Chapter 46 #2
Beau’s expression shifts as he listens, attuned to the changes, the music lifting us through some invisible transition, experimenting, improvising—
‘I heard something once about loss,’ he says. ‘That the hole it leaves in your life never disappears, but your life expands around it, like this. New music mingles with the old. The central melody is still there … It’s just bigger. It has to be. Or you wouldn’t be alive.’
I haven’t been.
I’ve been in purgatory since Fraser died.
Stuck thinking my chance at life had been irreparably stolen from me, too.
Trying to preserve what we had. Worried any steps forward would taint his memory.
Certain that our experience was so incredible and unique, there could never be a situation that would make it worth risking my heart again.
Never a person worth risking that for. I’ve gripped onto this so hard.
Thought it was keeping me safe when it was suffocating me.
And here I am, daring to play different music for the first time in years and—
‘What’s going through your mind right now?’ Beau asks. ‘Because what you’ve just played was exquisite.’
Was I playing? I didn’t even hear it.
He holds out his phone, and I get up from the piano. It’s a video he’s just taken, capturing music I don’t even remember. It’s like having an out-of-body experience, watching this. ‘How did you know to record that?’
‘The look on your face,’ he explains as I pass the phone back.
This is creative intimacy.
Actually, this is intimacy, full stop. Maybe not the scorching hot, light-up-the-sky stuff he’s used to. It’s not dazzling, in the way he described. But quiet power is still power, isn’t it?
‘Maybe you don’t need lightning bolts with this new character. Not every woman has to be dangerous,’ I suggest.
He pauses. ‘Not every woman has to be dangerous in the same way.’ Blue eyes flash on some stormy, far-off horizon. We’re no longer talking about the fiery woman his character was based on. We’re talking about someone else, and something much deeper.
‘Are you thinking about Lucinda?’ I ask, and he snaps his attention back to me, confused. He is ruffled now, cool Viper mask dissolving, ruptured heart on display. I think he’s trying to work out how I’ve read his mind.
‘Come on, Beau,’ I say, stepping closer to him. ‘No secrets here anymore. Now it’s the look on your face. I don’t mean to pry. It’s just, she’s the only woman emblazoned across your chest. She clearly means a lot to you. Nobody else is, well …’ I glance at his shirt. ‘Inscribed on your body.’
‘Have you conducted an inventory?’ he asks.
Yes.
‘No! I just thought maybe she’s the answer to your writer’s block. All the others are with you in Who? Weekly. She’s written on you. Permanently.’
‘Physical inventories plus homework reading? You’re turning into quite a fangirl, Hepburn.’
Yes. I am. And now I’m burning with embarrassment, my mind going haywire in its attempt to shake off and lighten this line of discussion, for some reason landing on the deranged clapback: ‘Struggling not to take my bra off and throw it at you as we speak!’
He laughs. ‘Is that so?’
Of course it isn’t! My cheeks are on fire. ‘April forwarded the article, and several others, about you and Harlow, and you and the actress I can only assume is the woman behind this movie script derailment. And about you and Lucinda. April is the real fangirl. She has an encyclopaedic knowledge …’
‘And what conclusions has she drawn?’
I can see this conversation going very badly.
‘She thinks you’re obviously …’ Smoking hot, I think were her exact words. His eyes, Audrey. Those pecs! ‘Talented. She said your last movie was nominated for Best Original Screenplay.’
‘I co-wrote it,’ he clarifies.
‘I remember. With a writer named—’
He’s caught in the headlights now. ‘Lucinda Taylor.’
‘To whom you were engaged, according to April. And who inspired you to get inked.’ Why am I interrogating him?
‘The ink was permanent,’ he clarifies. ‘The engagement was not.’
I try not to look too thrilled, rearranging my face into supportive muse mode.
‘What’s with the inquisition, anyway?’ Frown lines furrow around his eyes as he leans into the curve of the piano, arms crossed on the lid. He needs to workshop this obstacle before it tears his project apart.
Swallowing, I push back the stool and rise to my feet. ‘Perhaps your current block is because you’re writing without your former partner, with whom you enjoyed great success, and you’re scared you can’t replicate that success without her?’
The room catches this and holds it for a beat. ‘Where did you read that?’
I round the piano as he straightens and turns to face me. ‘Here,’ I say, brushing the side of his face, restraining myself from threading my fingers through his hair and pulling him towards me. I’m so nervous, it’s as if I’ve summoned the nerve to touch a lion itself.
I want to erase his doubt. I want to smooth the pain of the breakup and the creative fear and wait with him while he finds his confidence again. ‘When your rebound relationship with the actress imploded, you let it take the screenplay down with it …’
My voice drops now, as if I’m afraid to suggest the next part. ‘And if you give up now, you won’t be tested. You’ll always be the screenwriter who was nominated for an Oscar. You’ll never know what proportion of the accolades were Lucinda’s and which were yours.’
