Chapter 20 Quentin
TWENTY
QUENTIN
“Okay, everyone, listen, please,” Otto called out. “We are not herding cattle. We are making cinema. Big difference.”
A production assistant jogged past Quentin, headset crooked. “Quentin, you’re coming in from the west mark this time. Same pace as rehearsal. Hold until we call you.”
“Got it,” Quentin said, adjusting the reins as his horse, Linda, shifted beneath him, clearly unimpressed by the concept of blocking.
Across the dirt, Tessa was already in place, skirts hitched, posture perfect, sipping from a water canteen like she was born on a western set instead of a soundstage. She caught his eye and lifted her brows.
“You look tense,” she said, lips barely moving. “Try not to glare at anyone unless it’s in the script.”
“I’m not glaring,” he muttered back. “This is my neutral face.”
“Your neutral face looks like you’re about to confess to a crime.”
Before he could respond, Otto’s voice cut back in. “Sadie, bitte, one more stop at makeup. Then you meet Quentin by the corral. We do not rush romance. We let it breathe.”
Sadie turned toward him then and smiled.
The smile hit him right in the sternum, the kind that loosened something he hadn’t realized he’d been bracing like a man waiting for impact.
For half a heartbeat, he convinced himself it meant something.
That the last few days hadn’t nuked whatever fragile stupid-precious thing they’d started building.
That it hadn’t immediately collapsed the second he flew to L.A.
and then, like an idiot, didn’t speak to her for days.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried. He’d opened his phone more times than he could count, typed messages, erased them, typed new ones.
Thanks for the dance.
How’s the weekend off?
I can’t stop thinking about you.
You looked really fucking gorgeous when you—
Then the PA called, “Rolling in five,” and Sadie’s expression shut down like a flipped switch.
One blink, and the smile was gone, replaced by something cool and distant that slid past him as if he weren’t even there.
The whiplash was brutal. One minute she looked at him like he’d handed her the moon. The next, like he’d dropped it directly on her foot. He had half a mind to bill Sadie for his future chiropractor appointments.
From his mount on Linda, who was rapidly earning the title of Most Stable Relationship in His Life, he watched as Sadie flitted around her makeup station like a damn social butterfly.
She was all easy smiles and light laughter, effortlessly charming as she chatted with the crew.
Sunshine for everyone. Everyone except him.
His grip tightened on the reins. This again.
The pretending. As if nothing had happened.
As if he hadn’t seen her naked five nights ago.
As if she hadn’t gasped his name, wrecked and breathless, as she touched herself with him watching.
As if she hadn’t fallen apart in candlelight, fingers digging into porcelain while he burned the image into his brain forever.
Now, she wouldn’t even look at him.
He tried to give her grace. He’d hurt Sadie without realizing it.
And for a solid few hours, he really sat with that idea.
He told himself she might need space. That she might be scared.
That this could be some deeply personal self-protection strategy and not, say, a targeted psychological warfare campaign against him.
Unfortunately, Sadie made patience extremely difficult to maintain.
Because the attraction was obvious. Painfully obvious.
And yet she kept yanking the cord back every time he got close, snapping, going cold in a way that somehow hurt worse than outright rejection.
That was the worst part. Not the distance.
The contrast. The hope followed immediately by the emotional equivalent of being iced out by a professional.
She laughed at something the costume girl said, bright and easy, and Quentin felt his jaw tighten. The grace he’d been carefully hoarding evaporated on the spot. What was he doing, exactly? Sitting up here like a well-trained idiot while she acted like he was a decorative fence post?
Linda snorted sharply and stomped a hoof. He exhaled, nodding as he patted the mare’s neck. Finally, someone who gets it.
“Right? It’s ridiculous,” he muttered, shifting in the saddle. At least the horse had some damn common sense.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to march over there, accidentally-on-purpose knock over a bottle of foundation, and say something mature and levelheaded like Hey, acknowledge me, you coward.
Instead, he sat there, stewing, watching her from a distance like a stalker with too many feelings.
The morning dragged on. His lines were half- assed, his focus was shot to hell, and his patience was circling the drain. Every other thought was consumed by her. And the fact that she could so easily shut it all off and pretend he didn’t exist made him feel like a goddamn fool.
