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  “No, I care.” She let her gaze drift up to me. “But how are you doing? You look tired.”

  “Long night. For both of us. Want to go to bed?”

  I didn’t know where my sudden playfulness had come from—maybe the fact that my dad would be all right and seeing Laine wasn’t broken about the pictures. She was miles away, but she was in front of me. I was relieved that I could do something, and that she was there, and I needed her.

  Yes, I needed her against me. I admitted that. So I said quick good-byes and hustled her into my car. I may have been too wrapped up in my own happiness and despair to realize she was pensive. Or I may have expected any normal person to be a little off after the events of the last twenty-four hours. I can’t imagine we weren’t both completely scrambled.

  But I took her hand in the car and she put her head back on the seat, looking out the window.

  “We’re getting as many of the pictures taken down as we can,” I said as we crossed La Cienega.

  “What does liver failure mean? Will he be all right?”

  “Ken is on it. And the police are doing what they can.”

  “Your mother, she was upset, she couldn’t hide it. Is she always like that?”

  “That Jake guy, I swear if they don’t lock him up and throw away the key…”

  “Lucy’s all right,” she said. “I really thought she was the worst person in the world, but she’s thoughtful, and she loves you. I guess people change.”

  “I think they do.” I turned into the hills. “I mean, they don’t really. But they do.”

  “They improve.” She turned her head to face me, her cheek on the back of the seat. “We improve.”

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t ask her where she wanted to go, but I brought her home. There may have been a practical matter of her clothes or a camera. I didn’t ask if she had to get to work. She didn’t object. I assumed she needed me as much as I needed her.

  Chapter 42

  Laine

  He got out of the car and came around the front. The front lights of the little house clicked on when he passed.

  Was he my last chance at happiness? Was the disaster of those pictures going to break me? Or would we find a way through it? Because his hips swung around the car and I thought if I lost him because of Jake, I’d never recover.

  He opened the door for me and stood with his hand out, framed in the triangle between the door and the car, half lit by the porch light. I hadn’t thought about sex, or more accurately, I hadn’t thought about good sex, since the previous morning. But as I put my hand out for him and we touched, I couldn’t think about anything else. I was body slammed with arousal, and I wasn’t the only one, because I was barely out of the car before Michael pushed me against the car in a bruising kiss.

  And it was good, exactly what I needed. I wanted to be swept away in his hands, his mouth on my face and neck, pulling groans from me. I kicked my leg around his waist to feel his erection against me. He pushed. I pushed back. If I could just make the fabric between us disappear, rub it away with friction until the threads frayed and popped, getting to the skin, the fluid and blood, until he was inside me.

  “I have to have you,” he said, cupping the back of my head, mouth to mouth.

  “Yes.”

  It must have taken twenty minutes to get to the front door. He pushed me against every stable surface, kissing me, fondling me, yanking buttons and zippers. I could barely get a foothold long enough to touch him. By the time we got to the door, my shirt was hiked over my breasts and his pants were unbuttoned.

  The door swung open, and we tumbled in. My pants were undone, I don’t remember when or how, but he stuck his hands down them. I let loose with a long vowel when he touched me.

  “Christ, Laine.”

  He slapped the door shut and got on his knees before me, pulling my pants down. I stepped out of them. He got a condom from his back pocket before lowering his pants below his hips. I opened for him, hitching one leg over his waist and my arms over his shoulders. He pushed me against the wall, driving into me.

  “Say you’re mine,” he growled.

  He felt so good, pushing on me just the right way, holding my legs apart so he could go deeper. Light and heat gathered where we were connected.

  “Oh, Michael, I’m so close.”

  “Say it.”

  “I’m yours.” I pulled him to me, not doubting the words as they escaped my lips, because no man had made me feel like this. No man had made me feel so safe, so wanted, so valuable. We could do this, and if I didn’t believe we could get past our troubles, my world wouldn’t have exploded in pleasure. I pulled him close with my legs and came for all it was worth, letting go of everything for that moment.

  He came right after me with a bark and a groan, panting as if he’d just been for a run. We didn’t move, didn’t say a word. He hitched me up and I gripped him tighter as he carried me to the bedroom.

  Chapter 43

  Michael

  I’d fallen asleep wrapped around her, which felt as natural and right as any place I’d ever fallen asleep. Once I got her into my bed, we kissed, touched, talked, and made love twice more. She asked about my parents as if she were asking about an exotic trip I’d taken in the distant past. She was fascinated, as if the silliest details were important, and the parental idiosyncrasies I took for granted were the cornerstone of my relationship with them.

  She was still guarded about her time with those assholes who’d hurt her, but she told me about Sunshine and Rover, and I remembered the faraway look on her face when she’d spoken of them during our conversations in the bleachers. I wanted to find them for her, to reunite her with the only people who had been parents to her.

  We acted as if nothing had gone wrong in the previous twenty-four hours. We twisted together in the cocoon of my bed until the sun blasted through the guest house window and my phone woke me. In the previous night’s haste to get naked, I’d forgotten to turn off the damned ringer.

