Chapter 14 #2
“Well, either Nate’s camera-shy, or…” He paused, letting the implication hang in the air. Then his voice turned teasing. “You seem to have a very specific idea of who the star of this date should be.”
Heat crawled up my neck. “Of course I do. The point of the project is the sponsored content. You’re the one wearing the Nordique pieces.”
“Uh-huh.” Adrian’s mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile. “And in this shot here, where Nate’s adjusting my scarf? You cut off his head entirely.”
“Camera malfunction.”
“Right. And this one where we’re both supposed to be admiring the view? Somehow, the frame managed to capture me in perfect profile while Nate’s mostly just… a flannel-covered shoulder.”
I slammed the laptop shut harder than necessary. “You’ll have what you need for the content. That’s what matters.”
“Maddox.” Adrian’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “Why didn’t you get more footage of Nate?”
“I got plenty of footage of Nate,” I said, and it was true. Footage of his boots, his elbows, the back of his head. Too much footage of Nate, if you asked me.
“Ahh, getting off on a technicality. I see.” Adrian shifted to face me fully, those blue eyes sparkling with something that looked dangerously like affection. “You hardly got any shots of his face, Maddie.”
My jaw clenched, but my insides melted at the soft shortening of my name. He’d done the same thing during sex, when his control had slipped.
“Maybe Nate’s not as photogenic as he thinks,” I argued, trying desperately to keep from admitting the truth.
Adrian’s laugh was warm and delighted. “Holy shit! You were jealous.”
“I was not—”
“You were!” He pointed an accusatory finger at me. “Grumpy, possessive Maddox Sullivan couldn’t stand watching another man charm me, so you sabotaged his screen time.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, standing up to put distance between us. But Adrian followed, crowding into my space with that infuriating grin.
“Is it? Because looking at this footage, someone might think you don’t want to share me with anyone else.”
“You’re not mine to share,” I snapped, then immediately regretted the words when hurt flickered across his face.
But the hurt disappeared as quickly as it had come, replaced by something calculating. “No? Then you won’t mind if I call Nate about that barn dance. Maybe see if he wants to grab dinner one night before then.”
My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “Do whatever you want.”
“I will.” Adrian pulled out his phone, thumb hovering over the screen. “He did say I had a natural touch with horses. Maybe he could teach me to ride.”
A growl escaped my throat before I could stop it.
Adrian’s grin turned positively wicked. “Was that a no, Sullivan?”
“Fuck off, Hayes.”
“Make me,” he challenged, stepping close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
Needless to say, we burned the pasta. When we finally fell asleep after midnight, I was jelly-legged and dehydrated from all the rounds of sex we managed to have before our bodies simply couldn’t do it anymore.
Thankfully, we’d managed to find a pair of clean sheets, but that was about it.
We’d pulled the duvet over us and passed out.
Stress dreams haunted me after a while, the way they did more and more lately. A myriad of images that didn’t make sense but carried a sense of foreboding, or fear, or that horrible, overwhelming terror of missing something important.
“Maddox.” The voice sounded like my father’s but also like Michael’s. Or maybe it was Nate warning me off Adrian.
“Maddox!”
I wanted to respond, but my mouth was glued shut. Or maybe my lips were duct-taped. Maybe I’d been kidnapped. No, maybe Maya had been kidnapped. Was I trying to get to her? What if I couldn’t get to her?
“Baby, wake up.”
A crushing sense of longing filled me, making my eyes smart with regret. For whatever reason, I wouldn’t get to have that… that good, bright thing that was just on the horizon. Just out of reach.
“Dammit wake the fuck up you asshole!”
I blinked awake to the feel of Adrian’s hands gripping my shoulders. He loomed over me in the dark, hair wild and eyes glinting in the sliver of light from the hallway.
“Adrian? What’s wrong?” My voice was sleep-graveled, and my brain was like a bucket of scattered LEGOs—more potential than structure. The parts were all there, but they didn’t go together in any way that made sense.
“You tell me,” he said, voice softening. He moved his fingers absently through my hair as his body relaxed. “You were having a nightmare.”
He moved to lie next to me on his side, propping his head up on an arm.
I blew out a breath. “Sorry. Maybe I should have left after all so you could have gotten a decent night’s sleep.”
Adrian’s mouth eased into a smile as he tilted his chin toward the bedroom door.
“You could go now. Probably take the rental about an hour to warm up, but you’re welcome to it.
I’ve been meaning to do a post on the tourist shuttle to Slingshot Mountain anyway.
I’ll walk over to the store afterward and collect my keys. ”
I turned on my side to face him, grateful that he hadn’t pressed me on the nightmares. There was something about him pulling back, choosing to lighten the mood and give me an out—literal and figurative—that made me want to do the opposite.
“Stress dreams, you know?” I began. “I’ve, ah… I’ve been stressed about work. About the store. It’s part of the reason I took this job.”
His smile faded. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“It’s just hard trying to keep it all going on my own while trying to make it look like it’s not that bad.
I’m worried Maya will stay here instead of going off to school.
That she won’t have a choice financially or that she’ll feel like she needs to stay and help.
It burns me up inside. I don’t want that for her. ”
What was it about the early morning or the middle of the night that made people confess shit they should keep to themselves?
Adrian reached over and ran his fingers through my hair again. My eyes drifted closed at the comforting touch.
“You want to give her a chance to escape because you couldn’t?”
My eyes flashed open. “What? No! I love Legacy. I never wanted to leave.”
