Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
It was early when Bryn got off the phone with Gloria, but not so early that she had time to waste.
She glanced at the duffel bag and the clothes half spilling out.
She’d only been staying at Vivian’s place for a few days, but already she’d developed a routine.
Her throat was sandpaper when she swallowed.
Was it weird that she’d kind of miss being there? With only the third act left to record, she’d be leaving today. Leaving with a slim chance of crossing paths with Vivian again. It’s not like they moved in intersecting social circles.
After the intensity of having created something together, something good, it was weird to just suddenly part.
To move on to the next project as if they hadn’t lived in Maggie and Jo’s skin.
Hadn’t clawed their way through doubt and grief and fear of failure to find the most incredible love.
As if they hadn’t just spent the week falling in love with borrowed hearts.
Bryn’s stomach lost at a solo game of Twister, turning her mouth sour. She got up to brush her teeth.
While she showered, she gave herself a stern talking-to.
She’d been performing intimacy and connection with Vivian.
Getting her wires crossed between fact and fiction was normal.
It happened to actors all the time. Her reptile brain didn’t know the difference between Jo whispering against Maggie’s parted lips and Vivian looking right at her when she muttered, “I want you.”
An overactive imagination was to blame for the goosebumps on Bryn’s arms when Jo ran her fingertips over Maggie’s skin. It was a testament to Vivian’s incredible acting skills.
She’d almost convinced herself that she was being unprofessional about the whole thing when she thought about the night before. About Vivian waiting up for her. She had to have been waiting up. Why else would she have bolted out of her house and scared the shit out of Bryn?
Despite Bryn having expected Vivian to be annoyed that she’d been gone all day, she seemed more worried about whether Bryn had eaten. Bryn couldn’t stop the flutter in her silly gut while she applied a little mascara so her pale lashes were visible.
Bryn’s inward smile turned into an immediate groan. She wasn’t kidding anyone, and most unfortunately, even she wasn’t buying it.
It wasn’t the steamy acting that had her stomach doing gymnastics. It was the steak. Well, not the steak, that had been delicious. It was the way Vivian had looked standing by the sliding glass door, like a castle undefended.
It was the fact that Vivian del Castillo, a woman who probably slept in a freaking cryogenic chamber to shut the world out, had waited up.
Waited up for Bryn. It was the way Vivian had looked at her over the rim of her wineglass, eyes dark and searching and saying something Bryn couldn’t understand but she could feel.
The realization was more potent than Vivian’s tea.
A buzzing, effervescent hum right under her skin, like she’d swallowed a handful of Pop Rocks.
It was the undeniable, electric knowing that beneath all that intimidating polish and prickly defense mechanisms, Vivian was soft.
And funny. And maybe, just maybe, a little lonely in a way that matched Bryn’s own emptiness.
The heat on her skin sunk into her belly, roiling and churning like blown glass before it had a shape. Before it knew whether it was going to be coveted artwork or tourist-trap knickknack. Before she could identify if she had a harmless crush or misguided feelings.
When the electric kettle beeped, Bryn tucked the tea tin under her arm, grabbed the two mugs off the drying rack, and raced outside.
She set it all down on the patio table, where they’d only just had dinner, and darted back inside.
A banana and a bunch of kiwis wasn’t exactly Iris-level breakfast, but it was something.
Bryn was debating whether to peel the kiwis when Vivian stepped outside. If last night Vivian had been a castle undefended, this morning she was a fortress with the drawbridge up, the gator-filled moat flooded, and archers with flaming arrows posted at every window.
In a sharp navy jumpsuit that was going to make the hot booth unbearable, Vivian was dressed for a funeral.
Huge, dark sunglasses covered half her face, and her hair was pulled back into a bun so tight it made Bryn’s scalp ache empathetically.
There was no trace of the woman who had laughed over dinner and had done a terrible job of chopping vegetables.
“Good morning,” Bryn said, aiming for cheerful but landing closer to uncertain.
Vivian lowered herself into her chair with the careful precision of someone whose brain was pounding its way out of her skull. “Morning.”
