And I was back to being freaked out. Being at the party had felt less threatening. We’d been surrounded by people. Obviously he wasn’t going to make a move with so many people watching everything he did. So my mind hadn’t gone to the possibility that he might. The time we’d spent together had felt comfortable, and I’d allowed myself the luxury of not overreacting to every one of his movements and overthinking everything that was going on and just enjoying myself. Pretending to be normal, like every other woman out there.
That was all over now.
Because he might try to kiss me.
And then I would have a full-on panic attack.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Do you want something to drink?” Noah asked, leaning forward to open a compartment, from which he pulled out a bottle of champagne.
“No champagne for me,” I said. “I’m such a lightweight.” In my current living circumstances, I could afford neither alcohol nor the potential hangovers that might interfere with an early-morning appointment. “Plus, not being able to hold my liquor makes me very confessy.”
And why had I felt the need to tack that on? I resisted covering my face with both of my hands as he put the bottle back.
“Do you want us to stop and grab something else? Water?” he offered.
I let out a sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to home in on what I’d said. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”
Then, of course, he made sure my relief was short-lived. “I take it that being confessy is a bad thing.”
“It could be,” I said honestly. At least one of my secrets was totally humiliating. The other would destroy this entire evening. I wasn’t up for either experience.
“What is it that you don’t want to confess to me? Do you have a deep, dark secret?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I was aiming for lighthearted, but I was afraid I’d missed the mark.
“Do you want to know mine?” he asked, and me being me, of course I desperately wanted to know it. I didn’t know if that made me a hypocrite, keeping my secrets to myself while being way too enthusiastic about him spilling his.
“If you want to share it.”
He looked at me thoughtfully before saying, “I haven’t spoken to my parents in nine years.”
As far as I could recall, he’d never mentioned his parents in any interview. Ever. “Really? Wow. Why?”
He settled back against the seat, unbuttoning his jacket to get more comfortable. “My parents were my managers. My mother was a child actor on a sitcom and never had a substantial role after that. My dad was a radio DJ. They met at some event, fell in love, and had kids.”
Kids? My ears perked up. As far as I knew, Noah Douglas was an only child. He didn’t have any siblings. Right?
Or maybe he did and he’d been protecting that fact all these years. He was so intensely private that it was shocking he was saying anything to me now. His interviews consisted of the same set of facts over and over again—he’d starred on Late for Class, had joined the army at eighteen, came home three years later, and did some small movies here and there until he broke out with the Duel of the Fae trilogy. Now every director in Hollywood wanted to work with him, and he was doing an excellent job of choosing roles that were getting him all kinds of critical accolades.
That was it. He’d never said anything about his family.
And knowing how private he was? Why was he telling me? I could totally betray him and tell this to, like, the ENZ website, and it would be everywhere.
Because he trusts you. Even though he shouldn’t.
I was torn between guilt and selfishness. So I didn’t choose. I stayed quiet and let him talk, let him make the decision.
“The one thing my parents wanted was for me to be a huge star. My dad quit his job, and they spent all their time managing me and my career. I paid the bills. Everything depended on me. There were no choices in my life, no normal childhood activities. I was either on set working or memorizing lines or with one of my instructors for acting, dancing, or singing. Nobody asked me if I was doing what I wanted. Or if I was happy. Nobody cared.”
That made my heart break. I’d never imagined when I’d watched him as Felix that he’d been unhappy. “I’m so sorry.”
He raised one hand, as if to wave off my sympathy. “It got worse when I was a teenager. I rebelled in the worst ways possible. I was a mess, totally acting out and partying all the time. The day I turned eighteen I got married, just to prove I was an adult.”
Oh, I remembered. My fifteen-year-old heart had been entirely broken when he’d married one of his costars. A voodoo doll of his bride may or may not have been constructed.
“I just wanted to show them that they couldn’t control me anymore. And they took my challenge seriously. They tried to get control back. They attempted to get a court to declare me incompetent and give them a conservatorship over me.”
I gasped. I’d had no idea. “Who would do that?”
“My parents. They didn’t want their cash cow to wander off into another field. It made me wake up and I realized I had to be out of their reach. I stopped partying, got my marriage annulled, and did what anyone in my position would do—I met with my local army recruiter and signed up.”
I smiled slightly at his joke. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
“That’s why I wanted it. I needed something hard, something authentic. I’d never lived in the real world with real problems, and I wanted it more than anything. To be my own man and be in a place where I’d be treated just like everyone else. My goal was to become an Army Ranger. If I was going to be in the military, I was going to be the best.”
More than one director had talked about his incredible work ethic. I wondered if it was something his parents had instilled in him or if he’d found it in the military. “What happened? Why did you leave?”
“Because they made me,” he said with a wry smile. “We were deployed to Afghanistan, and when we arrived, on our way to the base, we hit an IED. The blast pressure caused me to have a pneumothorax.”
I was both horrified and enthralled. “What is that?”
“Basically it’s when your lungs collapse. It was incredibly painful, and I couldn’t breathe right. I thought I was having a heart attack and that I was going to die. Fortunately there was a medic in the jeep behind us, and he stabilized me. The explosion banged everyone up, but we all survived.”
“Is that when you came home?”
He shook his head. “A little bit after that. They performed a thoracoscopy on me and let me heal up. Then they sent me home with a medical discharge. The doctors determined that I was at too much risk of a recurrence if I sustained another physical injury. It’s why I can’t do my own stunts in movies, either. Which is frustrating. Anyway, I was pissed off. I’d trained with my company for three years, and they were off to serve our mission while I was sitting in an apartment in Brooklyn with no idea what to do with my life.”
“You didn’t go right back to acting?”
“No. I considered becoming a police officer or a firefighter. Something where I could still serve and protect. But I went to this play, A View from the Bridge, and I was blown away. The way the lead actor played this character, how he channeled this rage and frustration into a work of art . . . I wanted that in my life again. I resisted at first, because I didn’t want my parents to get credit for any of my success.”