Destined for the Star (Starstruck) (21 page)

”Did you answer?” she asked.

”Sasha did,” the boys said in unison.

”Thanks guys, thanks a lot,” Sasha murmured sarcastically.

Olivia turned to her.

”Why did you do that?” she demanded.

”I answered because I thought he should know what he did to you. And to tell him that if he ever shows his face here again, I’ll break his balls myself,” she said defiantly.

”That’s not up to you, Sasha!” Olivia shouted angrily.

Sasha stared at her for a moment.

”Oh no, honey, no you don’t. You are NOT going back to him after this! What’s wrong with you, girl?”

”Shut the fuck up, Sasha,” Olivia was too upset to sugarcoat anything at this point. ”Whether or not I’m going back to him, as you put it, is none of your goddamn business.”
 

Sasha looked set to argue, but Olivia held up her hand to stop her.

”But just so you know,” she drew deep breaths to try and calm herself down, ”I’m never going near him again. But that’s up to me to tell him. You had no right to break up with him for me!”

Sasha looked repentant.

”You’re right, I let my emotions get the better of me. I had no right to take his call like that. Please, forgive me?” she pleaded while making puppy eyes at Olivia. ”I’m sorry, I really am,” she added, when Olivia didn’t reply.

Olivia had never been able to resist Sasha’s puppy eyes.

”I forgive you,” she grudgingly gave in. ”But stay the hell out of my business from now on!” she threatened.

”I promise I’ll try,” Sasha smiled, incorrigible. ”Oh, and don’t come in for work tomorrow. I already arranged that with Rashid.”

Olivia was about to protest when she thought better of it. She would give herself a day in bed to wallow in grief and then she would not think of him again. If at all possible.
 

”Okay. I’m going to bed,” she said instead.
 

Sasha left and the boys hurried off to their rooms after they had made sure she really wanted to be alone. When she walked into her room she saw on the computer that Nate had tried to reach her via Skype several more times.
 

She felt nauseous again. She couldn’t deal with this yet. She turned off the computer and crawled into bed, without changing into her pajamas.
 

But, although she was mentally and emotionally exhausted, sleep refused to find her. She kept seeing the images of Nate and Julia together from the film and from the press conference and from the newspaper, all jumbled together in a never-ending loop.

Suddenly she wanted so badly to hear his voice, just one more time, even though she knew that it would only hurt her more if she did. She turned on her cellphone. There were five new messages on her voicemail. She took a deep breath and played them back.
 

”Olivia, where are you, love?” she heard Nate’s tender voice. ”I’m done for the day, finally,” he went on. ”I’m on my way back to the hotel now, and I’ll Skype you as soon as I get back to my room, all right?” He lowered his voice a little, she could hear people talking quietly in the background. ”I love you, Olivia. Talk to you in just a little bit.” Then he hung up. She was crying again, curled up into a fetal position, but she kept listening to his messages, one after the other.

”Olivia, I’m in my room now, turning on the computer as I speak. It’s 9:15, are you there, baby? Please call me as soon as you hear this, unless you’re already on the computer, in which case I’ll see you in a minute.” He hung up.

The next message had come in at 21:20. It was plain Sasha had gotten to him by then. ”Olivia, no,” he groaned, panic in his voice. ”I didn’t mean for you to find out like this, but in any case it’s not true. I am not in love with Julia, I love only you. Please, believe me, love. What Sasha thinks, it’s not true. Please, pick up, baby, please, please, pick up,” he pleaded. ”Please, Olivia, call me when you hear this, or just send me a text and I’ll call you right back. I can’t stand you shutting me out like this. I’m going crazy here, not knowing what you’re thinking and feeling. Please, let me explain myself, love. Please…”

She grabbed the teddybear he had sent what seemed like a lifetime ago and buried her face in his t-shirt. Nate’s smell was just a faint memory by now, but it still made her groan in agony. In that moment she didn’t care about anything other than her immense need for Nate. She really didn’t know if she could face a future without him in it.