“Oh,” he said, shifting a little closer and moving his hand down to my shoulder and then further along my arm until his fingers twined with mine. “But you think she does?”
I blew out a breath. “I don’t know. She doesn’t have anything to compare Legacy to. I want her to have a chance to see what it’s like to live just for herself. Not have to worry about me or the shop or anyone else.”
Adrian toyed with my fingers as he gazed at me. His eyes were soft and understanding in a way that got under my skin. “What if she felt that way about you? What if she wanted you to leave? To, let’s say, go to a fancy film school and leave Legacy behind for a while?”
The documentary workshop in Denver.
Adrian’s lips quirked up in a knowing grin. “Ah ha! Hoist on his own petard.”
“You don’t strike me as the Shakespeare type,” I muttered. I couldn’t help but grin back.
“I’m not. But I dated a guy once who used that expression all the time.” He pulled my hand up and kissed the back of it. “Maya may have mentioned the workshop you wanted to take.”
I gritted my teeth, causing Adrian to huff out a laugh. “Relax. She only mentioned it in case there was any sponsorship bonus or other opportunities for you from Nordique. She specifically said you’d be too stubborn to ask but that she wished she could give you the workshop for Christmas.”
Now it was my turn to scoff. “It’s five grand. Hardly Christmas present money.”
Adrian opened his mouth to speak, but I could tell he was getting ready to offer help again. Before he could, I clapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t.”
His eyes widened. But then they narrowed.
I withdrew my hand and muttered an apology.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he asked, his voice lower and more gentle than I deserved. “All I’d have to do to earn you an extra five grand is post another video of the two of us kissing. Fully clothed. Only this time, it would have to be…”
My heart thundered, and my stomach clenched. I was almost afraid to ask. “Have to be…?”
His jaw ticked. “Never mind. I know you won’t do it. And even if you did, you’d spend the money on the store.”
He was right about both. I couldn’t afford to have my friends and neighbors think I’d lost my heart to an outsider.
That I’d once again allowed someone to love me and leave me.
And even if I had the guts to accept what he was offering, the store had crushing debt that would take the money before it even hit my account.
Adrian pulled away, sat up, and put his feet on the ground until all I could see was the bare skin of his back in the shadows. “Maybe you should go, Maddox. You’re due at the store in a couple hours anyway.”
I wanted to reach for him. Put my hand firmly between his shoulder blades and feel the warm strength of him against my palm. But I didn’t dare. The last time I’d reached for someone when I was vulnerable…
“After the accident,” I started, the words scraping my throat raw. “When Maya was barely eating and the life insurance paperwork felt impossible and every breath had been a struggle…”
Adrian turned to look at me over his shoulder. “Go on.”
I sucked in a breath. Fuck, this was hard. “I was dating someone. Guy named Michael. It was serious. At least, I thought it was. But then…”
Adrian turned back around to face me. I could tell by the tension in his body language he was already upset by what I was going to say.
“He… it was too much. My responsibilities. He hadn’t signed up to be burdened with any of that.” I shrugged. “So he left.”
“How long after the accident?”
I met his eyes. They were dark like cut glass under water. Deceptively tempting.
I waved it off. “Does it matter?”
His voice was sharper than the cut glass. “How long after the accident, Maddie?”
My skin prickled with awareness, with the overwhelming feeling that someone cared, that he wanted to look out for me and protect me. That he would raze the earth to punish someone for causing me an injustice.
“Two weeks,” I said, feeling impossibly, unexpectedly brittle.
Before he could offer me any comfort, before he could make it good or even attempt to, I moved back and climbed out of the bed, trying to stay calm while I collected and yanked on my clothes. “So you can see why I have to go, right?”
My voice was abnormally high and strange, like I was speaking through a cardboard tube.
Every molecule of my awareness was laser-targeted on his reaction, but I refused to let him see it.
Adrian was quiet for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, his voice was carefully controlled.
“I do see. Self-preservation. Someone you trusted saw you as a burden rather than giving you support and love during the hardest fucking moments of your life. You don’t want to risk that happening again.
” A pause. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck ass to be on the receiving end of it. ”
The honesty in his voice—hurt but not accusatory—somehow made it worse.
I nodded at the floor, the numbness overtaking me a blessed relief. “Right. Good. Okay.”
After shoving my phone into my pocket, I strode out of the room in search of his rental keys. My hands shook as I grabbed them and reached for the door.
There were no footsteps behind me.
Damn.
My eyes stung, probably in anticipation of the frigid cold outside.
Motherfucker.
I yanked the door open and was just about to break free of the hold he had over me when his voice called out from the bedroom.
“Just one thing, Sullivan. Remember that bet about our fire-building video getting a thousand thirsty comments? Well, the thing is… I won.”
I closed my eyes, hand still on the door handle. Relief and disappointment warred in my chest—relief that this wasn’t over, that I’d get to see him again. But disappointment, too, because some pathetic part of me had wanted him to fight harder to make me stay.
Walk away, idiot. Get in the car and drive before you do something stupid like turn around and beg him to let you crawl back into his bed and into his body.
His voice rang out again as his sleep-rumpled self appeared in the bedroom doorway. For a moment, hurt flashed across his features before his expression smoothed into something more controlled.
He lazily leaned against the jamb in his underwear. “Which means you owe me a date.” He met my eyes, and molten lava slithered hotly through my veins. “A romantic one. An authentic one.”
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