Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
LUKAS
I hadn’t seen much of Ash since the other day when he’d kissed me. Had I seen it coming? Yes and no. I’d sort of half-guessed that he had some kind of a crush on me. Did I expect him to kiss me, though? No. I hadn’t been prepared for that, and I should have been.
He still did his job as my assistant, just without coming around as much.
Jax and Blue were keeping an eye on him, so I trusted that he’d be fine after he got over the rejection.
I went ahead and put him on the schedule with Jax and Blue, opting to have both of them shoot with him for his first scene.
In the meantime, I spent a lot of time talking to Sawyer. Both for the project, and because he’d become a friend. It wasn’t that every person I knew was in the industry, but it seemed that way sometimes and being friends with someone who wasn’t felt like a breath of fresh air.
Anticipating his arrival, I straightened up the living room, earning me eyerolls from Lara as she watched me try to get her hair off of literally every surface known to man.
“How can one beast have so much hair?” I asked her, not expecting a response. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
I gave up trying to deal with the dog hair and stopped to pet her instead.
“Sometimes I think that it would’ve been easier if I’d had feelings for Ash.
That way I could keep a proper eye on him like I promised myself I would.
He’d be looked after the way Leo would’ve wanted, and maybe he wouldn’t want to get into the industry.
” I settled down on the floor next to Lara and combed my fingers through her fur.
She let out a sigh and I nodded. “I know exactly how you feel.”
For a few minutes, I didn’t think. I just ran my fingers through Lara’s fur like she was a living, breathing Zen garden. I must have lost track of time because the doorbell rang, and my eyes snapped to the clock. Shit.
“Sawyer is here, and I’m covered in your hair.” I got up off the floor, and lacking any other option, I went and answered the door. My pants were covered in hair, having taken the worst damage from where I’d been pressed up against Lara.
I pulled the door open and tried not to die at how fucking good he looked.
The weather had started to turn a bit warmer, which I almost hated because when it was colder he wore this black peacoat that was honestly sexy as hell.
Today he was in a blazer that was storm-cloud gray and brought out the pink hue to his cheeks.
“Hey, come on in. Make yourself at home.” I said, stepping aside so he could enter. “I’m going to change really quick.”
I motioned down to my pants and Sawyer cracked a smile.
“She got you good, but you don’t have to change on my account. It’s just dog hair.” He stepped inside and bent to unlace his shoes. He wore these stylish brown leather shoes that looked like they were as soft as butter.
I shook my head, unable to explain the desire I had to look my best for him. Sawyer slid out of his blazer and hung it by the door. Popping the buttons on his shirt cuffs, he rolled the sleeves up past his elbows.
“I know I’m way overdressed, but I had a meeting today that I couldn’t get out of,” Sawyer said as he scanned the room for Lara, who entered a moment later, fashionably late to greet him.
“She’s shedding entire dogs at this point. You’re going to get covered.”
He shrugged and bent to pet her. He plunged both hands into her fur and scrubbed them down her neck and over her shoulders before looking up at me. “It’s just dog hair. Actually, do you have a brush?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well, if she tolerates a nice brushout, we can sit out back and talk about what comes next in the book while we brush her.”
“Don’t you need your computer nearby for notes?”
“Nah. Whatever I don’t remember I can just ask you later.” He stood and looked at me expectantly. “Brush?”
“Right. Ah, I’ll get it and meet you out there. Do you want something to drink?”
“Just water is fine. I was stuck in this meeting with coffee so bad that roofing tar would’ve been more appealing.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah. I think I’ve hit my caffeine intake limit for the year. Maybe the decade.” Sawyer started for the back door, Lara following along beside him, getting hair all over his pants. A pair of nicely tailored trousers that hugged his ass in a way that made me think obscene things.
Sawyer glanced back at me, his cheeks turning pink when he realized I’d been checking him out. “Are you coming?” he asked as he reached the door.
“Right behind you.” I found the dog brushes in the junk drawer in the kitchen, grabbed two bottles of water, and followed Sawyer out onto the deck.
It was a nice day, the sun a little warmer than it usually was this time of year, accounting for Lara’s massive shedding issue the past couple of days. Without any regard for his pants, Sawyer sat down on the deck and encouraged Lara to lay down in front of him.
I took the spot opposite to Sawyer and handed him a comb meant for dogs with her kind of coat.
“It might feel like it’s pulling, but it doesn’t hurt her.
I keep her brushed, mostly. Some days it gets away from me during shedding season.
” Handing the brush to Sawyer, I watched as he gently worked through a small patch on her neck.
He had a soft, methodical touch, and I found myself feeling intensely jealous of my dog and the way she got to luxuriate in the sunshine and enjoy his hands on her.
“Tell me about what happened after high school.” He handed me the other comb and motioned to her rump. “If you start down there, we can meet in the middle.”
I took the comb and started to work on her back end, combing massive clumps of loose hair out of her coat. It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts but Sawyer was patient. He diligently worked on brushing Lara and praised her for lying so still.
