“Dam—”
“Can I bring you breakfast tomorrow?”
“I—”
I reached for the door handle, pausing to look back. “French toast?”
She froze, face freezing.
Shit. Not French toast. I needed to suggest something else. Omelets? Burritos? Fuck. Who gave a shit about breakfast? All I could think was that she’d had her big break, her career was just taking off, and I’d impregnated her—
A shake of her head, her frozen expression clearing away. “French toast sounds perfect. Ten?”
“Ten,” I agreed.
Then I pushed open the door and I got the fuck out of there before I said something that might ruin her night, her scene, her life . . .
Something else that was.
Ten
Eden
I’d slept a solid eight hours, but I was still exhausted when I crawled out of bed at a quarter of ten the next morning.
Shooting had run until well after midnight, but my driver had gotten me home immediately after we’d wrapped. Which meant I’d been tucked into bed by just after one. Not the latest I’d been up, not by a long shot, but paired with all the long days of filming, and probably more likely, dealing with the emotional exhaustion that was Grant, and I was more tired this morning than any other time I could remember in recent memory.
But breakfast was being delivered by the wonderful Damon, and I had two whole days off from shooting.
We’d pick up on Sunday, push through the final weeks of filming in New Mexico, and I’d be done with Grant.
Until promotion.
Joy of joys.
But that wasn’t scheduled until next year, and so I had a full three-hundred and sixty-five days to recover.
Sometimes I had to focus on the simple things in life.
Snorting, I turned on the shower and spent the next ten minutes washing off the fatigue—though not my hair. Not only did I not have forty-five minutes to dry it, but throughout filming, my locks had been washed, dried, curled, and teased too many times over—not to mention slathered with products and also food from the dinner-gone-wrong scene. They’d also had slime in them along with artificial paint.
Basically, my hair had been put through the wringer and it needed a break.
So I tied it up, dry shampooed it, and then tugged on leggings and a cozy sweater.
I’d give it some quality attention later. A conditioning mask would go a long way toward rehabbing my working girl hair.
No makeup, because clearly, my face had undergone as much on the makeup front as my hair had on the styling front.
Luckily, Damon wanted to be just friends.
I sniffed. So, he didn’t need to see me dolled up.
Of course, I was also deliberately ignoring the fact that I’d been the one who wanted to stay just friends, that he’d wanted to continue on that day, that he’d stuck around since then.
I’d just thought—
“What?” I said, glaring at myself in the mirror. “I’d say he got in under the armor, nearly have a heart attack from admitting it, and then he’d tug me into his arms and declare his unending love? And I would just be magically okay with that?”
First, I didn’t think I wanted that. Okay, that was a lie. A part of me did want it, but the rest of me couldn’t fathom a world where I just put the past behind, jumped on the HEA bandwagon, and galloped down the aisle.
Even if that person was Damon.
Because, second, I couldn’t let someone in. I physically didn’t think I could do it.
Although . . . and this was the third point, Damon was already in.
My heart skipped a beat at the thought, throat tightening, fear shivering down my spine.
“Stupid,” I muttered.
I met my gaze in the mirror again and saw the truth within them. I’d stood in front of a mirror like this many times before. Sometimes, like now, my green eyes filled with fear, sometimes they were ringed in black eyes, sometimes they were judging or assessing as I did my makeup or prepared to do a photoshoot or walk the runway. But many more times I stood like this, emerald depths empty, my emotions shoved down and locked away.
Not anymore.
The edge of the Band-Aid had been peeled up slowly, millimeter by agonizing millimeter. First, by the photoshoot six years ago followed by the weekly calls, then by Artie and Pierce and filming Carrot, then Daphne and her sweet, newborn innocence . . . and then Damon in my bed, Damon at my house, Damon in my trailer.
Damon making me feel.
Damon—
Enough.
I yanked open the drawer on my vanity, knowing that even if I wasn’t going to wear a bunch of makeup for him, that I’d still need moisturizer. The dry air in California demanded it. Except . . . the bottle wasn’t on my counter. My eyes searched the drawer’s contents, then the countertop. I didn’t appear to have slung it either place while washing my face half-asleep the night before.
“Damn,” I muttered, bending to pull open the cabinets. Not there. Not there. Not—
I spotted it on my dresser in the closet.
Right next to the hamper.
Thank God it hadn’t made it inside. That would have been a mess, not to mention a waste of a very expensive moisturizer if it had taken a ride through the washer-dryer.
Delirious. Clearly, I’d been delirious last night.
Glancing at my phone, I saw it was only a few minutes before Damon was due to arrive. I hurried to the closet, snagged the bottle, and whipped back around toward the bathroom—
“Ouch!”
I’d slammed my elbow into the shelves that were in one corner, knocking a small box off the top, where I’d stashed it.
Stashed it out of sight.
Because it was that box.
The small cardboard shoebox hit the carpet, its lid falling off, contents spewing everywhere—a bit of lace, a narrow gold band, a picture of me and Tim, my eyes bright and excited, Tim’s already lined with rage that would become physical pain for me. A dried rose and another picture, this one a smaller black and white image that had been beyond precious.
I stared at the picture and . . . the pieces in my mind shifted and realigned.
I’d already lost everything.
That little rectangle had once been critically important to me . . . and I’d lost it.
The doorbell rang.
Damon was here.
My lungs froze, breath locked inside. Then a sob escaped.
“F-fuck,” I stuttered. I didn’t want to lose him, too. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be alone.
No.
I didn’t want to be alone if that meant I wouldn’t have Damon, if I just let the connection I had with him fade away. For him to find a future with someone else while I was left behind, still stuck in the same pattern I was now, living a half-life, wanting more but too scared to go for it.
Because Damon was different.
He’d always been soft where Tim had been sharp and brutal. He was supportive and kind, a thoughtful friend, a lover who was more focused on my pleasure than his own.
All that was without me giving him anything in return.
Patience when I’d only offered the opposite.
Damon wasn’t Tim, and I wasn’t the same woman with him as I’d been with Tim. I was more and stronger and healthier and, dammit, I deserved to find my only little slice of a happy future.