Totally Wrecked #2
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Hello, Brooke.” The man draws my name out slowly. “I’m Killian, your audio.”
He has lines around his mouth and eyes, and his straight black hair has a smattering of gray.
But, even with tired eye bags, Killian is very, actually exceedingly, attractive.
He’s wearing faded black jeans and a dark, V-neck T-shirt that is so thin it’s almost transparent.
A packet of cigarettes is rolled up in the sleeve cuff, and a tattoo peaks from beneath it.
Killian looks a little worn around the edges.
.. I know how he feels. He gives me a half smile and seems to have a question in his eyes.
He’s like the sad Keanu meme.
Frances puts a glass of juice in my hand, then pats Killian on the arm. “Killian is taking over from Trevor.” She turns to him and adds, “Brooke’s had a few weeks off since the last filming session. The last one was quite taxing.”
“Ah, yes,” Killian nods, “the underground caves, right? Glad I wasn’t doing sound on that one; it would have been a challenge.” When he speaks, I hear an Irish accent. It’s massively sexy. I catch a whiff of him, his body smells hot, musky, and there is maybe the smell of cigarette smoke.
“It was a challenging session,” Frances sighs. “We lost more contestants than we’d expected.”
“Is this session going to be equally tough?” Killian asks.
Frances looks at me and grins. “Well, I can’t give away any secrets, but let’s just say that it’s a good thing Brooke is so fearless!”
“Ha ha,” I give a laugh that probably makes me sound a little insane. “Fearless, and bad to the bone!” Bad to the bone? Good grief.
“I’m going to look for Harvey,” Frances tells us. “You guys hang out and chat.”
Harvey? Wait, what! I thought I wouldn't see him!
We both watch her go, then Killian flags down a passing waiter and orders another whisky. I’m jealous. “More juice, Brooke?”
Fudge nuggets, this is an emergency situation.
“Can I get a whisky too?” I ask him.
I can just have one while no one else is around.
His eyebrows raise again. “Sure, whatever you want.”
Ha! What I want is an alien invasion, so I can just get sucked up into a spaceship and out of here, but I guess I'll settle for a whiskey.
KILLIAN
Well, this is weird. I have no idea if Brooke has really forgotten me or if she's playing some odd game. I’m truly at a loss.
And my head hurts. Jesus Christ, these people are the worst.
I press my fingers to my temples, as though I can force the headache away.
The forty-hour travel here was insane, and I’m questioning my decision to say yes to this gig.
A waiter comes back with two Jamesons. I give one to Brooke, who immediately clutches it like it’s a life preserver—you and me both, Brooke. You and me both.
“So,” she is saying, “how long have you been a sound man?”
Uh-huh—definitely forgotten me. Unless she’s pretending?
Was she pissed about last year? Maybe I’d hurt her ego.
We’d been filming the first episode of “Champion” and in a twenty-four-hour break (gotta fecking love unions), she'd made the moves on me. I’d already been drunk, it was the day I’d gotten Stevie’s message.
We’d made out a little, until I’d pulled the brakes, my mind spinning from the news from New York. At the time she’d seemed unbothered.
Brooke sips on her whisky, looking like she’s waiting for an answer. Oh, right—how long have I been a sound engineer?
“I’ve been in the industry since I left school, so fifteen years, I guess?”
This is so weird. Ten months ago, she had a mind like a steel trap, as they say. Also, she was an adamant non-drinker before, too worried about the empty carbs on her perfectly toned body.
Hmm. That perfectly toned body has also been let slide.
Though I prefer it as it is now, a little softer and a lot more curvaceous. She was all hard edges and sharp words before. Maybe the competition has taken its toll?
Brooke grabs several canapes from a passing server and shoves them in her mouth.
“Sorry,” she says, “I’m starving.”
Her eyes, the color of forget-me-nots, look tired. What is going on with her? She’s now looking desperately at the exit, and chewing on her lip like a puppy with a slipper. Actually, she seems afraid.
“Brooke?”
She turns, and I see I’m not mistaken, there is fear in those big eyes.
“Are you doing OK?” The Brooke I remember feared nothing and no one.
I watch as she rearranges her features. “Absolutely, just a little jet-lagged. I’ll probably head back to my room soon.” Her smile is thoroughly unconvincing. “Ooh, me old tired bones,” she adds, putting on an old lady voice.
“I thought you were starving—you’re not having dinner? ”
“Oh, right, yeah,” she replies. “I am. I love to eat food, especially paleo. Like, I could eat a dinosaur. Rawr.” Brooke makes a dinosaur noise, then turns red and clamps a hand over her mouth.
Is she on drugs?
