Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
And Brendan could only watch helplessly as Mrs. Tell pulled on Cillian’s arm, turning him away without the slightest hint of resistance, Cillian listless and silent.
“Come—that’s enough,” Mrs. Tell said, then turned a sharp look back. “I want all of your people done with whatever you need to film, and out of here by the end of the week.”
“Ma’am, I’ll be on the next ferry out in the morning,” Brendan replied numbly, the words coming out on automatic when all he could think was that Cillian was walking away, Cillian was leaving, Cillian was gone.
And this was well and truly over.
“…fuck. Cillian.” He took a quick step forward. “Cillian, I—”
Despite his mother’s grasp, Cillian stopped, looking back, something haunted and wary and questioning in his eyes.
Brendan parted his lips.
And nothing came out.
Nothing at all.
I love you, he wanted to say, but the wariness in those pale brown eyes stopped him, the realization that he had made that happen; he had broken Cillian’s naivete, his strange worldly innocence.
And after several moments of silence, Mrs. Tell clucked her tongue and marshaled Cillian away. Just a few steps, a turn around the corner, and then without even a look back…
Cillian was gone.
Leaving Brendan standing there, feeling like his heart was vanishing into these dark, cold stone halls, lost somewhere in icy and lightless passageways.
“You shithead,” Drake said softly at his elbow. “Why didn’t you just tell him you love him?”
Because I don’t deserve to, he thought.
But all he said aloud was,
“I don’t…” His throat closed, crushing in on itself. “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IT SHOULDN’T HURT THIS MUCH.
Cillian curled up in his bed inside these oppressive stone walls and tapped his phone screen, rewinding the video to the beginning and listening as, outside, the wind whipped its way into a frenzy, howling toward the first of many months of winter storms. He’d watched this video so many times he had it memorized by now. Brendan, almost thirty years younger yet still so handsome, so dignified, that white streak already starting at his temple in thin shining threads against the thick, glossy black of his hair.
And his face set in a frozen grimace, the poor lighting of the shoot and pixilation of the ancient video adding green edges to his skin that contrasted violently with his bright, painfully orange Hawaiian shirt.
He stood in front of a greenscreened mess made up of randomly cut-apart shapes of various noodle dishes, holding a large plastic tub overflowing with noodles in one hand and staring at the screen like he’d been completely poleaxed.
“Come down to Noo Noo Noodles,” Brendan said woodenly in the video. “We’ll show you something ‘noo—’” A pained grimace on the pun, and Cillian wondered how many takes there had been where it had been even worse, that long, disgusted sigh, that squaring of his shoulders to power on, that this was the final. “—about how you see noodles.”
Cillian laughed faintly, curling his fingers against his lips. God, that was bloody terrible…and he loved it. Seeing Brendan before he’d become the formidable powerhouse he was now, just as awkward as Cillian so often felt. It…it was somehow easier to see him like this. It felt more real, almost like he still had a connection to Brendan, could reach out and touch him instead of just the cold glass of his phone screen.
God, he had it bad, didn’t he?
It had been weeks. Including the week he’d spent hiding in his room until Newcomb was gone, taking the entire cast and crew with him. A week Cillian had spent agonizing over what to do; he’d been serious about going public with Newcomb’s attempt to assault him, and his threats—but he didn’t know how. How to go about it, what to say to prepare his agent, what to say at all.
Or if he had the courage, without Brendan at his side.
He…he wanted to believe that hadn’t been fake. That even if Brendan had been playing the perfect boyfriend so well he even fooled Cillian…the encouragement Brendan had offered so freely had been real. The support. The advice, everything about how he went out of his way to hold Cillian up when he stumbled, guide him when he faltered, give him someone to lean on when he couldn’t quite stand on his own.
How…how could all of that have been real…but that warmth, that closeness he’d felt with Brendan the entire time had been fake?
Easily, he realized. Exactly because of what he loved about Brendan: that for all his snarling and grumping and claims not to be a people person, he’d help anyone for any reason without even needing to know them, to care about them. Everything he’d done for Cillian, he’d just as easily have done for anyone else, simply because they needed and Brendan was capable of answering that need.