That kiss had been everything.
More than everything—it had been a promise.
Or at least, that is what I was saying in return. I think.
And now, I was back to staring at the script and thinking that maybe I should clean the small fish tank in the kitchen even though I had a service for that. Or maybe I should wash my car? Nope, that had been done two days ago. I could put on some washing. Clean the kitchen floors? I wandered from room to room, convinced I needed to do something that wasn’t the thing I should be doing—reading the script. Procrastination, thy name is Finn Kerrigan, not to mention my thoughts were in full-on squirrel mode, so the doorbell startled me so bad I nearly fell on my ass turning to face the noise. Steadying myself, I headed down the hall—there was no one scheduled to be in the house, but I hoped that it was Cameron coming back again. Then kicked myself because he was long gone, and he doesn’t know my gate code to let himself in.
I stopped then, and sent a quick text to him, debating over adding an x, when the doorbell sounded again.
“The fuck, Finn! I see you standing there!”
Shit. I’d gotten distracted, again.
Atlas sounded pissed, but that was my agent’s default setting, so I wasn’t too worried until I opened the door and saw his thunderous expression.
I let him in, and he grumbled and cursed as he toed off his shoes and stalked past me to the kitchen, then grabbed snacks out of my refrigerator. I watched bemused at his plate piled with everything from pickles and triangle cheese to a pot of yogurt.
“I missed breakfast because of you,” he explained with extreme prejudice, then made himself at home at my counter and spread his bounty before him. His dark eyebrows tangled as he dipped a pickle into the strawberry yogurt and munched down on that before gagging and checking out what he’d done. “Fuck my life and fucking protect me from fucking actors who eat fucking fucked-up pickles,” he added, and shoved the jar away.
“Are actors who eat pickles a big problem? I mean, I don’t actually eat pickles. I think they’re leftover from a party,” I started to ramble as I poured him a coffee, sliding it over to him, but keeping my distance. “I don’t mind a gherkin here and there, and not in a sexual innuendo way, but anyway, morning—”
“Don’t ‘morning’ me!” Atlas shuffled on the stool, close to slipping off one side, which led to another tirade of curses.
“Okay?” I prompted because it was obvious this was about me. “Did I do something?”
“It’s more like what you aren’t doing,” he muttered, and this time stuffed the triangle cheeses into the fruity yogurt which—yuck—but he seemed to enjoy it. The man was heading for an ulcer, and I took some of the guilt for that, because I’d done something else that had caused him to take a step over the fluffy bridge.
I needed to clarify. What was he talking about?
“I didn’t do, or not do, what? Or what? Or do? What?” Were we talking in circles?
He stopped with a cheese triangle halfway to his mouth, then used it to emphasize whatever point he was about to make. “Byrnes-Rose studios have offered you another ten million on top of their current offer, plus a bigger percentage share on turnover, and your input into the freaking storylines, just to get you to do Rapid 4, and, get this, they’re throwing in a guaranteed Rapid 5, and I had to tell them no, so you owe me for not suggesting you do it.” Everything fell out of him in run-on sentences, and it took me a while to parse that.
I blinked at my agent. 4 and 5? That was… I calculated it in my head; hell, that was a lot of money. Then it hit me that he’d said he wasn’t here to convince me to do the movies; he was here to tell me he turned them down.
“So, you told them no?”
He sighed with such drama, then paced the kitchen, a bag of cherry tomatoes in his hand.
“They want to rapid release Rapid Love and Rapid Danger.” He snorted at his own joke. “And I told them no, and when they asked if it was about more money, my agent heart began to wither and die.” He pressed his free hand to his chest. “DIE! I tell you! Die!”
I shuffled to the side, getting the counter between me and him just in case he planned on using the bag of salad items as a deadly weapon.
“Okay, but why—”
“Why?” He pointed at me with his bag-carrying hand, a tomato escaping and flying across the kitchen to hit the coffee machine. I winced. “Because for some fucked-up reason, I like you, and agents shouldn’t like their clients. Hell, I even feel affection for you.” He rubbed his chest with his free hand as if that was the most awful thing on earth.
“I like you too,” I murmured. “But—”
“You don’t need four more years of hiding!” he shouted at me, and then the piss and vinegar disappeared from his voice. “Can a queer actor carry an action franchise? No. Not right now. If you sign on the dotted line, they’ll screw you on the morality clause if you so much as step out of line. One innocent kiss caught on camera, and they’ll label you as wrong. You come out as gay, or bi, or pan, or whatever you identify as—”
“Gay.”
“That. You come out as gay, there is no way I can spin that to Byrnes-Rose and make it stick when you could cost them millions in box office receipts.”
I tilted my chin and got all defensive. “I happen to think that being openly queer or not, I can carry two more movies.” Wait. What was I saying? That was a lie—the movie world was a fickle and unforgiving mistress. Anyway, I didn’t want to do any more Rapid movies. I wanted to make a name for my acting alone, then I wanted to come out.
I wanted to spend time with someone and not worry that my secret would spill.
Cameron. It’s Cameron I want.
I deflated then, but the counter at my back held me up.
“Finn? Look at this.” I glanced at Atlas, who was holding up a phone with a photo on it. He seemed to have calmed down, and I edged closer to check it out. The photo was an innocent one of me and Cameron at the party—me in my Thor outfit, kids in a circle around me, and Cameron laughing. I remembered that moment—it was a perfect second where I’d told a silly joke to the kids about Cameron and his inability to do cartwheels, and the children giggled and Cameron elbowed me, then proceeded to show me that yes, I was right, he couldn’t do cartwheels.
The moment might have been innocent, but the photo was a different story. It was beautiful—Cameron grinning at me as I smiled back.
“It’s a nice photo,” I said, and I knew I sounded lame.
“It’s all over social media.”
“Okay, but—”
“Just be careful, because if I can see the way he’s looking at you, then others could. Head down, okay? Get through to full release on The Cup, and then after that, it’s up to you to make the life you want. I’ll make you the best most wanted gay actor in the entire world, but, please, for now, be careful.”
“Okay.”
The warning Atlas gave me spun in my thoughts as I made my way to the rink to meet Cameron for today’s lesson. I was getting better on a daily basis, working on the balance ball at home, and setting up a net in my basement. I’d even invested in some roller skates to scoot around my sprawling terraced gardens with their artful pathways. This huge area was about all I’d miss when I sold this place, and selling it was very much on the cards. My financial team was horrified when I suggested I sell, then said I should re-invest in property. I reminded them that I had invested in property, but it never became a home. Cameron’s place was a home—this was just a house. A big empty house. The real estate agent was a friend of Atlas, who told me I’d get eight million for my place, and it would go in less than a day, and had pushed a load more details my way about bigger houses for me to move to.