He stares at me, dark eyes flashing, the room charged with a heady mix of shock and daring and truth and resistance … and a tsunami of sexual tension, at least from where I am standing, watching Beau Davenport crack open.
He is all raw intensity—looking as likely to sweep out of the room as he is to sweep me into his arms. And suddenly, if it’s going to be the latter, I need him to know about more than just my messy grief story and the failed music career.
I need him to know how low it all pushed me and what I lost because of my actions.
He’s scanning my face as all of this plays across my brain. Or is he mapping it ahead of kissing me? Yes, now he’s taking a step closer, dark eyes devouring me as he reaches for my hand. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything, or anyone, more.
‘Beau, wait,’ I whisper, letting go and putting my hand on his chest as he leans towards me.
If this isn’t going to be just some random event, if there’s even the smallest possibility it could head somewhere deeper, I need him to hear exactly how far I fell.
‘I’m an alcoholic,’ I stammer into the charged air between us, entirely out of context, killing what was left of the mood.
‘That is, I have alcohol use disorder. You’re not meant to say “alcoholic” these days—too stigmatising.
You’re meant to use person-first language—’ Getting off track, Audrey!
I take a breath and refocus on him. ‘Eight hundred and fifty-two days sober. I lost Fraser’s child from my life because of it.
She’s here, actually, at a music school.
I’m not supposed to see her without her mother present.
And the reason I know this is because Fraser’s brother—my original muse and vice versa, who is meant to be in New York and who was involved in the plagiarism case—was here, in this room, half an hour ago, before I kicked him out of my life again—’
The admissions gush out of me, one after another, as if my subconscious mind is attempting to lope several steps closer to Beau via the exposing of every single secret in one massive information dump.
If I share my deepest, ugliest truths, perhaps he will, too?
Except, now I’m worried all of this will push him further away.
He’s certainly paused the kiss. And as my hand drops from his chest, he steps back, considering me carefully from arm’s length.
‘I know about the alcohol,’ he replies, unexpectedly, his voice calmer and softer. ‘Not the timing and details, obviously …’
‘How?’
‘Your face, when I didn’t press you about your choice of drink in Tathra. The sheer relief that this wouldn’t become a battle.’
‘Am I that easy to read?’ I’ve been an expert in hiding this. It terrifies me that he just saw it, straightaway. And it intrigues me that he didn’t run then.
‘I’m a writer. I notice details.’ He waits for me to make eye contact again, and when I do, my whole body feels flushed with the nakedness of this admission. ‘I’m very impressed, Hepburn.’
Impressed? Shouldn’t he be shocked or disappointed?
‘There’s nothing attractive about recovering from addiction,’ I confess. ‘It’s a painful, ugly, shameful, messy—’
‘There is, actually,’ he interrupts. ‘I mean, here I am, mucking around with a small creative problem, and there you are, being a bloody superhero.’ He looks me up and down.
Really looks at me, in a way that makes me feel even more undressed, as though he can see through my skin, observing every sinew and nerve ending.
‘It’s not something I tell people,’ I admit. ‘I’m scared that between this and the death stuff and the creative angst and the whole soap opera I’ve just outlined—’
‘What, you’ll be too interesting?’
That is not where I was going.
‘You’re right about Lucinda,’ he says, interrupting my inner thoughts and taking a seat on the piano stool now, backwards, resting his elbows on his knees. ‘I’m scared I’m not up to it without her. It’s easier to avoid it, then run out of time.’
‘Failure on your terms, right? I’ve spent the last eighteen years proving this methodology, with a perfect success rate.’
He smiles at me from the stool. Reaches for my hand, pulls me over, and stands me in front of him, between his knees, looking up at me. ‘Thank you for telling me all of that.’
He hasn’t let go.
‘I trust you,’ I find myself admitting. I must trust him, given all the information I’ve disclosed.
‘We met on Thursday, Audrey. It’s now Monday.’
‘Are you saying I shouldn’t?’
There’s a bolt between us. Lightning attraction, breath quickening.
This is Beau Davenport: Hollywood darling, wildcard entrant in People Magazine’s sexiest man alive, person who’ll let me unleash the terrors of my heart and who will stay, even after I guide him through a tour of the very worst parts of me …
He breaks our eye contact and exhales slowly, looking worried.
I let go of his hand and step back, skin prickling. ‘Please tell me I can trust you.’
He was entirely discreet about the actress when I asked. But with her he signed an NDA. We have no such legal scaffolding. Just our word. And I’ve told him everything about me that counts.
‘You can trust me,’ he says, unable to meet my eyes, pain spreading across his face, his energy pulling away from mine already. ‘But you’ve read the tabloids.’
What’s that supposed to mean?
‘Audrey, sorry. I just need a minute.’