Chapter 3
THREE
SAWYER
Things moved quickly after our meeting. I got in touch with Thurston, who steered me toward a lawyer who dealt with stuff like this all the time. I’d put my own work on hold for the week while I read a bunch of biographies and mapped out different ideas for how we could approach his story.
I sent the contract to Lukas to look over, and within twenty-four hours he signed and sent it back to me. After that, we agreed to set aside an afternoon to meet and discuss how we wanted to get this project started.
But that’s when things got a bit strange. I thought it would be fine to keep meeting in public, but Lukas insisted that we meet somewhere private, explaining that some of the subject matter wasn’t stuff he wanted to talk about where other people might hear involuntarily.
After a bit more back and forth, I agreed—for his comfort—to meet him at his house.
I thought he might live in the city, but he was on the outskirts in a quiet suburb filled with older homes, the kind my parents would turn their noses up at.
Old neighborhoods were only acceptable if they were accompanied by old money.
Not houses with fading paint, the odd crooked shutter, and cute little walksways surrounded by flowers.
Far from the biggest or the nicest house in the neighborhood, Lukas’s was well kept, with a white picket fence, a fruit tree in the front yard, and a recently cut lawn.
I rolled up to his house a little early and contemplated sitting in my car for fifteen minutes until it was time to knock on the door, but that just made me feel even more stupid, so I gathered my things off the back seat and headed up to the front door.
Lukas opened it before I could ring the bell, which made me feel better about not waiting around in his driveway like a weirdo.
“Sawyer, I’m glad you made it. Come in, please.” Lukas stepped aside and a rather big, rather old-looking German Shepherd came lumbering over. “She’s friendly.”
I held my hand out and let her sniff me before I gave her a scratch between the ears. After that, she must have deemed me acceptable and unimportant because she lumbered back the way she came.
“What’s her name?”
“Lara. After Lara Croft, tomb raider.”
When I gave Lukas some serious side-eye, he held up his hands.
“I adopted her from the shelter with that name. Her original owners had to move and couldn’t take her. That’s the name she came with. They told me I could change it, but she’d already lost her family, so I wasn't going to take her name from her too.”
“Well, that’s definitely going in the biography.” I slid my messenger bag off my shoulder and unbuttoned my coat.
“Where did you want to set up?” I asked after I hung my coat up on a hook by the door.
“I have an office, but it’s a bit of a mess right now. So how about we set up in the kitchen? It’s got a breakfast nook we can work at and it’s closer to the coffee.”
“Suits me just fine.” I could see why Lukas had gone into film. He was one of those men who were meticulously groomed. His beard short and neat, his black hair styled in that just rolled out of bed but still the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen kind of way. He was undeniably attractive.
I followed him into the kitchen and pulled my laptop out of my bag.
I got it set up and while it booted, I pulled out a couple of notebooks and set them to the side.
“I never got a chance to google you to see if I’d recognize any of your work.
I’m not exactly a film buff, though. I mean, the last one I saw in theaters was one of the Spiderman movies and that’s because my date wanted to see it. ”
Lukas turned and gave me a funny look. “Thurston told you what I do, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. He said you’re an actor.” I paused, realizing my mistake. “Oh, sorry. Are you, like, a theater actor? Like Broadway or something?”
Lukas’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a sigh. He abandoned the coffee pot and pulled a chair out for me. “Have a seat, Sawyer.”
I dropped down into the chair that he pulled out for me and watched as he pulled one out for himself. He sat down and immediately he looked about five years older and about two decades more exhausted than he had when I’d walked in.
“I’m just going to give it to you straight, and if you want to cancel the contract, there’s no fault.” Lukas took a breath and raked his hand through his hair. He muttered a curse to Thurston under his breath before turning his attention back to me.
“I’m an adult film actor.”
My face must have displayed a blank expression because he continued on.
“I’m a porn star, Sawyer. Well, I was. I haven’t been on the other side of the camera in a couple years. But I still direct and produce. I’ve been in the business since I was eighteen.”
Lukas was a porn star.
Since he was eighteen.
“That’s so young though. Shit, sorry.” I furrowed my brow. “So you… you film porn.”
“If that’s a problem for you, like I said, we can cancel the contract.”
“I—it’s a surprise, but no. No, I’m fine.
I just assumed. I should have clarified.
Or googled.” I felt my cheeks go fire fucking red at the thought that I could google this man and see exactly what he looked like naked.
I could watch him fuck… other people. Which might be hot.
I’d watched porn before. Who hadn’t? But it wasn’t something I paid attention to.
Most of the time, when I needed some visual assistance, I found a random video and went for it.
I didn’t have any subscriptions, and I didn’t follow any of the studios.
“I’m fine,” I assured him again. “It’s unexpected, but it’s not a deal breaker.”
Lukas’s gaze was heavy with skepticism, but he eventually nodded. Then he seemed almost amused. “I’m happy to hear that.”
He got up from the chair and went back to the coffee pot and finished filling it with water. He carefully measured out the grounds then powered it on.
