Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
She looked like hell, and I still ached at the sight of her. I backed her into the living room. She sat on the arm of the sofa, back straight as a poker. I leaned against the wall, unable to take my eyes off her.
“What happened?” I asked quietly, brushing my hand across my own forehead so she knew specifically what I was asking about.
Her own hand rose, flinched as she brushed the bandage. “Car accident.”
“God, Laurier–” I cut myself off. “Or should I say James.”
Her face went slack for a moment, then her face tightened. Red dots appeared in her cheeks. “Maybe you shouldn’t say anything at all,” she snapped. “Why are you even here?”
Anger was starting to chase out some of the disbelief that had numbed my brain. Where the hell did she get off being mad at me? She had lied to me, spied on me, fucked me, and fucked me over.
“I’m here to make sure you’re alive,” I snapped back. “Because whether you’re a duplicitous, lying traitor or not, I still fucking cared about you.”
She didn’t miss the past tense, and I could tell it stabbed through her tough girl armor. Weakened her for just a moment, but not for long. She recrossed her arms and lifted her chin, her eyes blazing. “Cared about me?” she repeated with a sneer. “That’s rich.”
“Hell yes I cared about you.” I had to ball my hands into fists to keep from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. Probably not the best move for someone who had just had a head injury. “I fucking–”
I almost said it. I almost told her I loved her, but I knew those words would go from my lips to Fletcher’s ears. And I’d sooner submit to thumb screws. I’d let someone yank my fingernails off with pliers before I let Fletcher know that his plan had worked better than he ever could have imagined. He might not have won the rights to the book off me, but he’d shredded my fucking heart.
He was still shredding it. Willow’s hateful stare was rubbing salt in the open, puss-filled wound.
“You fucking used me, and you know it,” she finished my sentence for me. “So don’t act like you’re the victim here, Lewis.”
She hadn’t called me by my last name in months. Maybe she’d been trying to forget it so that it was easier to act like she felt something for me. Her invocation of it now was nails in the coffin. She was reminding me once and for all that I was a Lewis, and she was a James, and there was no love lost between a Lewis and a James.
No matter what I might have thought.
Suddenly, I had to get out of there. I couldn’t look at her another damn second without killing her or kissing her, and both would be a disaster. “I’ll send someone over with Camper,” I said tightly. “Assuming that’s his real name.”
She tossed her hair back–winced from the motion–and didn’t say anything.
I shook my head, unable to believe that just twenty-four hours ago, I’d thought I loved her. I hadn’t even known her. The woman I thought I’d fallen in love with could never be this cold. But then, that woman didn’t exist.
Willow James did.
I went through the next couple of weeks on autopilot. We got the rights to All the Dying Light. Dana wanted to throw a party, but my heart wasn’t in it. She and Shelly dragged me out anyway. My friends even showed up, and everyone tried to act like everything was normal. Great, even. Lewis Productions was accelerating pre-production on All the Dying Light. Miller would wrap up his project with Michio and go straight into Callum’s. We were finalizing a deal with the most in-demand screenwriter in town and already talking to leads. It was going to be great.
But I still felt like shit.
I never went by Miller’s set anymore, but I knew Willow was still working with him. I’d heard through my sources that she’d gone in, told him she’d falsified her resume, and tried to quit. It didn’t surprise me that she tried to quit, but it did surprise me that she came clean. Why bother? Her job there was done. And it didn’t surprise me that Miller didn’t want her to quit even after she told him she’d lied–Miller was a fan of doing whatever needed to be done to get where you wanted to be–but it surprised the hell out of me that she had let him talk her into staying.
Again–why bother?
The question nagged at me. Why had she bothered with any of it? She could have spied for Fletcher without sleeping with me. She’d been a virgin for Christ’s sake. And then there was the question underneath the question–if she was going to the trouble of sleeping with me, why hadn’t they used it against me? It wouldn’t have made a big splash, but it might have created enough ripples to reach Callum. He was looking for a reason to think all of Hollywood was scum. Spin it the right way, rig up the right lighting, and I could look like Weinstein 2.0.