Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
NOLAN
Have you lost your damn mind?
It was the first question I asked myself back in my car, after crossing the biggest possible line with Charlotte.
The kind of line you really couldn’t uncross.
Kissing her had been bad enough, but sleeping with her?
What the fuck was I thinking?
Or rather… What was I thinking with?
Because it certainly hadn’t been the head attached to my shoulders.
I could say with full transparency that us sleeping together had been the absolutely furthest thing from what I intended when I showed up at her door.
After she’d spent the two days since we kissed doing her best to pretend I didn’t exist— again— all I wanted was to clear the air between us.
It was just a kiss.
It didn’t have to make things weird.
Weirder.
Because honestly…I wasn’t sure where the kiss came from either.
Maybe just…shit, a build-up of all our creative tension over the years? There was such a thin line between lust and hate—all the passion, just a different emotion—it was easy, probably, for the wires to get crossed. And then all that frustration from the meeting?
Take all those possibilities, and you had…
You had…
Bullshit.
That’s what was had.
Bullshit .
The truth of the matter was that I’d always been attracted to Charlotte—she was just much younger and seemed to hate me. Both of which were fairly easy to overcome, but I also tried to avoid lending fodder to the hostile environment this industry created for so many young Black women. If she showed interest first, that was a different situation, but I made it a point to not lead with flirtation.
At least, until her disdain was set in enough that my flirting was actually a point of annoyance.
Making her uncomfortable was a no-go.
Getting on her nerves, though?
That, I could tolerate.
Especially since the attraction persisted.
Soon enough, it became more than that—she was attractive and talented. She was attractive and smart. She was attractive and well-liked by everybody that worked with her. She was attractive and she didn’t take anybody’s shit.
Too aware of the world to be fearless, but definitely something adjacent.
The kind of woman who intimidated a lot of men, instead of them being cognizant enough to realize, Charlotte Fox was definitely the kind of woman to be… revered , honestly.
Really man? What the fuck is happening?
“ Shit ,” I muttered to myself, shaking my head as I cranked my car.
I was sticky from her bodily fluids all over me, including on my face.
My dick was sore, and I was tired as shit.
And I could smell her—her perfume and her pussy were both embedded in my nose, and lingering on my tongue.
Again, I shook my head.
Probably a good idea that she’d insisted I couldn’t stay.
One of us had to make a sensible decision.
Me?
I replayed the last few hours in my head all the way back home—Charlotte’s skin, Charlotte’s hands, Charlotte’s pussy, Charlotte’s mouth.
All elements of her I really shouldn’t know a damn thing about, and yet…now I was intimately familiar.
Again.
Not the fucking plan.
But we’d been off-plan a while now at this point.
Starting from when I’d told—asked—her to not go into that meeting with Matt and his cronies guns blazing. It really didn’t have to come to anyone’s job being threatened.
But of course, I understood her frustrations.
I shared many of the same ones, which was why I’d made a point of standing up for her.
At some stage, there had to be a line in the sand between doing what was right creatively and chasing numbers—whether that was streams or dollar signs, which often overlapped each other. At some point, there had to be that discernment to say, no, this is a little too far, or better yet, this is not in line with the level of quality I like to create.
And Matt and his bullshit had crossed it for me.
Already.
Before he’d had the nerve to declare Charlotte’s plans for the show, “ boringggg .”
I was already on it.
Not that she had any reason yet to believe me—and clearly she didn’t, considering the way she’d gone in swinging. And besides my personal connection to the show, and feelings about corporate oversight, and desire to preserve my own reputation…I also gave a fuck about Charlotte.
Again—she clearly hadn’t thought so, but that wasn’t my problem.
It was my problem if I sat by and let a talented young woman with a child under her care get railroaded and possibly cost resources because of silliness with Matt.
They might hem and haw a bit about it, but my contracts and contacts were a little too iron-clad for me to be worried about really getting fired.
But that wasn’t the point anyway.
The point was to show them I was truly, immovably on Charlotte’s side in this, to get them to understand how serious this was—a fact I explained once she’d left to go back to her office.
Ironically, the unsurprising first question out of Matt’s mouth had been are you fucking her , which was insulting too, like everything else he spouted. I’d shut him up and gotten him to back down about any other changes—promised him a trashy reality show where he could get his fill of drama instead of trying to force it into Kinfolk.
But he’d planted that seed.
Had me wondering if other people were seeing something I hadn’t.
And then there was Charlotte.
