Chapter 4
chapter
four
Seven
T he incessant, never-ending buzz of my phone on the glass-topped nightstand was what finally dragged me out of my deep sleep. I fucking hated being woken up by my phone, but whoever was calling seemed fucking desperate.
“What the fuck do you want?” I barked into the phone without even opening my eyes to see who was calling. Either it was someone I knew, and therefore they knew better, or it was a journalist…and quite frankly they could go fuck themselves.
“Open your goddamn emails, Seven!” my manager, Jerry, snapped back. “Or your socials. Or the fucking internet. It’s fucking everywhere ! Why the fuck would you do something so stupid, now of all fucking times?”
The fury shaking his words made me sit up, sleep haze evaporating in a flash of dread. “What are you talking about, Jerry? I was dead asleep until you blew up my phone.”
“Me? Just me?” He scoffed. “Bullshit. I bet every reporter with your number has tried to get through to you this morning. Fuck knows they’ve been harassing the shit outta me.”
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I put Jerry’s call on speaker and checked notifications. Sure enough, I had dozens of missed calls and voicemails. I had notifications for social media turned off, but when I opened the app, I wondered if maybe it was broken.
Then I saw the images.
“Whoa. Whoa . Jerry, what the hell? What is this?” I exclaimed, sweat breaking out all over my skin as I frantically checked my missed calls again. Sure enough, there were a handful from my longtime girlfriend, Clara Belle, and I groaned.
Jerry inhaled deeply. Smoking. Jesus Christ, I’d driven him to smoking again. “You tell me, Seven,” he coughed on the exhale. “This scandal will not go down well with Carriage Pictures.”
“Fuck!” I roared, resisting the urge to throw my phone across the room. Instead, I sprang up out of bed and stalked out of my room, slamming the door open as I went. “I’ll call you back, Jerry.”
My manager started to protest, but I ended the call right as I reached Gem’s bedroom door. My fist pounded against it, then I shoved my way in without waiting for a response. He was my identical twin; there was no privacy between us.
“Gemini!” I bellowed, searching his empty room with a glance. “Where the fuck are you?” I all but kicked his bathroom door open, then growled my frustration to find it also empty. His bed was perfectly made and his bathroom spotless. The fucker wasn’t even home, and by the look of things, he hadn’t been all night. Our cleaners didn’t make the beds this early.
My next stop was downstairs to hammer on Ollie’s bedroom door. He, thankfully, had actually come home last night. We’d all been out at an exclusive club in the penthouse of the Covington, and Gem had left early, grumbling some shit about hitting the gym in the morning. Ollie and I had stayed way too late, playing Texas Hold’em and drinking forty-five-year-old Port Ellen whiskey. Hence my irritating behind-the-eyes headache right now. Or shit, maybe that was from the photos splashed all over the tabloids of my fucking idiot twin brother hooking up with some random chick in a parking lot.
Problem was, the tabloids all claimed it was me.
And I, among other things, had a very committed, very public relationship with Hollywood’s sweetheart Clara Belle Lafleur.
Or I used to anyway.
“What’s going on?” Ollie asked, scowling at me with sleepy eyes. “Why all the shouting? What’s Gem done?”
I shoved my phone in his face, too irate to explain. A picture was worth a thousand words anyway, and there were a half dozen pictures to choose from. Hell, there were even sensationalist headlines to accompany.
Superstar Seven Harrison Caught Cheating!
Slimy Seven Shows His True Colors!
Seven Harrison Sets His Career on Fire With Mystery Woman!
“Oh shit,” Ollie spluttered, jaw dropping as he scrolled through. “Bro…when the fuck did this happen and why didn’t you tell me?”
My head might have just exploded. Fucking half-asleep dickwad. I smacked him in the side of the head in an attempt to wake him the hell up. “I didn’t!” I roared.
“Ow,” Ollie protested, rubbing his head, then, “Oh. Ohhhhh. Gem. What a moron.”
I grabbed my phone back. “Exactly! And the little dick isn’t even home right now to fucking explain himself. Where is he? He said he was hitting the gym early but his bed wasn’t slept in.”
Ollie yawned, running a hand over his messy inky-black hair as he exited his bedroom. “I reckon I know where he spent the night based on those pictures.” He chuckled, and it irritated the fuck out of me. It wasn’t his relationship or career on the line.
“Those pictures weren’t from last night,” I muttered. “They were taken in the parking lot of Cactus, and I know he was drinking there on Saturday night. So where the hell is he now?”
Right on cue, the huge front door of our house swung open and my mirror image came strolling through in his signature baseball cap and sponsored athleticwear.
“You two are up early,” he muttered, brushing past both Ollie and me as he headed through to the kitchen. “Figured you’d both be nursing hangovers with how hard you were hitting the scotch last night.”
“I would be if Seven hadn’t woken me up just now,” Ollie admitted, grabbing a couple of vitamin juices out of the fridge and offering one to me. “You’re in big trouble, Gemini Harrison. Huge trouble. But first…who was she? Fangirl, right? You fucked her, I hope.”