“I guess I can skip the questions I had planned to ask about any influences you had as a child that inspired you to go into acting.”
A laugh erupted out of him, and the tension in the room seemed to break and fall away. Lukas had a beautiful laugh, and the relief in his expression didn’t go unnoticed. This was likely the reason he’d had so much trouble finding a suitable candidate for the job.
“Fucking Thurston.” Lukas shook his head. He added a spoon of sugar to one of the coffees and brought it to me. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”
“Well,” I began, searching my brain for possible explanations for Thurston’s subterfuge.
Lara Croft came shuffling into the room.
She moved like a ninety-year-old. I was only a little surprised when she walked straight over to me and dropped her head into my lap.
Two brown eyes looked up at me, and my heart melted. “Oh, God, does she always look sad?”
Lukas rolled his eyes. “She’s also an actor. She’s good at finding the soft-hearted ones and milking them for all the attention she can. I can tell her to lay down if you want.”
“She’s fine. It’s her house.” I combed my fingers through her thick fur. “I never had a dog.”
“Every kid needs a pet. Did you have a cat?”
I looked at Lukas and raised an eyebrow.
“A cat? And risk the furniture? Perish the thought. My father had a fish tank in his office. A huge saltwater set-up, and I think he loved those fish more than he loved my brother and me.” I winced at the overshare.
“Sorry, we’re here to talk about your childhood, not mine. ”
Lukas didn’t seem to mind that I’d gone off on a tangent and rambled about my own trauma.
If you could call it that. It didn’t feel traumatic.
My parents were workaholic overachievers who had high expectations of their offspring.
I never wanted for anything. I always had food and shelter.
Security. Safety. Just not love. My brother and I tried to be close, but it seemed like every time we almost bridged that gap, our parents would pit us against each other. On my lap, Lara let out a sigh.
“I know the feeling,” I whispered to her. “So. Lukas Knight. Is that your real name or is that your stage name?”
“It’s my stage name, but I don’t use my real name anymore. Only when legally obligated.”
“Since we’re under an NDA here, what is your real name?”
Lukas grinned but didn’t answer.
With a dramatic sigh, Lara lowered herself to the floor and curled up at my side. I looked down at her and smiled. Her presence made me feel like I’d won her approval, and therefore had won Lukas’s as well.
“Okay, so I’ve never written a biography before. Expect some trial and error. For now, how about we talk about what years of your life you want in the biography and the kind of tone you want. Is it like dark, or hopeful, or funny? That kind of thing.”
“Well, I thought biographies were about someone’s whole life.”
“That can be the case, but sometimes people focus on a specific time period in their life. They might give some broad strokes back story as to the events that led up to the period of time they want to highlight. If someone wants to talk about, say, their time as a soldier overseas, they might not need to spend a whole lot of time on their childhood.”
“Well, my childhood was certainly a contributing factor in my career choice. Not so much the early childhood, but the teen years were rough.”
“I think that’s true for everyone.”
“Not everyone who had it rough ends up in the adult film industry, though.”
“No, some of us end up as socially stunted writers or emotionally constipated doctors who have two settings—angry or drunk and angry.”
Lukas lifted his coffee mug and mimed clinking it against mine. “Fair enough.”
“So you want to talk a bit about your teen years and then jump into your transition from high school student to adult film actor?”
“You can say porn star, Sawyer. It’s not derogatory or anything.”
I felt my stupid cheeks turn into twin flames of mortification. “I know that.”
Willing my stupid nerves to calm down I took a shaky breath and tried again. “I imagine the bulk of the book will be about your time in the adult industry. I have to ask… are we going to get sued if you publish this?”
“I might.” Lukas laughed. “But there’s language in our contract that protects you from any lawsuits.”
“Right. Right. Okay. I just wanted to be sure our bases were covered.”
“Don’t worry, Sawyer. I’ll protect you from any blowback this might cause.”
“And just how much blowback do you expect?”
Lukas only shrugged. “The industry doesn’t like it when their dirty laundry is aired. Unless, of course, they’re the ones airing it for their own benefit.”
“I think that’s true of any industry. Knowledge is power.
” I opened a new document in my word processor and settled my fingers on the keyboard.
“Okay, so you want to touch on the early years, with a more in-depth talk about you in your teens and the events that led you to sign with your first studio? Is that right?”
Lukas nodded. “That sounds good.”
“And what about the… adult content?” I wished to God my face would stop giving away my embarrassment.
It only made it worse. It was a terrible cycle.
I got embarrassed, then ashamed that I felt that way, then it just made me look even more embarrassed.
Maybe my brother wasn’t the only emotionally constipated person in the family.
“What about the adult content?”
“How detailed were you planning on getting?”
Lukas furrowed his brow, a set of lines appearing as he thought about my question. “I don’t think most events will need a lot of detail. There’s a couple scenes that are important to the story, and they’ll need to be somewhat explicit. But I think mostly we can stick to broad strokes.”
“Broad strokes. Got it.” And my chagrin only grew when I realized that I just used the word stroke in front of a porn star. My brain was an asshole.