  I untwisted myself and walked out to the living room. My jacket was half under the couch, in a ball with the sleeve sticking straight out as if it was hailing a cab. I yanked it, and the phone slid out of the pocket. I plucked it up to shut it.

  But I saw who it was from and felt compelled to take the call. “Hello?”

  “Mike. It’s Steven.”

  “Good morning. Is it morning? The sun’s barely up.”

  “I’ve been up all night,” he said, and I heard it in his voice. The guy never lost a minute’s sleep for anything.

  “Good thing we’re not shooting.” I threw myself on the couch. I was completely naked, and it was my house, yet I felt as though I should put something on. I knew what this was about.

  “Last night,” he said.

  “Wasn’t me.”

  “Stop joking.”

  “What do you want me to say? I didn’t do anything wrong.” I heard Laine behind me, but I couldn’t look at her. The house was so small I couldn’t go anywhere to have the conversation where she couldn’t hear me.

  “Look,” Steven said in his director voice, “I don’t want to get into a big battle over morality.”

  I sat up straight. “Morality? Are you—?”

  “I don’t want this to go bad. I respect you as an artist. But hear me out. This shoot’s already compromised. I have the Overland thing bumping right up against it. The delay was going to eat into my pre-production. And now this?”

  “This what? Say it.”

  “I can’t work with you.”

  My heart sank as if sucked into a vacuum. He was bailing. Losing an actor was the worst thing that could happen to a project. That killed it immediately. But losing a director was the second worst thing. That killed it in a slow, wasting death. And my father needed Bullets. He’d been waiting for this chance for ten years, and I’d put everything on the line to make it happen. Gareth was in the hospital because production had paused. How bad would he get when the project died?

/>   “I’ve got Ken on the PR,” I said. “It’s going to go away.”

  “I have daughters.”

  “You have daughters?”

  “I have to think about them. I’m sorry. But they’re going to be the same age as that girl soon.”

  “So? I…” I stopped.

  He wasn’t worried about the public relations nightmare. He wasn’t worried about what people thought of him or me or Bullets. He thought I liked teenagers, and he didn’t want to work with a predator.

  “Fuck you, Steven.” I threw the phone on the couch and turned around. Laine stood in the doorway, fully dressed and looking skittish and nervous. I was so annoyed with Steven and so worried about my father that I threw up my hands. “Don’t even ask.”

  “Okay.” She sounded small and anxious.

  I just wanted everything and everyone to go away so I could throw something. “Steven quit right to my face, and I’d normally say, hey, brave move not having his agent call me. But his bravery doesn’t make this less screwed up.”

  “It’s because of me.”

  “No.” I paused then told the truth. “Yes.”

  “I figured.” She looked out the window, crossing her arms.

  We’d been so close the night before, and that morning, with the taste of her still on my lips, she was a million miles away. She sat on the edge of the couch, looking into her lap. When I put my hands over hers, she didn’t move them.

  “I thought about this all night. After you fell asleep, I was up, thinking about what your mother said. And I slept a little and woke up thinking it would all be all right. Because I’m just… you. It’s always been you. I look at the past nine years, and I don’t think anything I’ve done that hasn’t been because of you in one way or another. And it seemed that being with you was somehow… like it had a purpose. Like it was the end of a long journey. But I woke up uncomfortable and convincing myself it would all be all right. Your mother said you make everything an uphill battle, and I started thinking, ‘Is that me? Am I his uphill battle?’”

  “Come on, really?”

  It was the wrong time to show impatience. It was the time to come together with her, but I was overwhelmed, hurt, and worried about my father.

  “I think we had a good time, and now we have to move on.” Her breath hitched, and her voice had an odd flatness to it, as if she’d opened a valve at the bottom of her throat and let the emotion drain out before speaking.

  “What?” I sat up straight, feeling my nakedness for the first time. “Why?”

  “Don’t you see? I’ve been nothing but trouble to you. I walk into your life, and you get beat up and your movie is in trouble. People aren’t talking about you and your work, they’re talking about me and who I am. You break your contract, then you do something borderline illegal to help me, you get arrested, and your father winds up in the hospital. Nice, right? And this morning, Steven quits. Nice how I enrich your life. Nice how I add something instead of taking away.”

  “Hold it.” I held up my hands. She was talking crazy. She just needed to hear sense. “You’re looking at this all wrong. That’s all external stuff. We can get through it.”

  “We couldn’t have done anything better. We couldn’t have worked harder to make it right, and we still fucked it up,” she said. “My best chance was with you, and if I ruin you in the process, then it’s me. All I’ve ever wanted to be was no worse than anyone else, and it’s uphill every day. I wasn’t born to be normal any more than you were, but I can’t drag you into my version of not normal.”

  “Laine, can you just stop and let me think for a minute?” I put my hands on the sides of her face so she had to look at me, because this was important. “How is it you can get shuttled through twelve homes as a child and cope with everything you’ve coped with and not deal with this nonsense?”