Pretty-ass Charlotte with her deep-brown skin and deeper big brown eyes.
I could see the fear in them, the confusion, the determination, all of it.
And something just… clicked.
It was such horrible timing.
I didn’t need clicks while we were working together so closely—I needed clicks when it wasn’t a fucking conflict of interests.
Shit, that wasn’t even the right term.
We were on the same side, whether or not she believed that, but it was messy as hell.
And we’d gone and made even more of a mess of it.
By the time I made it to my shower and my bed, I was sufficiently convinced I’d beat myself up enough—at least for the night. After wearing myself out in Charlotte’s bed, I was exhausted.
Getting to sleep didn’t take much.
* * *
Morning came entirely too fast.
I’d already slept through my first alarm, and it seemed like my second came along way before the twenty-minute mark when it was supposed to.
I peeled my eyes open, feeling around on my nightstand for my phone. Once I had it in hand, I realized why it seemed as though my secondary alarm had arrived so fast.
It wasn’t my alarm at all.
My phone was ringing , and the name and number accompanying the beautiful face flashing on the screen was my daughter.
I sat up immediately, pushing the button to answer.
My baby girl was a notorious late sleeper, so her trying to get in touch with me at such an early hour signified that something might be wrong.
“Nadia, you okay?” was the first thing out of my mouth, and I was glad to hear her soft giggle on the other end of the line, accompanied by a deeper male laugh I quickly deduced was her brother, either on the third line or with her on speakerphone.
“Why is that always the first thing you ask?” she inquired as I shuffled out of bed.
It was a good thing she’d called—I needed to be up, since I was supposed to be on set in…forty minutes.
That was pushing it.
“You know you’re usually not out of bed before your ten o’clock class if you can help it,” I teased her. “Of course I asked if something was wrong. Is there?”
“ No ,” she insisted. “I just wanted to catch you before you got to the studio. I’ve got Aiden with me too. We uh…wanted to ask you something.”
“I don’t have any money. Y’all have bled me dry,” I replied, grabbing jeans, a light sweater, socks, and shoes from their various places in my closet.
“You know what Grandma used to say about telling lies, right?” she asked, and I chuckled.
“ Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do y’all need this time?” I asked, putting much more exasperation in my voice then I actually felt.
For the most part, I gave my kids whatever they asked for, but I tried not to make it too easy so they wouldn’t get too deep into such a habit as young adults. They were privileged, absolutely, but I also needed them learning to be somewhat self-sufficient.
Because of Natalie’s call to give me a heads up, I already knew exactly what this was about.
“Well…what are you doing the week we’re on spring break?” Aiden was the one to chime in, following his question with a reminder of when that actually was.
I already had it down in my calendar from when they’d communicated their school schedules for the semester, but I appreciated little things like that, that let me know they were growing up.
“Why do you need to know my schedule?” I asked.
“Because…” Nadia chimed in, “we want you to be here to come apartment shopping with us.”
“Apartment shopping? You kids planning to pick up a mortgage?”
“ Hunting ,” Aiden corrected. “Apartment hunting . Unless you would consider purchasing an apartment for us. A small house, where you could rent out the extra rooms to other well-vetted students. Or a duplex, where we could each have our own space. In a city like Blakewood, it could be a great investment.”
I smirked. “It seems as if y’all put real thought into how you were going to spend my money,” I teased in a stern tone.
“Just thinking through ways you get the best use out of it, if you’re going to be paying for it. Might as well make it a little more attractive. Renting isn’t bad by any means, if you find the right place at the right price point, but purchasing would certainly be the better investment of cash.”
I shook my head.
They’d double-teamed that one, which meant they’d likely done a little practicing on this whole spiel.
I liked it.
“So again, you’ve already thought out what you’re going to do with my money?” I asked. “I’m not saying it as a bad thing, it’s just an observation.”
“Well…yes,” Nadia admitted. “We’ve thought it through, before we approached you with it.”
“You want to tell me why the on-campus housing isn’t good enough for you anymore?” I asked.
“It’s not that it isn’t good enough,” Aiden answered, “it’s just not really conducive to the type of students we’d like to be. Or the lifestyle we’d like to lead. There’s a little more rowdiness going on than we like to get into personally.”
I knew he wasn’t just talking.
Growing up, my kids had seen a lot—maybe more than they should’ve.
Because of the nature of my work—and their mother’s honestly—having them around me meant they’d had a front-row view of what partying, drug addiction, and alcohol abuse did to a lot of people’s favorite celebrities.