“I was broke. Directionless. Jobless. I know a lot of people feel like they don’t have many options, but I knew I didn’t.
I didn’t graduate. I barely had a home to go to.
I couch-surfed whenever possible. And sometimes I cleaned myself up real nice and went down to the clubs.
Sometimes I managed to stay the weekend with a guy, and that’s how I met Curtis Chastain.
He was the owner slash director slash producer slash talent scout for his studio Six Six Nine.
” I glanced up at Sawyer, whose face looked like a thundercloud.
He was shit at hiding how he felt. He’d make a terrible poker player but knowing he wasn’t unaffected by my story somehow made it easier to tell.
“He was nearly fifty to my freshly eighteen. He’d been around several blocks, and he still looked good for his age. It was easy to be charmed by him. I was barely an adult and barely getting by. Curtis promised me… well, he promised me a lot of things.”
Sawyer’s gaze flicked up to meet mine. Anger flashed in his eyes, dark and deep, like it was down in the pit of his soul and I was just seeing the tip of it. “Predators often work that way.”
“Yeah, well, my eighteen-year-old ass wasn’t as smart as I thought I was, because I fell for it, hook line, and sinker.
A few nice words, some money thrown around.
A warm place to sleep every night. But it was the line about how everyone in his company was like family that reeled me in the fastest. I’d been so fucking lonely, so desperate and alone, that the idea I could have an instant family was almost too good to be true. ”
“I’m sorry. That’s… incredibly shitty of someone to do. To manipulate you like that. I take it things weren’t as he described?”
“They were at first. Because he was an incredibly good liar. He was a great gaslighter. Definitely an expert in shifting blame and pitting his talent against each other to keep them from being mad at the real villain.”
“That sounds stressful.”
I let out a dry laugh. “Stressful is a kind word to use for what it was. It was mental and emotional torture. If you were in his good graces, you were untouchable, which was how he earned your loyalty to begin with. At the start, everyone was nice to you. And then when you weren’t around Curtis, they were less nice.
” My gut clenched when I thought about the way things were back then.
Fighting for every scrap of approval. Throwing myself into shoot after shoot.
“What was your first shoot like?” Sawyer asked.
The question was inevitable, and really it was a testament to his professionalism that it hadn’t come up before now.
Sawyer had wanted to have the groundwork down before he delved into the stuff about the industry.
Some of the people I’d tried to work with had only been interested in digging up dirt on people or hearing the horror stories.
Sawyer had approached the project from a different perspective.
Between us, Lara moaned and rolled over, showing Sawyer her belly.
“It wasn’t horrible, that first shoot,” I said after a minute.
He scoffed. “That’s big praise. It wasn’t horrible.”
Lara rolled onto her side, got to her feet, and shook between us, from head to tail, sending hair flying everywhere before she padded off the deck and onto the grass. Dog hair floated in the air like some kind of fluffy snow globe.
“My scene partner, Max, he was a bit older than me, and he’d been around for a while. He often shot with the new guys. I think he was onto Curtis by the time I started. He tried to warn me about him, but I was enamored.”
“Teenagers are easily influenced. Especially when someone is offering them everything they think they want.”
I hadn’t always known that, but I’d known it for many years now. I no longer blamed myself for some of the situations I’d ended up in, but hearing it from Sawyer set something inside of me free. It was like another piece of the guilt I held on to broke off and fell away.
The wind kicked up then, and the results of our impromptu grooming session with Lara swirled around us.
Sawyer laughed and batted the hair away from his face.
He brushed it off his shoulders and off his neck, but some lingered in his hair.
Shuffling forward, I reached for the stray hair.
I took a breath, but didn’t exhale. Something compelled me to lean in.
From the moment I laid eyes on him, I’d been interested in him.
We were so different we might as well have been raised on different planets, but in that moment, we were just two men sitting in the sun, the breeze cooling our skin.
My hand lowered to caress his cheek, and I pulled him into me, slanting our mouths together.
His lips were pillow soft. They parted in surprise, and it sweetened the kiss.
Then Sawyer reached for me. His hands rested on my arms, and he started kissing me back.
Tentative at first, like it had been a while since he’d been kissed and had to remember how to do it.
Then he let out a sigh and melted into me, and I kissed him deeper, longer.
I kissed him until my head swam, and my lungs burned with the need for a breath of fresh air.
I broke the kiss, but rested my forehead against his and held him in place.
Sawyer sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Wow,” he breathed.
I’d had too many first kisses to count. I’d kissed for pleasure. For work. For fun. For no reason at all. I’d kissed people I’d forgotten five minutes later, but I’d always remember the kiss I just shared with Sawyer.
“Wow, indeed,” I said before going for another, already addicted to his taste. To the way his lips felt under mine. To the way he touched me when we kissed, his hands almost as unsure as the rest of him.
Wow didn’t begin to describe it, and I’m not sure if mere words ever could.