Shuttergirl Page 20

  “Cop to what? Wanting to go to a party instead of being here for you? Laine, I want you. I care about you. You give me something I’ve never had before. You’re a devil in high heels, but you… God, I want you. You. Your body, yes, but everything else too. I want to make everything in your world right. I can’t help it. Let me in. Just let me in.”

  I leaned back on the seat as if my neck couldn’t hold my head. “You’re a good person. Don’t make me something you have to fix. I’m fine. I earned my life the hard way.”

  “Let me in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I won’t hurt you.”

  “But you will.” When I blinked, the tears that had hung over my eyes fell onto my cheeks. “Jake is going to put these all over the internet, and you’ll have to protect what you’ve built. They won’t tolerate you with a whore. You’ll stand by me out of obligation, and you’ll blame me. How could you not?”

  “None of that is true.” He took a handkerchief from his inside pocket.

  “It’ll ruin you unless I give him what he wants.” I brushed my hands over my cheeks, but he pulled them away and handed my face the handkerchief.

  “What does he want?”

  “Money. Which I’ll give him.” I sniffed. Wiped.

  “Is that it?”

  “Probably a nostalgia screw. He’s come around few times since I left. And no, he never got what he came for.”

  Michael leaned back and looked out the window as we drove down the dark expanse of deLongpre for the fifth time, turning back toward the colored lights of Hollywood Boulevard. I assumed he was coming down from the drama-high of our conversation and was putting together what being with me meant. Finding a loophole. Strategizing a way to break it to me.

  I’d had a couple of parent-sets look me in the eye and say it wasn’t me, it was them. I knew how it went. They needed to do it that way, but for me, it didn’t matter.

  I was happier being single, to be honest. If I dated anyone, he should be a pap or a criminal or something. Michael was a liability. He was going to end a career I loved.

  I was okay.

  Chapter 28

  Michael

  She was going to end me. Even if the thing with that picture—and who knew how many more—blew over tomorrow, she was trouble. I’d known that from the start and had continued as if she wore a costume that could be peeled off, as if she was acting. But she wasn’t, not a bit. Her hurt was real and disquieting.

  I could get out of it. Having said too much, too soon and having made little promises I couldn’t keep, I could still get out of it. Save her and me a lot of trouble. It was better that way, really. I’d existed before I knew her, and I could exist after. Over time, we’d go back to the way we were, with her hidden behind a camera and me hidden in front of them. I’d stop being a magnet for her past, and she’d move on safely.

  Excusing myself from her life was the only sensible thing to do.

  “Laine,” I said so low I could barely hear myself.

  “Yeah?”

  “How many pictures are there?”

  “A roll. Thirty-six.”

  I looked at her for the first time since she’d mentioned a nostalgia screw. Her chin was an eighth of an inch higher, and her mouth was set tight.

  “A roll?” I asked.

  “Negative film and paper. Tom was learning. He left his camera, and the guys thought it would be funny to leave him a present.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Tom didn’t think so either. He said he threw up when he developed them, then he made me look at them. It was awful. But it doesn’t matter how many, does it? One or a hundred, how many will it take to ruin your life?”

  She was so guarded. She was braced to take a blow and beautiful in that. I was sure I could let her down easy and never see her cry over it. I’d walk away without a drop of guilt, only an ocean of regret.

  Once I saw her tears fall and heard her admissions, her shame, and her self-blame, the idea that I could leave her was a distraction. She could take care of herself, but I didn’t want her to. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to be that man who was more to her, the one who treated her like the jewel she was. I wanted to be the one to protect her.

  I touched her cheek. She pulled back a hair, still girded, her hand on my arm as if she wanted to draw it down. I slipped my fingers to the back of her head and pulled her toward me.

  “Michael, really, I—”

  I put my weight into it and kissed her because I had to. Her face knotted then relaxed, and she kissed me back.

  I was unqualified to save her. My black eye proved it. But I was also unable to abandon her, because I wanted her with every cell in my body. I admired her strength, her dignity, her very spirit. She’d broken free of her situation through sheer tenacity and effort. The only care I had about her past was how to release her from its effect on her present and future.

  She was no whore. She was a queen.

  The seat vibrated. She pulled away and went for her phone, but I got it first. She grabbed for it, but I pulled it back. It was a call, not a picture, and it was from an unknown number.

  “Stop,” she said.

  I answered it. “Hello?”

  “Who is this?” Male voice.

  “Laine’s phone.”

  “Where’s she at?”

  Laine looked as if she was going to explode. I put my finger to my lips, and she flipped me the bird. I was crazy about her. I had no reason not to be.

  “She’s indisposed,” I said.

  “What the fuck kind of word is that? Hey, wait. I know that voice. Man, are you that actor? ’Cos I will beat your ass.”

  “How much do you want, Jake?” I asked.

  Laine pressed her knees together and put her forehead on them. I rubbed her back.

  “Foo!” Jake said into the room, away from the phone. “It’s the guy whose face you busted! He wants to know how much!”

  I couldn’t hear what Foo said. I just stroked Laine’s hair.