The single word landed like a gavel. Conversation closed.
Bryn bit back her smile. Vivian looked like she was irate at her own body for having the audacity to feel like crap. “Feeling okay?”
“Fine.”
“Does your stomach tea do something for hangovers, or is it only for—”
“I don’t get hangovers,” Vivian insisted, and Bryn might have believed her if she hadn’t also flinched.
“Uh huh.” She knocked the table with her foot, and Vivian flinched at the sound. “Definitely not.” She looked at the outrageously healthy fair and shook her head. “You’re gonna need something greasy to soak up—”
“God, no,” Vivian said, like she might actually turn green. “I just need to hydrate. I’m fine. I took a couple of pills for my head.”
“For the head that definitely doesn’t hurt because you have a hang—”
“Finish that sentence and you’re going to be recording from the pool.”
Bryn laughed. “It’s 7:30 and already hot as hell. The pool actually sounds amazing. Do you want to see how the cool water helps your hang—your non-wine-related headache?”
Vivian made a sound in her elegant throat and reached for a banana before her lip curled at the prospect of ingesting it. She put it back.
“Let’s start with tea, huh?” Bryn looked down at the table. “Dang, I forgot the honey. I’ll just run in and grab some.” She started for the glass door to the main house to see how far Vivian would let her get.
“There’s honey in the guesthouse.”
Bryn hadn’t gotten a foot away. She laughed.
“Of course,” Bryn replied with exaggerated innocence. “I forgot.”
Another throat sound, but this one was followed by the faintest twitch of Vivian’s perfect lips.
When Bryn returned with the bottle of honey in hand, Vivian was already steeping the tea for both of them. Bryn tried not to read into it but she made a mark in the crush column and handed Vivian the honey.
After eating a kiwi, Bryn reached for the tea closest to her and hesitated. It was the wrong mug. The heavy, slate-grey one. The one Vivian always used.
Vivian took the mug Bryn had been using all week and wrapped her hands around it like they were in the Alps in winter rather than Miami in late summer. Without facing Bryn, she inhaled the steam. “That one is thermal ceramic. It holds heat longer.”
Bryn furrowed her brows, sure that there was a message in the drinkware switch she couldn’t decipher. “Okay…”
Sunglasses hiding her eyes and face unmoving, Vivian added, “You talk.” Her tone was clipped and cool. “You get distracted and then you make a face when it’s lukewarm. It’s...” She paused, jaw clenched like she was biting back a wave of nausea. “It’s distracting.”
Bryn went still. It was such a small thing. Nothing, really. But Vivian had been watching her. Watching her closely enough to notice something so small. What the hell column did she sort that into?
Banana choked down and tea finished, Vivian stood. “Let’s get to work,” she said, looking no less miserable.
Work, Bryn reminded herself. Work was what she was here to do, not moon over a woman so far out of her league the distance was measured in light-years.
The moment they stepped into the booth, Vivian snapped into focus. If it weren’t for her unusually irritated eyes and slightly pale complexion, Bryn wouldn’t know Vivian felt like death warmed over.
But the second the headphones slid over Vivian’s ears, the transformation was absolute.
The slump in her shoulders vanished, replaced by a spine of steel.
It was like she didn’t just ignore her headache, she forced her pain to yield.
It was a terrifyingly beautiful display of discipline that made the booth shrink and turn sweltering.
Vivian’s captivating eyes met hers. She slipped into Jo’s voice, dark and husky, when she asked, “Ready?”
Bryn almost replied with a flustered, for what, but she nodded instead.
When Bryn realized she was in trouble, it was already too late. She was in quicksand and afraid of making her drowning worse.
It hit her not with a flutter, but with the shock of a head-on collision. It punched the air right out of her lungs, leaving her ribs aching as if a seatbelt had just locked tight against her chest. Her pulse roared in her ears. The sudden, jarring halt of momentum.
She looked at Vivian and knew. Knew with absolute and unfortunate certainty. That she hadn’t survived the crash.