  Did I sound angry? Maybe I was. Maybe I didn’t want to deal with this right now. But I knew from the flatness of her expression that I wasn’t giving her hope. I wasn’t telling her anything she wanted to hear. I was talking into the mirror. I’d never felt this frustration mixed with despair before. She was gone to me, and I had no idea how to make it right. Was this feeling hopelessness? It was new and awful beyond measure.

  “I’m so fucked up,” she said, emotion back in her voice. “I mean… so fucked up. I shouldn’t be with anyone. I should be alone and happy with my friends. I should play with their kids and be the aunt everyone loves. That’s what I want. I don’t want this. It’s too complicated.”

  I should have answered her tears with kisses, should have held her or said something to cut off the next line, because before it, everything was salvageable.

  “Do you love me?” she asked. “Can you honestly say you love me?”

  I was too squeezed. Too many things were happening, and all of them closed and locked my heart.

  “That’s not a fair question,” I answered. “It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

  She nodded, her face a mask of stone and ice. She was gone, and I realized I should have said something else. But I couldn’t take it back, even if I wanted too.

  “So sensible,” she said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m sorry.” She stood. “And thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  And that was that. The fact that I’d never experienced that before notwithstanding, when a woman said it was done, it was done. As if I could hear a gate clang closed, my defenses fell into place.

  “That’s fine,” I said, as shut down as I’d ever been.

  “Can we still be friends?” she asked.

  “Sure. I should go. Let me put you in a cab.”

  She put her shoulders back and held her head high. “I can get myself a cab, thank you.”

  “I can get Gali here in three minutes.”

  I took her arm to stop her and she jerked it away, then held her hands up as if stopping an oncoming train. I felt ashamed to have touched her. Even after all the intimacy of the night before, I’d somehow physically overstepped.

  “You’re a good man, Michael. You’ll see it’s the best thing.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She just turned on her high-tops and walked for the door without looking back, head down as if she were looking for dropped change. I didn’t sense that anything had shifted until she fussed with the doorknob, and when I jumped to help her, she put her hand up to keep me away.

  “I got it. Just open the gate for me.”

  She walked out and closed the door. She trudged to the front, and just before she got to the gate, she put her chin up, her shoulders back, and walked as though she meant it. I pushed the button and opened the gate so she didn’t have to break her stride, and that too was a mistake.

  I was supposed to shut it off like a faucet, as if I’d been acting the whole time.

  I hadn’t been. I’d meant everything I ever said to her, and I didn’t know how to un-mean it. But maybe she was right. Maybe I should admire her strength to do what had to be done. I didn’t know how to have a relationship any more than she did. I’d never learned how to work for it. I’d left my name to do the heavy lifting.

  My life was my life. It wasn’t changing. Whatever my ability to expose myself while exposing none of myself was, it was something I’d been born into. I couldn’t change it any more than I could make myself shorter. She saw that. She was wise beyond her years and strong beyond her stature.

  She was right. It hurt, but she was beautiful, and she was right.

  Chapter 44

  Laine

  Nothing was right. Nothing was exactly wrong, but nothing was right. I had things to figure out, and I didn’t even know what they were. I should have been out getting work, but I wanted to go to bed. Not to lie under the covers but to sleep. Forever.

  I’d done the right and honorable thing. I knew immediately why so few people bothered with it, why so many just went where their heart pulled them. Because doing what made sense hurt. I had a
physical pain in my chest. Doing the right thing wasn’t supposed to feel like that. It was supposed to be uplifting. But the loss of him… well, the only word I had was pain.

  I pulled an ice-crusted container of French vanilla out of the freezer. Maybe I’d just freeze out the sad. I opened the drawer for a spoon, and I stared back at me in black and white.

  Jake had already copped a plea for two years behind bars, and still, the problem of that old me was nestled with the spoons.

  I took the picture of sixteen-year-old me out of the drawer, ice cream forgotten. Look at that kid. She was tough. She did what she had to. She’d been given nothing and turned it into something.

  I didn’t flinch from the photo. That girl had screwed up any chance I’d had at happiness, but she had given me that chance in the first place. I didn’t hide the picture or try to not think about it. She was mine. She was a part of me.

  “I forgive you,” I said, then I started crying.

  I think I cried for two days. Two and a half. Normally I viewed every tear shed as a sign of weakness, as a lack of ownership and control. But I gave up on that in the first ten minutes. I’d been through a lot. I earned my tears. This snot-shooting, breath-catching blubber was mine, and I deserved it.

  Irv called, and I texted back that I was busy. Tom emailed me an invitation to a Razzledazzle show, and I texted back that I couldn’t make it. No one called to tell me who was eating at what restaurant without their underpants.

  Sometimes I called up memories of Sunshine and Rover, with their brightly colored everything. I knew they loved me. I had been with them for two years, and I had to be ripped away from them. I remembered the funky smell of the van, sweat and love and something else.

  I’d always thought they’d abandoned me, but maybe it was more complex than that. Maybe I shouldn’t have grown up in a van. Maybe they thought I could do better than them. At six and a half, I had no idea what it meant to leave behind someone you loved.

  It sucked.

  Michael was the only person who could soothe me, the only one who could make my crying stop, but I’d abandoned him. I had no right to call him to comfort me.