  Jake got back on the phone. “I’ll text you a number, bitch. What the fuck happened in Dead Lawyers? That explosion was—”

  “I need a place and time, Jake. Thirty-six prints and negatives.”

  “Test prints,” Laine said between her knees. “Tom did six test prints. I have one. So five more.”

  “Five test prints,” I said. “If you can add, that’s forty-one prints. Thirty-six negatives.”

  The moment of silence following concerned me, but then Jake said in a low, conspiratorial voice, “Hey, I know why you’re doing this. She sucks dick like a fucking champ. I taught her that. You’re welcome.”

  I hung up. I didn’t want to hear another word, and he and I were done with business. And the personal part? I wasn’t in a position to kill him and get away with it. I hit the intercom behind the seat. “Pull over, Gali.”

  “I’m going to die,” Laine said.

  “Not tonight.”

  She sat up straight, her face red from being in crash position. “I can take care of this.”

  “Let me do it. I want to. I need to know you’re not going to see him.”

  The car came to a stop on a side street.

  “How am I supposed to not worry about you?” she asked.

  “Don’t. Look around. Tell me if we were followed.”

  She peered out all the windows, leaning over me to see out mine. I couldn’t help but touch her when she was near me.

  “Looks clear.”

  I kissed her just as her phone vibrated in my hand. She tried to look, but I kept the screen away. A number and an address. Perfect.

  “Stay here for five minutes.” I got out of the car.

  As soon as I closed the door, Carlos got out of the passenger side. The street was residential and unpopulated in the moonlight. Even two blocks away from Hollywood Boulevard, the crickets made a racket.

  “I have a thing for you tonight,” I said. “I need you to pick up some cash from my business
manager and make an exchange out in Venice Beach.”

  “An exchange?”

  “Double rate. And you should be carrying.”

  “I don’t do nothing illegal. It’s in my contract,” Carlos said.

  “It’s not illegal. It’s not drugs. It’s pictures. Forty-one of them. And thirty-six negatives. I need you to count, and do it without looking at them, as much as you can.”

  He looked as if he was suspicious but agreed when I gave him my word. I called my business manager, connected the dots quickly, and got back into the limo. At least this one thing would be put to bed once and for all.

  Chapter 29

  Laine

  When he got back in the car, he looked relieved, and joyful because of it.

  “Done,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  He took my hands. “Carlos will bring him his money and get the pictures for me. Then we can burn them, or hide them, or whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want you to pay for this.”

  “If I pay, I know it’s done. Pay me back if you want. I don’t care. All I care about is making sure this is gone by morning.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was grateful, humbled, and unworthy. The better he was, the more unworthy I felt, and I knew it was wrong. I knew it wasn’t helpful, and I knew it wasn’t true, but I had no idea how to stop feeling like that.

  “Are you going back to the party?” I asked. “It’s in your contract.”

  “Fuck the contract. I told Gali to drive us back to my place. I hope that’s all right.”

  “It’s all right.”

  He drew his thumb over the line of my jaw, the pressure just enough to make me want him despite everything.

  “Can you ever get that picture out of your mind?” I said.

  “It wasn’t you.”

  “It was.”

  “That picture was of a confused, lost girl. You aren’t any of those things.”

  I considered letting him off the hook by telling him he didn’t have to take me home. He didn’t have to spend the night with me. But he was a grown man, and if he didn’t want to, he wouldn’t choose to. I wouldn’t assume I was unwanted or a pity fuck. I would take him at his word. So I kissed him, and we kept kissing until the car took a sharp turn into a driveway. I looked away from him, out the window. It was getting dark, but I could still see the modern house that was as big as the Hatches’ had been. Everything about it was clean and trimmed and perfect.

  I sat back and straightened my skirt. “Thank you.”

  “I haven’t even done anything yet.”

  “For helping me. Thank you.”

  “I’ll say this once, but it should be obvious,” he said. “If you want to wait because of what happened tonight, I’ll wait.”

  “Damn right you will. Except I don’t think I can.”

  There was a quick knock at the window. Michael knocked back in response, and the driver opened the door.

  “Thanks, Gali,” Michael said, getting out. “I think that’s it for the night.”

  Michael held out his hand for me, and when I took it, he led onto the driveway I’d glanced at through layers of glass. Gali closed the door with the thup. Our fingers looped together as we made our way up the walk.

  “Nice house,” I said. The windows were warm against the flat light of the Los Angeles sky, and the ground swept up and away in the distance, like the ocean decorated in tea lights.

  “It’s bigger than any one person needs, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

  We stopped at the front steps to kiss, and he jangled his keys.

  “Keys?” I said.

  “Yeah?” He stood in front of the huge wooden door, its size proportional to the rest of the house, and the detail in the glass matched the expense.

  “It’s funny the mundane things I think people like you get to skip.”

  “People like me?” He punched numbers into a keypad, disabling the security system, and turned the key.

  “Magic people. You know.”

  He laughed, opening the door. “Yeah. Me. Magic.”