And that shit was not pretty.
I drilled in them, even from a young age, that that wasn’t the path I wanted for them, nor was it one I would accept.
Now, of course I knew that as kids on their own, they were probably experimenting with things, and getting into a little more than me or their mother potentially liked.
There wasn’t too much we could say, considering we’d done the same things.
It was all part of growing up.
But I also knew the twins were smart enough to be cautious with drinking, smoking, sex, and whatever else, in a way that a lot of their peers just were not.
To add to that, they were serious about their studies.
They both wanted to work in movies and TV—writing, directing, cinematography, anything. They just wanted to be in the mix. That decision had scared me a little at first, because I was afraid they were simply mimicking me. I didn’t want them investing these formative years, when they should be exploring their own interests, mirroring me.
But so far instead of spending summers traveling and partying, they’d come back to Vegas to work at the studio, serving as writing interns, production assistants, set design, all kinds of shit. And neither of their passions had waned.
Which made it easy to put my full support behind it.
“So y’all have everything else planned out—how do you anticipate this going? You still flying in to spend a few days up here?” I asked since that had already been settled— before this idea of “apartment hunting.” They were supposed to come up and hang out for the last few days of filming on Kinfolk , and then spend the rest of the time using their spring break to relax and catch up with their friends from around here.
“Well…” Nadia started, “we thought maybe we would come there, spend a few days, and then you could fly back with us to look at places. You and Mama,” she amended unnecessarily.
Of course they wanted their mom there.
Still though, I sighed like it was a big inconvenience. “I guess it’s a plan, since y’all have already decided it all for me. Y’all want to tell me your budget too? All your amenity requirements?”
“Daddy, come on! I’d never presume to tell you how much you should spend!”
“But,” Aiden quickly cut in, “we do know the going rate in the Blakewood area is?—”
“Relax,” I chuckled. “I’m not going to have y’all on skid row. We can talk about it more when the time is here. Until then, I’ll see you guys in a few days, okay?”
“Thank you,” they sang in unison, making me shake my head.
“You’re welcome. I’ve got to go, alright?”
“Okay, bye!”
Once I’d hung up with them, I really didn’t have time to sit and contemplate like I might want. I had to brush my teeth, wash my face, and finish getting ready to get out the door so I wouldn’t be too late making it to set.
As it turned out, I arrived at eight on the dot—which wasn’t timely for my own standards, but it was fine. Usually, everybody was trickling in around this time, but I wasn’t surprised to find Charlotte already in the mix, giving out instructions for production assistants, talking to the director, etc.
She was truly in her element.
Maybe I just never admitted it to myself before now, but…I loved seeing her like this. Technically, her true title was “only” head writer, and of course she’d secured an executive producer credit, but she honestly did a bit of everything. She’d learned damn near all the different trades that made an episode of TV come together.
It was admirable.
And it was clear that she felt good doing it, from the way she breezed around fully confident in every directive she gave, every decision she made.
She was having a blast …at least until her gaze landed on me. Her eyes went wide, and she started making a beeline in the other direction.
Nope.
Without thinking, I sped up, practically chasing her down before she could get away from me. I grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her around the side of one of the production trailers and pinning her back against it once we were out of view.
“ Absolutely not ,” I said, looking her right in the eyes.
She tossed her hair, fully indignant. “What the hell are you talking about now, Nolan?”
“Okay, this is how we’re playing it?” I asked, chuckling a little. “Not only are you ignoring me, you’re going to pretend you don’t know what I’m confronting you about?”
“This is a confrontation?” she asked, eyes wide. “What makes you think I’m pretending?”
I bit my lip then leaned in, speaking into her ear. “Woman…I taste-tested your cervix last night. Watched all this little cold facade you like to put up with me melt all over my dick,” I reminded her, noting the involuntary jolt that went through her at the mention. “We can’t pretend nothing happened.”
“But I’d prefer to pretend nothing happened,” she replied.
“No deal,” I countered with a chuckle.
“What does that even mean?” she asked. “What is this, you’re pussy whipped now? Trying to be my boyfriend or something?”
“Not trying to be your man, but I’ll be honest…we should do it again. Put that pussy whipped possibility to the test.”
“You’re insane,” she countered.
“But you didn’t say no.”
“So?”
“ So …give me a real answer,” I said. “Am I coming back by your place tonight?”
She stared at me for a moment then rolled her eyes, pushing me away.
“Make sure you don’t wake Kyran up.”