teeth on the beach when those guys had come up to us.
She flipped her hair out of her face and gave a playful—but much too flirty—laugh before focusing on the rig again.
He smirked as he made another comment. She threw her head back and laughed again.
And my gut clenched even tighter.
I gritted my teeth. Really?
Daniel glanced at his watch and stood. He gestured across the set and shrugged apologetically. She smiled again, said what looked like, “It’s okay,” and they held each other’s gaze for a second before he turned to go.
She watched him for another second. Then she shook her head, laughed to herself, and resumed working on the rig.
Jeremy cleared his throat, reminding me he was there. I turned, and he raised his eyebrows as if to ask if everything was okay.
Yeah. Fine. Great.
I didn’t say anything. Teeth still grinding, I forced a smile as I approached Natalya. “He seems friendly.”
She eyed me. “He is.”
I said nothing.
She cocked her head. “Is that a problem?”
My chest tightened, but I clenched my jaw tighter. We were at work. I was pretty sure I could feel Jeremy cringing behind me. This wasn’t the time or place.
She put the rig down and faced me fully. “Anna . . .”
“We shouldn’t—”
“Or do you mean I shouldn’t?” she snapped.
I glanced around. No one was looking yet, but it wouldn’t take much to start turning heads. “Not here, okay?”
“Then where?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Because ‘later’ isn’t going to cut it either.”
Shit. Just what we both needed. And chances were, she wasn’t going to let the subject drop any more than I would.
“Let’s talk about this in my office.” I gestured around the set. “I’d rather not do this here.”
Natalya’s lips tightened. “Fine.”
Well, fuck. This was going to be fun.
Without another word, we left the set. One of her stuntmen approached her with a question in his eyes, but must’ve thought better of it when he actually looked at her. He stopped, raised his eyebrows, and then turned tail and went the other way. Smart man.
Natalya kicked the door shut behind us, startling the shit out of me. “All right. No one else around. Just us.” She folded her arms again and set her jaw. “What’s the problem?”
“Really?” I glared at her, my chest painfully tight with almost-contained anger. “I just watched you flirting with—”
“Are you serious?” She glared right back at me. “I banter with a man for five seconds, and suddenly—”
“That looked like more than bantering.”
Her eyebrows rose. Then they slowly came down, and her eyes narrowed. “What it should have looked like was none of your fucking business. Because that’s what it was.”
I held her gaze but didn’t speak.
Count to ten, Anna. Don’t flip out. One . . . two . . .
She beat me to the punch anyway. “You do recall that we’re not exclusive, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” I ground out. “And in case you were curious as to why that is, we—”
“Jesus. So should I be jealous if you speak to a woman who’s got bigger breasts than me? Or who’s taller?”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it? How is it different?” She huffed sharply. “Because a man has a penis? For God’s sake, if I’m that desperate to be fucked, Red Hot Bluewater sells strap-ons.”
I glared at her. “Y
ou’d ask a woman to do that? To penetrate you like a man?”
“I said if I was that desperate. And for your information, when I have used a strap-on, I like to be on top.” She sneered at me. “How does that work with your insecurity?”
I blinked, her words startling me enough to displace the anger and throw me off-balance. “I—”
“You need to get over yourself,” she growled. “Do you really believe all your own bullshit about me seeing you until a man comes along?”
“It’s not bullshit when it’s happened to me.”
Her lips pulled tight. “That had nothing to do with me. You really think I would use someone the way people have used me?”
She caught me so off guard, she nearly drove me back a step. “I . . .”
“No, I’m not one of those gold-star lesbians who’s never tainted myself with a man. Yes, I am attracted to men. And yes, if I’m not exclusive with a woman, and I’m attracted to a man”—she gestured toward the set where she and Daniel had been flirting—“I will talk to him, and I might even flirt with him. Who knows? Maybe he’ll think I’m good enough for an exclusive relationship.”
My breath hitched as if she’d hit me in the chest.
Before I could respond, she narrowed her eyes. “You can’t have it both ways, Anna. If I’m not good enough to really date because I’m attracted to men, then you don’t get any say over who I flirt with or who I fuck. So back off.”
I gritted my teeth. “If you’d rather be with him, then—”
“I never said I’d rather be with anyone,” she snapped. “What the hell is the problem? You didn’t want a relationship. Then you did, but you made it quite clear you saw this as something less than what you’d have with a real lesbian.” She waved a hand toward the set. “Then I flirt with a man, and suddenly—”
“So you were flirting?”
“Is that a problem?”
I swallowed. Yeah. Yeah, it was a problem. But how was I supposed to explain it?
“What about the men on the beach?” I asked. “You—”
“For God’s sake.” She clicked her tongue. “You probably wouldn’t have even noticed if I’d been flirting with a woman. In fact, you haven’t noticed when I’ve flirted with women.”
“You . . . what?”
One eyebrow arched. “My point exactly.”
“No, I didn’t notice.”
“So this is because he’s a man, isn’t it?” she pressed. “Admit it, Anna.”
I exhaled. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me what the fuck you think this is. Because one minute I’m not worthy of being exclusive, and the next, you’re getting jealous because I have the audacity to look at someone else.”
Except I just figured out how I feel about you yesterday. I haven’t even had a chance to—
She stabbed a finger at me. “I want you to admit that this isn’t about me flirting with someone, it’s about me flirting with a man. And—”
“Yes, okay?” I threw up my hands, my chest on the verge of exploding with frustration. “It’s exactly what we talked about when we first started doing this. That I can’t compete with—”
“With what? His dick?” She rolled her eyes again. “For God’s sake, get over this obsession with penises. For a bunch of women who claim they don’t like penises, lesbians certainly do think about them more than—”
“It’s not just about penises,” I growled.