My twin quirked a puzzled brow at our best friend. “The fuck are you talking about? I went hiking through Runyon Canyon before dawn because I couldn’t sleep. No fans, certainly no fucking.”
“He is talking about the pictures of me hooking up with some hot brunette all over the tabloids this morning,” I snapped, losing my cool all over again. “Don’t act like you don’t know about it, Gemini. I sure as fuck wasn’t the one picking up chicks at the Cactus, regardless of what fucking TMZ thinks.”
Gem choked on the Gatorade he’d just taken a gulp of, then coughed and spluttered for a moment before staring at me in shock. “Excuse the fuck out of you?”
My eyes narrowed and my fist tightened so hard that I was at risk of shattering the glass juice bottle I held. “You. Heard. Me.”
Ollie yawned again. Loud. “Where’s your phone, Gem? Haven’t you seen the blow up?”
My brother shook his head, still looking like he’d seen a ghost. “I left it behind.”
Fucking typical. He never took his phone with him when he went for hikes, claimed it was too easy for people to find him and he wanted to be alone with nature. To help clue him in, I tossed him my phone and it unlocked for him thanks to our identical faces.
“Oh. Fuck,” he whispered, his eyes wider than a dinner plate as he scrolled. “What the hell? Sev, this is bullshit. She knew perfectly well that it was me and not you. I can’t believe she fucking—” He broke off, running a hand over his face with a groan. “Sev, bro, I’m so sorry. She seemed so normal .”
I frowned, confused. “What makes you think the chick had anything to do with the photos? You just got papped, dude. It happens to us all the freaking time. You know that. Remember when Ollie got papped coming out of the family-planning clinic a few years back?”
“Yo, dude,” Ollie interjected, “they share the same building as my dermatologist. I was getting my skin checked for melanomas!”
“Paps don’t fucking care. They sell whatever story makes them more money. And apparently Seven Harrison Cheats On Clara Belle sells more magazines than Gemini Harrison Breaks His Dry Spell .” I threw my hands in the air, silently cursing the fact that my own fame was preventing my brother from just living his life. But at the same time… “ Fuck, Gem. You know better!”
Gemini was staring at my phone, his brow furrowed as he zoomed in on the images. “Foxy bitch,” he muttered under his breath, but there was a weird, little smile on his lips like he was remembering a hell of a good night.
Come to think of it, he’d been in a crazy good mood that next day. I guess he really had broken his dry spell in spectacular fashion, and honestly, good for him. But if he could hook up without destroying my life, I’d be a lot happier.
“It was her car,” he said in a quiet, thoughtful voice. “The pics…they’re all taken from her car and since there were no slimy paps hiding out in the back seat, I’d bet my shorts they’re stills from a dashcam.”
“Whoa,” Ollie commented, peering at the pictures again. “So she knew who you were…but still sold these to the dirt media as it being Seven? Rough.”
“Not necessarily,” Gem said, defending the mysterious woman. “Maybe she sold them as me and the breaking publication decided to slap Seven’s name on it. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
My phone rang again, and Gem held it out to show me Jerry’s name flashing on the screen. I shook my head and he rejected the call. Barely a moment later, it started again and this time when he held it out, Clara Belle’s name flashed.
“Shit,” I breathed. “Gem, I swear to fuck?—”
“Dude, what do you want from me? I don’t have a time machine.” He was irritated now and understandably so. Tossing me a middle finger, he answered the call for me and put it on speakerphone. “Clara Belle, honey, it’s Gemini.”
“Fuck you, Gem. Put Seven on.” My girlfriend had a vicious tongue on her, despite her carefully crafted image as Hollywood’s darling.
“He’s right here,” Gem replied, raising a brow at me, “but I wanted to get ahead of things and tell you those photos are of me, not him. I met a woman the other night and was a little bit indiscreet, and?—”
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Gemini?” Clara Belle snapped. “Obviously it’s you. Anyone with half a fucking brain knows it’s you. Seven isn’t that goddamn stupid, especially now with the Carriage Pictures deal on the table.”
A huge sigh of relief gusted out of me to hear her say that, and I sagged to sitting on a barstool as Gem handed the phone across the island to me. “Thank fuck,” I groaned. “Clara, baby, you have no idea how worried I was that you were calling to break up with me.”
There was a pause on her end. Then she gave a small laugh. “Oh, Sev…I am breaking up with you. Honey, you know I love you, but this scandal is going to be huge for me. Awful for you, don’t get me wrong, and I really do feel bad about all of that, but I’d be an idiot not to take this opportunity.”
Shock rendered me speechless for a moment and I just stared at my phone like maybe I’d heard her wrong. We’d been together for four years, and I’d been planning on proposing to her once the Carriage Pictures deal went public. It was all planned out between our publicists. I’d spent millions on her ring and everything.
“What the fuck?” I exclaimed eventually. “Clara, I didn’t cheat on you. Those pics are of Gem!”
