Chapter 6 Lana
Lana
“Griffin? Everything all right?” Lana started toward him, but he did that thing where he stepped back the equivalent number of paces. “Are we back at you thinking I’m a stalker, because I swear—”
“No! No, all good. Just, ah… We should search. I’ll go this way, you go that way.”
“Sure, okay.”
He walked to a large blackberry patch. “So, your sister would normally have her phone on her?”
“Always.” Lana turned toward the stream.
The distant surf boomed faintly, channeled through the gully.
“If she lost it, she’d get another right away.
If she changed her number, she’d have told me.
Except that… Well, she would definitely have told our parents.
” Lana could almost hear his lie detector ping, or whatever noise a lie detector made.
She imagined a machine scratching charts on a page, though these days it was probably digital.
“Okay, look, I might as well tell you the whole story, in case you use your actor woo-woo on me or get me arrested. Last time we spoke, I was … harsh with her. I told her to solve her own problems. But I swear, she would have forgiven me if she were still…” Lana’s eyes stung. She shut them tightly.
“It’s not your fault she’s missing.”
“I know,” Lana said impatiently.
“I don’t know that you do.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“You’re blaming yourself, though you know you shouldn’t. She’s a grown woman, old enough to make her own decisions. And if something’s happened to her, it likely has nothing to do with you. But you are—blaming yourself.”
“Is there no private thought when you’re around?”
He smiled, part amusement, part sympathy. “You don’t have to share anything with me. I’ll help you anyway.”
“Thank you.” She spun away before he could see her eyes fill, and was forced into evasive maneuvers to avoid a vine of poison oak.
Was this the first time since her parents visited that anyone had taken her fears seriously?
Sure, she liked being invisible as a rule, but this was a rare time when being seen was a relief.
Despite the embarrassment of blurting out her attraction to him—a moment she might never in her life get over—she was grateful for his presence.
Both for the help, and because otherwise this place would be creepy.
Not to mention that without social interaction, her internal monologues tended to snowball, like the Southern Ocean at the 60th parallel, roaring around the globe without as much as a rocky islet to interrupt its path.
The search area wasn’t large, but the foliage was dark and dense, requiring them to sift through layers of vegetation, disturbing the occasional lizard or black-and-orange butterfly.
No snakes, thank goodness. Better yet, no body and nothing that looked like a recent grave.
Yes, she wanted answers, but she didn’t want that answer.
Hope and dread had been driving her in equal measure, but this was a victory of sorts for hope.
It was a relief to fall into silence and get some distance from Griffin.
It was hard to focus with him too close—not just the physical attraction, but also the unsettling feeling he could see right into her.
She snuck a look at him. He was crouched by a clump of sword ferns, looking up at the lip of the cliffs.
Scanning. She’d noticed him doing it every few minutes on the climb down, like he was checking his rearview mirrors.
He was perfectly in profile. Slightly lined forehead, strong brow, straight nose, pink lips—the bottom fuller than the top, perhaps because of the cleft repair.
When his guard was up, his face was breathtakingly perfect.
In the moments he dropped the mask, he was mesmerizing.
He turned his head and caught her staring, and she stumbled. Her foot caught in something and she unbalanced, thumping onto her butt. All class. Like the superhero he was, Griffin was beside her in a flash, helping her up.
“Tripped over a tree root.” She gestured vaguely, hoping there was some foliage around to back up her story.
“The light’s fading,” he said, releasing her. “I think we can conclude Vivien’s not here. And if she dumped her phone here, or if…”
“…if someone else did…”
“…it’s going to take a lot more effort to find. Are you planning to stay the night on set?”
She nodded. “I have a sleeping bag.”
“We should head up. We have the whole weekend.”
“The whole weekend? You’re going to stay with me?”
He shrugged. “There’s enough room in Troy for the both of us.” He stepped backward. “And that way we can keep looking for the ph—.”
“Griffin!” She dove for him, grabbed him by the biceps, and steered him backward into a tree trunk. “581.659,” she muttered.
His expression blanked. “Lana? What are you doing?”
She pointed at the vine beside them. “Harmful plants. You were about to walk into poison oak. Those abs wouldn’t look as hot if they were swollen and blistered, now would they?”
He scoffed, relaxing. “The abs aren’t even mine, but thanks.”
