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)
Newcomb stared at him frigidly. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Lau?”
Brendan fixed him with a long look.
One day.
One day soon.
“You’re not helping with anything at all,” he said softly.
Fingers lightly touched his wrist. He looked down; Cillian watched him sidelong, his eyes hard with anger, snapping and bright, but he subtly shook his head, fingers curling against Brendan’s wrist.
Please don’t.
Brendan breathed in deep, reined himself in.
Cillian’s choice.
Always Cillian’s choice.
Brendan could keep his anger under control.
So he flashed Newcomb another look and said, “We don’t have time to fit in another shoot today. Save it for tomorrow. Let’s call it a day.”
Newcomb bared his teeth. Brendan refused to respond; he blanked on Newcomb when he could, ignoring him as unimportant, nonexistent, relevant only when taking stage direction. He might hold himself in check for Cillian.
But he wouldn’t waste his time on animal threat displays with this asshole, either.
Finally Newcomb looked away and grudgingly signaled a halt. Brendan had been right—and if Newcomb had argued, he’d just look like the weak, posturing fuck he was in front of the crew. At Brendan’s side, Cillian slumped, head bowing.
“Thank you,” he murmured from the corner of his mouth, before a pallid smile flitted across his red-stained lips. “Good thing it’s the weekend, eh?”
“…yeah,” Brendan said—but his mind was already leaps and bounds away as he latched on to an idea. Maybe something that might help—either way, it couldn’t hurt. “If you’re free…want to take a drive up the coast with me?”
l
BRENDAN TOOK CILLIAN BY SURPRISE more and more.
When he’d offered to drive up the coast together, Cillian had jumped at it in a heartbeat—anything to get away from Los Angeles. Anything to get away from the foul stench of Newcomb that always seemed to hover on the air. The man wouldn’t leave him alone, criticizing his every breath, and at this point just the sound of his own name could make Cillian flinch and instantly tense into fight or flight mode.
Anything to let him forget that for a weekend, after almost two months of nonstop harassment with his only comforts being Sophie’s friendship…and Brendan’s kiss.
But the last thing he’d expected was for Brendan to lead him to the tenant parking garage beneath Brendan’s building…and to the oldest, ugliest, ruggedized Jeep 4x4 Cillian had ever seen, maybe once black but now a dull gray, its plastic and canvas top rolled back to leave its frame exposed.
“No way,” Cillian said, eyeing the thing with its enormous tires, laughing. “I’d…this…”
“What?” Brendan vaulted over the driver’s side door without even opening it, smoothly sliding his body behind the wheel. “It’s a good car. These things will outlast human civilization. And the photographers somehow never notice me in this thing.”
“…it doesn’t fit your image.”
“Which image?” Brendan asked. “The Prince of Romance…or me?”
“…that’s…fair.” Cillian ran his hand along the passenger’s side door. “So where is Brendan Lau, Everyman taking me this weekend?”
“You’ll find out when you wake up,” Brendan said, and smirked. “Put your bag in the back and get in. It’s a long drive until morning.”
“Ah,” Cillian said dryly. “In other words, I’m about to get swept up in Hurricane Lau again, so no point in even asking.”
“You’re learning,” Brendan said, waiting only for Cillian to settle in to start the Jeep and shift into gear, the engine rumbling deep and steady. “But don’t ever call me that again.”
Cillian only settled himself in and curled up against the passenger’s side door with a smirk.
But before Brendan pulled out, he twisted to rummage into the Jeep’s back storage area—then came up with a patterned woven blanket and shook it out, before tucking it around Cillian’s shoulders.
“Get some rest,” he said softly. “You seem like you could use it.”
“…yeah.”
Understatement of the year.
If he didn’t lie awake at night dreading another day with Newcomb…
He’d lie there thinking too hard about the quiet of Brendan’s bed, the city lights playing over the ceiling, the rock-hard forearm curled across his chest and the possessive hand clasped against his shoulder, holding him there throughout the night until morning.
Every night like that, for weeks—while Cillian asked himself again and again what it meant, when he already knew the answer.
Nothing.
Cillian wrapped himself tighter in the blanket and willed himself to sleep.
But sleep was still a long time coming, even as Brendan navigated the Jeep through the sunset streets and into twilight highway, and then the great dark stretch of the interstate at night.
Cillian hadn’t seen the stars since he’d been home, hidden away from view behind Los Angeles’ persistent layer of smog, the sky a muddy thing without a single bright light showing through.
But as they left the city behind, the sky cleared and all was darkness, where the light shined at its brightest.
Let that be me, he thought, and turned his face up to the sky, to the wind. Let me shine brighter when everything is dark.