I’m bothered about this, and I’m not sure why. It’s not like Brooke and I were friends. Maybe she’s drugging; well, surprise, surprise, so is eighty percent of the industry.
But very uncharacteristically, I want to intervene. Why? Because she seems so vulnerable, and not the Brooke ‘Action’ Jackson I remember at all.
I take another sip of whisky and try to think of an easy way to say, ‘hey, remember when we almost banged last year?’ but fail completely. I guess I’ll just remind her of the first time we met.
“This is pretty different from the ‘meet and greet’ in Alaska, isn’t it?”
She looks at me blankly.
“The party on the eve of the first day of filming? In Juno?” I add, trying to jog her memory. It’s got to be drugs.
The whiskey pauses on its way to her mouth, and her face blanches. “Oh, err, yes, of course. Were you there? I mean, you were there. So was I, obviously.”
Hmm. “Yeah, I did the sound for all the Alaska challenges, if you remember, but then I had to leave, and the production company got Trevor as the replacement.”
I swear I can see her mind going a hundred miles an hour. “Oh!” she says at last. “That’s why you look so familiar! Why was it you left again?”
“Personal reasons—you don’t remember me telling you all about it?”
Brooke’s eyes widen, and she looks like a deer in headlights.
“Right…” she says. “Yes! The totally personal reasons you told me about. Of course I remember.”
She contorts her face. Is she having a stroke?
“Yes!” she repeats, blinking rapidly. “So sorry for your…loss?”
What the feck?
“I’d just discovered my ex was pregnant,” I remind her, “so I was going back to New York to settle down and be a da.”
Brooke swallows several times, then smiles at me. “Of course! It was a joke, haha, about your loss of freedom. You know me, I love my freedom!” She gives me a manic grin. “So, how’s the baby?”
“Non-existent,” I tell her bluntly. Her face falls, and I realize that sounds like the baby died, so I add to the statement. “Or rather, he exists, but it turned out I wasn’t the father, and I wasn’t wanted, nor needed.”
Surprisingly, tears form in Brooke’s eyes. She reaches out and puts her hand on my arm. “Oh, Killian, I am so very sorry. How painful that must have been.”
Brooke’s unexpected sympathy kicks me in the gut. I’d been doing a good job of not really feeling much recently.
“To be sure, it was hurtful,” I mutter, downing my whiskey.
All the whiskey is probably why I find myself telling her more.
It’s an out-of-character move for me, so it has to be the whiskey, not Brooke Jackson, with her blue eyes brimming with sympathy.
“I’d completely gotten my head around being a da, but Stevie, at the eleventh hour, told me this guy called Brett was the dad, and Stevie and Brett were going to make a go of it. ”
I feel two small, and not particularly muscular, arms come around my waist, and Brooke hugs me hard.
Her head leans against my chest. “You were planning a future that was ripped away from you—that’s a huge loss.
You’d loved that baby for nine months. That must be so painful, and you should mourn as long as you need to. ”
At first, I’m stiff, but then her warm, soft curves melt the reserve I’ve been holding for weeks. “My poor ma was devastated,” I tell her, breathing in the smell of her strawberry shampoo. “She'd been knitting up a storm—booties and whatnot.”
Brooke's arms tighten further. “Your poor Mom! And that girl—Stevie? She’s utterly selfish and doesn’t deserve you.”
My body responds to her contact and her caring, and I can’t stop my fingers moving up and into her hair, wrapping my fist around the long, blonde lengths.
She sighs, her breath hot against my neck, and I have to restrain myself from kissing her—and cupping that ass through the tight fabric of her dress.
“What’s happened to you, Brooke?” I murmur.
She doesn’t get a chance to reply because a loud cough from Frances pulls us apart.
“Hey, guys! Harvey will be down in a minute,” she says.
“And I’ve some news to share.” Brooke steps out of my arms and starts biting her lip again.
“Apparently, one of the Australian flights had to turn around mid-air! Some kind of engine problem.” She runs a harried hand through her short gray hair.
“Now, most of production team B is going to be two days late!”
That sucks for Frances—organizing these kinds of shoots is like herding cats.
“So are we not sailing tomorrow?” I ask. Truthfully, I wouldn’t mind a couple of days' delay to hang out in Sāmoa and investigate this new, soft side of Brooke ‘Action’ Jackson. Her sympathy is so sweet and kind of a turn-on.
But Frances is shaking her head. “I called the bigwigs; the consensus is we’ll ship you, Brooke, and Harvey out tomorrow.
The rest of us will travel on Friday. What a mess,” she sighs.
“This will be the smallest meet and greet ever! I’ll tell Harvey where to find you—make sure you put your food and drink on the Really Wild Films tab. ”