Her gaze dropped to his stomach—he had invited it, after all. “Whose are they?”
“They’re drawn on.” He rubbed at a spot.
His fingers came away streaked with brown.
“They’re a bitch to get off. They do my shoulders and arms too.
” He pulled his arm around and showed her the shadowing above and below his biceps.
“For sure, I do a ton of evil workouts and deny myself a lot of donuts. But mostly my abs come off in the shower.”
She hardly had to point out that his beauty was far greater than the sum of his contour lines. And all the contouring in the world wouldn’t create muscles on someone who didn’t at least have the basics.
She forced herself to focus on his face—and slapped his cheek.
He caught her hand. “What the hell, Lana?”
“Omigod, I’m sorry.” She wriggled her wrist so he could see her palm. A squashed mosquito. “Ew, blood!” He released her and she wiped it on her pants. “You’re right. We should get out of here, before I have to save you from a mountain lion by jumping you, or suck out rattlesnake venom.”
He laughed. “You are a one-woman roller-coaster ride.”
“Not usually. I’m usually very sedate. I definitely don’t go around slapping men and shoving them into trees. I apologize for encroaching on your personal space without permission.”
“I acknowledge and appreciate your apology,” he teased.
Going up was somehow easier than going down. They quickly established a rhythm—he’d climb, she’d follow, he’d help her up. It involved a lot of touching.
“Do you have anything else to go on, apart from this pinging as her last location?” He hoisted her onto the granite platform—the scene of her earlier humiliation.
“No, but…” She clamped her mouth shut.
“But?”
She let out a frustrated sigh. “I suppose you’ll torture this out of me anyway. I had this idea that I could break into the production trailer and snoop around.”
“Breaking and entering, now. You might be the wildest librarian I’ve met.”
“How many librarians have you met?”
He thought for a moment. “None?” He pointed at her. “One!”
“In your entire life?”
“I don’t get out much,” he deadpanned. “Wait, I did go into a library once.”
“Once?”
“A charity function at the J.P. Morgan Library in New York. That was cool. Old books stacked right up the walls.”
“Not your regular public library. So, you’re judging me for not watching movies, yet I’ve watched twelve times more movies than you’ve visited libraries!” Of course, half those movies had starred him, but if he was doing those calculations, he didn’t let on.
“I’m not judging you! Besides, I’d like to be a guy who goes to a public library every week and picks out a book.”
“You know you could be that guy? It’s free, and anyone can join!”
“Just get a library card, wander in, and pick out a book?”
“Generally how it works, yeah. You do have to return it later.”
He looked at her sadly. She sensed there was something she wasn’t getting, something he couldn’t be bothered explaining. He looked around again—checking his mirrors—and resumed climbing.
“Why not join a library?” she pressed. “How charming—the movie star who pops down to the local library! Sounds like a rom-com.” A rom-com with Griffin Hart as the hero. She’d read that book. Hell, she’d watch the movie. Perhaps the heroine could be a librarian? In a rom-com, anything was possible.
“A novel in which the librarian sells my reading preferences to the trash media?” His voice strained as he pulled himself up. “Sounds like a psychological thriller. Not that I read anything shifty.” He found a stable spot and held out the rope. “Your turn.”
She followed his route, though it was a case of one small step for him, one giant leap for her. “Wouldn’t matter if you did—that would be a serious breach of privacy. A person’s library history is a window into their soul.”
“A breach of privacy,” he echoed bitterly. “If only that were enough to stop that shit.”
“Wait, this has happened to you?”
“Not that exact thing—no library card, remember? But plenty of other stuff. Besides, libraries are supposed to be peaceful. I get filmed at the grocery store.”
“I’m sure a library would let you in after hours.”
“Then it would no longer be a public library, would it? Which is counter to the concept.” She’d come within his reach. He held out a hand and she let him pull her up. There was something gentlemanly about it—Regency romance vibes. “I went to the Louvre once, in normal hours. I got asked to leave.”
“Why, what did you do?”
“Naively thought I could slip in unnoticed. This was a while back, when I was still in denial about what my life could and couldn’t be.
This school group from Wichita started following me around, then others joined, and it got rowdy.
Hard to get lost in art when you’re stuck in a flash mob and they’re pulling out your hair. ”
“Pulling out your hair?”