He needed to talk to her. He needed answers. This hot-and-cold routine, this emotional whiplash, this will-she-won’t-she-acknowledge-him nonsense was going to drive him fully off the map.
By the time the sun was high and glaring down on him, Quentin was hanging onto his last shred of sanity by a single, frayed thread.
He cleared his throat and called across the set, voice dry and loaded. “Uh, heads up. Scar’s peeling.” He flicked at the prosthetic on his cheek. “Think I need a touch-up.”
The director barely glanced over, already waving him off. “Go. We keep rolling with Tessa.”
Before he could talk himself out of it, Quentin swung off his horse and started moving. Linda gave a loud, offended huff, her tail swishing like even she thought he was an idiot.
Quentin muttered under his breath, dragging a hand through his hair. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Dumbass move.”
He caught sight of Sadie leaving her station, her breath curling in soft little clouds against the cold.
He cut across the lot, long strides eating up the distance.
She was already halfway to her trailer by the time he reached the edge of the lot, forcing him to lengthen his steps, to close the distance without running.
He watched her, studying the way she moved, the way her shoulders tensed ever so slightly, like she could feel his gaze prickling at the back of her neck.
Sure enough, she glanced back over her shoulder, catching his eyes with a look he couldn’t quite read. Irritation? Curiosity? Murderous rage? At this point, he’d take any of it. Whatever it was, it made him pick up his pace, boots crunching over the gravel as he closed the distance between them.
"Sadie," he called, his voice rougher than he intended.
She stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. The afternoon light caught in the loose strands of her hair, turning them into molten copper.
“You here to shake me down?” she asked, arching a brow.
“You want my lunch money or just another ego bruise?
" She raised an eyebrow as she waited, her breath curling in the chilly air like smoke from a dying fire.
Her tone was light, almost teasing, but he knew better.
She would do anything to turn this into a joke, to make it something trivial, anything but real.
"What is your problem?" he bit out. His fists clenched, jaw ticking. She always knew how to push him. Hell, maybe that was the problem, she only pushed, never let him pull.
Her gaze remained steady, unflinching, and that was somehow worse.
"There is no problem," she replied with an easy shrug, her parka rustling against the quiet.
“The hell there isn’t,” he said, stepping forward. “I’ve got a massive problem.”
She moved back, boots crunching against the frozen ground, though her eyes never left his. That flicker in them, that defiance sent a thrill up his spine.
"Sounds like a ‘you’ problem," she said lightly, but there was something else beneath her words.
She didn’t stop until her back hit a tree, and when it did, he saw it. The shift in her breath. The twitch in her lip. She was trying so damn hard to look unaffected, but she felt this. Just like he did.
He stepped in until there was nowhere else for her to go. His hands braced against the bark on either side of her head, his body a wall between her and the rest of the world.
"It's actually a ‘you’ problem, Sadie," he murmured, his voice dropping lower, rougher. “My problem is you."
He saw the way her lips parted slightly, caught the faint tremor in her exhale.
"You drive me insane. I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I see your face every time I close my goddamn eyes.”
“Then stop looking at me,” she said. But her voice wasn’t cold now. It wavered, just a fraction. It hit him like a punch to the gut, but instead of pulling away, it only made something inside him tighten, coil, and burn.
“Can’t,” he said simply. “I’ve tried.”
Her gaze flinched away for the briefest second, and it was all the confirmation he needed.
“Every time something happens between us, you pretend it didn’t,” he murmured, voice dropping lower, darker. “But I feel it, Sadie. I feel it every time I’m near you.” The cold wind whipped around them, but it barely registered. There was only her.
“You feel something? Good for you. I feel nothing but regret.” Her voice was too sharp, too fast like she was afraid if she didn’t spit it out, the truth might slip instead. “Whatever this is, it’s just friction. It’ll burn out. Heat without substance. I don’t like you, Quentin.”
He gave a low, humorless laugh, leaning in until their noses nearly touched. “You don’t need to like me to fuck me,” he said, voice gravel and heat. The words dripped between them like honey laced with venom.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” she snapped, aiming to wound. But her eyes flicked to his mouth, lingering there like she already knew exactly how it would feel to give in.