5. Logan #3
I slide into the back leather seat of the black SUV, and Emily gets in on the other side. When the back doors finally shut, I’m back in a safe cocoon, but the adrenaline in my blood did tick up a little again.
“Okay. Dinner tonight is with Antonio Gallano. You’re in the running for his next movie already,” she tells me, tapping away at her phone as the blue glow highlights her face.
“Then press interviews tomorrow, and filming for a YouTube channel where they make you eat spicy ramen while answering questions about Yard Line.”
“Got it.”
I leave my sunglasses on even behind the tinted windows in the car, well past midnight. When the driver pulls around to the front of the hotel I look up, gazing at the neon sign 20 stories higher, wondering if Chase is still up there.
My knees sting. My throat feels used. My fucking chest aches.
But the pain is the good part.
Physical pain is a breeze compared to the feelings that just got kicked up inside me. It’s overwhelming. It hits me hard, now that I have a moment to relax in the back of the car. I just did something with a man for the first time since…
Since Daniel.
Since I was 19, exploring myself with a friend, and it felt like nothing could ever take that away.
Daniel and I never kissed, never fucked. But it felt like we might do those things, one day. Until he got famous, got rich too quickly, and surrounded himself with people who didn’t question his affinity for cocaine.
He hated it when I told him to watch out with that shit.
And when he got awful news headlines where pictures were taken of him with white powder on his nose, I screamed at him, begging him to stop. Every week, they started publishing worse gossip about him. Hounding him. It fed into his self-hatred, and only tossed fuel on an already bad flame.
He stopped talking to me, but I followed the horrible media gossip about him like I was just another concerned fan. They called him a fuck-up. A lost cause.
Then he got cast in a movie about a young addict that was supposed to be his redemption arc.
They only got halfway through filming it before Daniel died. They found more than just coke on his body, and I was too heartbroken to ever delve deeper into reading about which other drugs he’d fallen into.
My hands are shaking when I look down.
Fuck.
Fuck.
The dark box inside of me has ripped open, a box I’d been trying to stuff away for the past ten years. In fact, I don’t know if it’s the same box that I closed a long time ago, or a different one that I never knew was there.
I think of the fact that Chase offhandedly told me he’d never touch coke, and something settles in my heart.
I’d almost wanted to hug Chase when he said it earlier.
I don’t know him that well, but at least I knew he wouldn’t crack my heart open by telling me I should just get over myself and do a bump or a line with him on the roof.
He’s nothing like Daniel, anyway.
But I still have my constant inborn need to try to fix things, or make people happy when it seems impossible.
I can’t go down that path of thought right now.
Not anymore. I need focus. For the future, not my past.
My dinner with Antonio Gallano feels endless.
Hours and hours spent schmoozing, talking about the movie industry, and wondering how far my own fame will take me.
It’s terrifying, and promising, all at the same time.
Antonio orders me a Scotch before dinner, and then another after the meal.
And the whole time, I keep thinking of Chase.
His touch.
His need.
When I get back to the hotel, it’s late, and the idea of Chase is still circling my mind like a moon orbiting me.
My feet take me into the hotel bar without my brain having any control of the matter.
Maybe my brain deserves to have a night off, right now.
Chase is at the bar.
He’s closing up after his shift, at 2 in the morning. He looks just as exhausted as me. His green eyes meet mine, and it’s already so clear how bad of an idea this was because seeing him feels like stepping into a warm bath.
I have no right to feel this way.
You were just curious, but I’m so fucking lost right now.
This month.
For the last decade, I suppose.
“I had too much Scotch again,” I tell him.
He gives me a simple nod. “Me too. Well, more tequila, while I worked.”
“We’re bad.”
“Guess so,” he says.
He’s silent for a while, and I let it hang. I look up and see a fresh cigarette tucked behind his ear, and I nod at it. “You broke down and got more?”
“Just bummed one off a guy from the maintenance staff,” he says, a resigned look in his gorgeous eyes. “Willpower’s not my strong suit.”
“I’m usually good at willpower. Not… not lately, though.”
He holds my gaze for a moment.
His eyes scan my body, up and down, and I watch his lashes flick back up to meet my eyes.
“Come smoke this with me,” he says softly.
He’s just being friendly.
Turn around and go.
He doesn’t want you… and he doesn’t want to be pulled into your baggage-ridden, complicated life.
But I shake my head, pulling the cigarette from behind his ear and stuffing it in my pocket. “Come up to my room instead.”