“I know,” she replied, her voice dripping with false sympathy, “and, Sev, this hurts me just as much as it hurts you. But the media thinks you’re a lying, cheating scumbag. There’s no coming back from that, and you have to see how fantastic this will be for me! I’m the heartbroken, jilted woman here. My agent is already getting calls for new roles I never would have been considered for previously. This could win me an Oscar, Sev! Really, if you loved me, then you should be happy for me.”
Fucking speechless all over again.
Ollie and Gem looked just as shell-shocked as I was feeling, their jaws basically on the floor as they enjoyed a front-row seat to the systematic destruction of my whole damn life.
“Clara, what the fuck ?” I asked again. My brain was too numb to form much more thought than that. “You’re breaking up with me because you want public sympathy to win roles? How about you just become a better actress and stop pretending to be such an airhead, then directors will take you more seriously?”
For all her many faults, Clara Belle wasn’t an idiot. She was sharp and business savvy, but she was a mediocre actress who’d never cracked it past straight to streaming rom-coms and the occasional art house women’s fiction flicks. Still…that was a low blow.
Her outraged gasp told me she thought so as well. “There’s no need to get nasty, Seven. It’s nothing personal, and you’d do the same in my shoes. I’d say we can stay friends, but you know how it goes. The story is juicier if we hate each other. Bye, boys, good luck with Carriage now.” Her nasty, little chuckle before she hung up told me she also believed my career was in the toilet from this.
“Fuck!” I exploded, leaping out of my chair and clenching my fists. I wanted to hit something so badly, but I couldn’t risk messing up my hand when I still had a few days of shooting left on Death Mission before it was done.
“Wow,” Ollie murmured in a sigh. “She is a piece of fucking work. Bullet dodged, bro. Seriously. I’m kinda glad she’s gone.”
I spun around to glare at him, incredulous. “Ollie! I was supposed to fucking marry that woman and she’s…she just… What the fuck?! ”
Gem was oddly quiet, and I swung my gaze to him. My emotions were all kinds of conflicted because he didn’t do this deliberately. He didn’t ask for any of this and had expressed his discomfort with fame in a multitude of ways over the years. We’d started out acting together as children, swapping out in the same roles to share the workload while we were still young, but the older we got, the less enthusiastic he’d been to take new parts.
Several years back, he’d quit acting entirely and slipped into the shadows as a stuntman and body double. As far as the media was concerned, though, Gemini Harrison was no longer an actor and he liked it like that. Except, of course, I was going from strength to strength on the silver screen and we, unfortunately, shared a face.
“I’m sorry, Sev,” he said quietly. “I should have thought it through.”
Mentally, I forced myself to calm the fuck down. He looked so crestfallen, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he felt entirely responsible for what had just happened with Clara Belle.
“It’s not your fault, Gem,” I gritted out, scrubbing my hands over my face. “It’s not on you. This is the paparazzi fucking with our futures again . Filthy, soulless bottom-feeders.”
Ollie grunted his agreement, no stranger to the paparazzi treatment himself. “Why didn’t you think it through? You’re normally so careful.”
My twin’s face flushed pink, and he ran a hand through his hair that matched mine so perfectly. Our arrangement with him working as my stunt double was invaluable. No one could match what we had, which was why Carriage Pictures had even taken an interest in me for their new action-hero franchise. I couldn’t do it without him, and I wouldn’t want to. He was my other half, and it just fucking sucked that he couldn’t be his own person.
“Uh, well…I’d had a few drinks,” he mumbled, seeming sheepish. “And this woman…Jesus she was something else. Knew immediately that I wasn’t Seven, then nearly kicked my ass at pool…” He trailed off with that weird, little smile on his lips again.
Ollie grinned, clapping his hands together. “Shit, dude, you’re fucking smitten! What’s her name? Are you seeing her again?”
Gem screwed up his face, looking regretful. “Uh…”
I rolled my eyes. “She sold pictures of him to the tabloids, Ollie. Of course he isn’t seeing her again. Right, Gem?”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to. I never got her number and she was gone before I woke up.” Then he cleared his throat and ducked eye contact as he added, “And I didn’t get her name either.”
My jaw dropped, but Ollie cracked the fuck up.
Before I could give Gem grief for his irresponsible decisions, the doorbell rang, then rang again and again. I rolled my eyes, knowing full well who I’d find even before I sauntered over to open it.
“Morning, Jerry,” I drawled, letting our manager in with the weight of dread across my shoulders, “welcome to the shit show. Clara Belle broke up with me, and Gem didn’t even get that chick’s name.”
Our manager stared for a moment, so hard I worried his eyes might pop out of their sockets. Then he glared at Gemini. “So I take it you didn’t have her sign the NDA? That explains a lot. So much. What the fuck did I do in a past life to deserve this?” His slightly sobbing question was sent heavenward, and I bit back a smile. Jerry was a drama queen.
He’d fix this all for us, I was sure of it. He was the best in the business, so if Jerry Thompson couldn’t untangle this mess, no one could and we were all fucked.