  He stepped aside, and I walked in, my heels clopping on the wood floor. A few strategically placed lights were already on, revealing only what needed revealing. He had a perfectly balanced and furnished home full of right angles and masculine colors. The walls were soft grey, and there was glass everywhere, showing off the view and the turquoise, bean-shaped pool in the backyard.

  “Can I get you something?” He passed me, walking backward into a kitchen that, like mine, was defined by an island, the open space around it, and its spotless lack of use.

  “Water?”

  “That, I have.”

  We went into the kitchen together. He filled a glass from the fridge door. His perfect hand gripped the simple glass, his beauty shattering the ordinary nature of his task. I leaned on the counter, looking out onto the living room, the painting over the fireplace, the view. The stairway to the second floor was exposed wood and metal with just a railing. Was his bedroom up there? What would be different when I walked down those stairs?

  “You were pretty amazing tonight,” I said. “In the movie. I thought you were going to jump through the screen and sit in my lap.”

  “Scary guys are my specialty.”

  He handed me the glass, and I drank. He stood so near to me that only the distance of the tipped glass separated us. When I was done, he took it and put it on the counter. As I drew my hand across his cheek, I flicked his stubble under my nail. His eyes, jade and blue, were so close to mine, and his hands on my body, unmoving, waiting.

  “I have a confession,” he said.

  A lump grew in my throat. Were we doing confessions? Did I have to drop my life at his feet? I didn’t want to. Not tonight. Not ever, but especially not tonight. “Let’s confess stuff later.”

  “This is a now kind of confession.”

  “Okay.” My voice cracked, because I didn’t want it.

  “I don’t live here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He stepped away. “Let’s do this quick before I lose my nerve.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t explain or even give me a chance to utter another question. He pulled me out of the kitchen, through the living room, through another room with chairs and a rug and couches, another room with a television, another functional room with storage, another that looked like an entryway of sorts, and out of the house.

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer as he pulled me along a stone path. The drop-off into the Hollywood basin was to my right, and this man ahead of me, saying nothing, pulling me across his property, around a wall, and to another doorway with flowers planted all around the entry. He pushed me into the door, and his passion accelerated, lips on mine, tongues meeting, twisting, hands finding the boundaries of my clothing.

  “I want you,” he said, gravel in his throat. “All of it. Nothing between us.”

  “Where are we?”

  He opened the door behind me, and by force of inertia, we were through the door.

  “The guest house.”

  I didn’t have time to see much. Just leather couches, paintings. It was neat but warmer, with blankets and exposed stone. One story. And there were his lips, his hands, his hair in my fingers, the rush of fluid between my legs as I pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He yanked off his tie, his eyes on fire. He was the guy in Big Girls, all heat and perfect lips set to a task as he stepped forward.

  I gasped. “Nice house.”

  “One bedroom,” he said. “Nine-hundred-twenty square feet.”

  The ravenousness in his voice took the strength out of my spine. I turned around to face the view. Same as the big house but cropped by shrubs. Somehow, it was less grand. More manageable.

  “I can imagine you here,” I said. “More than the other.”

  He brushed my hair away from my neck. “This hair,” he said into my ear. “Never cut it.”

  I
would have agreed to anything when he kissed the base of my neck. He slowly pulled down the zipper of my dress and slipped the straps off my shoulders, drawing his fingers over my arms until the dress fell to my feet.

  With slight pressure to my shoulder, he turned me around and looked me up and down. I’d worn the pale pink underwear for him, and it got the exact reaction I wanted and feared.

  “You like it?” I said, trying to sound normal, but I sounded breathy and nervous.

  He scooped me up so quickly I squeaked. His right arm was under my knees, his left arm holding up my back. I looped my arms around his neck and let him carry me to the dark bedroom. It was small, lit only by the glitter of the city below. He laid me on the bed and turned on the lamp.

  Details blurred around him. A closet door. A photograph of the Hollywood sign from the back. Pale blue walls. And him, a focal point so strong it was impossible to see anything outside him standing over me with his shirt unbuttoned halfway and a hungry look in his eye.

  I was propped on my elbows with my knees pressed together by instinct or training, because the pinpoint of arousal where my thighs met felt vulnerable.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, putting one hand on my knee, “and you’re mine.”

  He put his hand on my other knee and parted my legs. I threw my head back as every sensation made my body react. He slipped his hands inside my thighs and got on his knees at the side of the bed.

  “Michael?”

  “Laine?” He kissed inside my knees, working upward with his lips and tongue.

  “I want to tell you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want you to be disappointed, but oh God, that feels so good.”

  He looped his fingers under the sides of my panties and slid them down before tossing them off. “I won’t be disappointed.”

  “I’ve only ever come one way.”

  “Tell me.” He put his lips back on the inside of one thigh and drew his hands up the length of the other.

  “Myself. I can only make myself come. Or sometimes fingers like the other day but never—”

  I couldn’t finish, because his lips reached home, and his tongue took me, luscious and soft, gentle and firm, while he spread my legs farther, exposing me completely to his mouth.