Natalya sighed impatiently. “Then what is it about?”
It’s about me not knowing how to tell you that I want you and only you.
And how the hell am I supposed to reconcile that with the fact that you want more than I can give?
I took a deep breath. “You can choose between a straight relationship and a queer one. I can’t.”
“So what? I’m still queer.”
“Yeah, you are,” I said. “But do you know what it’s like to have your entire sexuality be seen as an affront to men? For men to tell you that you just need to be fucked by the right man to realize you’re straight?”
Natalya folded her arms tightly beneath her breasts. “Do you really want to go there with me?”
I swallowed. “Try me.”
She set her jaw. “When I have sex with a man, lesbians look down their fucking noses at me. Because I’m just taking the easy way. I’m not really queer. I’m no different than a straight girl.” Eyes narrowing, she lowered her voice. “And then when I want to be with a woman, suddenly all the lesbians turn up their noses at me because I dare to be attracted to men, but the straight men also get pissed off at me. Because I’m bisexual, so I’m supposed to be a whore. I’m supposed to fuck anyone. I’m not rejecting all men, I’m rejecting that man specifically.”
My breath stuck in my throat. Her words bounced around in my mind, and I struggled to make sense of everything she was saying. I hadn’t thought of—
“I can’t win, Anna,” she spat. “Not with women. Not with men. Not with you. Everyone I touch is a statement about everyone I’m not touching. Men threaten me with corrective rape, and women turn their backs on me. You turned your back on me. And you have the brass fucking balls to think you have the monopoly on being judged and threatened because of your sexuality?”
“I—”
“Do you know how much shit I’ve caught for being bi?” She scowled. “Do you know what it’s like for a woman to say I’m disgusting and untouchable because I’ve had a dick inside me before?”
I coughed to get my breath going. “Actually, I do. I—”
“Yeah? Bet you’ve never had a women tell you she couldn’t be with someone who had the best of both worlds.” Lips curling in disgust, Natalya snorted. “Please. I come from a country where people like us”—she gestured at each of us—“are treated like garbage, and there’s no protection for us. One of the boys I trained with was beaten and thrown into the Volga.”
My breath hitched. “My God. Was he—”
“You don’t survive being thrown into a river in Russia in February.”
I swallowed.
She stared me down. “So don’t you dare tell me I’ve got it better than a lesbian or a gay man.”
“Like it or not, you do have it better in this country, Natalya,” I snapped. “Men . . . I mean, men have a hell of a lot more power than women. You’re with a man, some of that power transfers to you, and . . . and that means—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. This coming from the woman who’s been producing and directing one of the most successful TV shows in the last decade.” She gestured sharply toward the set. “You’re one of the most powerful people in this town, and you want me to believe that me being with a man means transferring—”
“I have plenty of power here, but the minute we’re out on the street, I’m no different than any other woman. I mean, does it ever occur to you that dating a woman is a lot harder than dating a man? People expect to see us with men. Seeing two women together is—”
“Of course I know it’s harder being with a woman!” she shouted. “People are assholes!”
I resisted the urge to glance outside and make sure we hadn’t drawn a crowd.
Then Natalya exhaled, and when she spoke again, she sounded more exhausted than angry, like she’d blown all her energy and now struggled to get the words out at all. “Dating a black man a few years ago got me dirty looks and bullshit from people too. It was still better being with him than it was with Tommy. Tommy was a straight white guy, so he was exactly what everyone thought I should be with, but he was also the biggest douche bag I’ve ever dated in my life. I’ve never been with anyone who could make me feel worse about myself in more ways than he could.” She folded her arms tightly beneath her breasts. “Tell me again how it’s ‘easier’ to be with him.”
I held her gaze, but couldn’t put the words in order.
“I didn’t think so,” she growled. “I’ve done nothing wrong, Anna. Maybe you should stick to dating lesbians.
At least then you’re only possessive when they speak to members of half the fucking population.”
“I’m not poss—”
“Enough.” She put up both hands. After a moment, she slowly lowered them, all the while glaring at me. “I’m not going to argue about this. You can make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the day, it’s nothing but bullshit, and you know it. If you don’t want to date me, fine.” She laughed bitterly. “I’m sure as hell not going to argue with you. But don’t blame this on who I am. I can’t control it or change it any more than you can, but at least I can choose to see past my own damned insecurity enough to trust a person instead of distrusting her sexuality.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Natalya wasn’t done.
“You know what?” She gave another harsh, bitter laugh. “I don’t know why I’m bothering, because I’m pretty sure the only one who lives up to your own stupid standards is you. None of the rest of us will ever be good enough because we dare look at other people. Or whatever other bullshit reason you dream up.” She narrowed her eyes. “So why don’t you do all of us a favor and go fuck yourself?”
With that, she turned on her heel and stormed out.
The door slammed behind her, rattling the whole building.
Arms folded, teeth clenched, I glared at the door. She just didn’t get it.
But what if she’s—
How could she not see that being with a woman who was attracted to men and women was not an easy thing?
But everything people have done to her in the—
And how it didn’t help matters when she flirted with men while dating a woman?
But—
But if she didn’t want to listen, then . . . fine. If that’s how she wanted it, then . . .
Fine.
Chapter 21
So that was that. It was done. And, thank God, it had all blown up before I had a chance to make an idiot of myself and tell Natalya what I felt.