The fourth message had been recorded at ten. She had been walking to the subway station then, oblivious to everything but the images in her mind of Nate falling in love with Julia on the screen. Nate sounded miserable. She would have given anything to get to comfort him right then, but he wasn’t hers to comfort anymore. He belonged to Julia. He always had.

”Olivia, my love, I’m begging you to let me explain myself. There are a million stories about me and Julia in the press but they’re not true. Not the way you think, at least. Please, baby, call me, text me, email me, just anything so I can know you’re okay. Please, Olivia, I love you more than I can say. I will always love you, I have always loved you. I loved the promise of you before I even met you, I just didn’t know it then. Please, baby, please call me back.”

She cried so hard she couldn’t breathe. She wanted so badly to believe him, but she had seen him with Julia, and it was too late to believe he loved her. Or that he ever had. He had lied to her and he was so obviously Julia’s. She rocked back and forth with the bear hugged tightly to her, trying to soothe herself.

The last message had come at eleven, as she was crawling into bed. It was short. ”Please, Olivia, please don’t do this to me. I’m dying here,” his voice broke, ”please just call me. One call, that’s all I ask, just so I can hear your voice. Please, baby, please…” His voice broke again and he hung up.

”Oh, God,” she wailed. She couldn’t stand hurting him like this. Not even after the way he’d hurt her. But she didn’t dare call him either. If she heard his voice now, she would probably break down completely and beg him to keep her as a mistress on the side or just anything. And she could never do that to another woman, nor to herself.

She reached for her phone and started typing a message for him. The tears kept falling, obscuring her view. ”You’re not my Nate anymore. Please, just let me go. Olivia.”

Then she hit send before she could chicken out. She sat frozen, crying and staring at the display. His reply came back almost immediately. ”No, love, don’t say that! Nothing has changed! You’re still my only love and I’m still your Nate. I will always be your Nate, even if you never forgive me for this. I would do anything for you, but don’t ask me to give you up. I can’t. Please, Olivia, I love you, I love you, let me explain.”

”There’s nothing to explain. You’re not my Nate, you never were, you belong with her. Please, please let me go, Nate. I’m turning off the phone now. Please leave me alone. O.”

She didn’t wait for his reply this time, she just pressed send and turned the phone off as soon as she saw that the message had been delivered.

Chapter 16

Nate was sitting on the edge of the bed, in his hotel suite in Paris, wishing he could somehow wake up next to Olivia and realize this was just a bad dream. He understood completely what this must have done to her, to discover that he wasn’t who she thought he was, when she had so courageously opened herself to him, in a way she had never done with anyone before, trusting in him completely and trusting in his love for her. He groaned in agony as he thought of what she must be going through, believing everything they’d shared in the glorious past month to be nothing but lies. She must be hurting so badly right now. It felt like the twist of a knife to his gut to be so far away from her, and not getting to comfort her. But even if he had been in Stockholm, she probably wouldn’t have let him close enough to comfort her right now anyway. She may never forgive him for this and there was a real possibility that she had shut him out forever now. He knew her well enough by now to understand that her trust was hard to earn and once lost may not ever be regained.
 

He buried his face in Olivia’s t-shirt, inhaling deeply, letting her scent give him hope.

”I refuse to give you up, Olivia,” he vowed out loud, ”you are mine now and forever. You belong to me and I belong to you.”
 

As he said it, he felt the perfect truth of it resonate in his entire being. Nothing mattered more than the woman whose love he had been so fortunate as to win once. He would win her back somehow. He would earn her trust back, he refused to let this ruin the beautiful bond they had forged. There was no way all that glorious love she had for him could have just disappeared. He didn’t believe it for a second. She was obviously hurting, and hurting badly right now, but he knew in his heart she still loved him. He had messed up by keeping the truth from her. Of course she was hurting - feeling betrayed by him and confused, no doubt, by all the gossip out there about him. He had created this nightmare by not trusting enough in her love to tell her the whole truth before he left again. Therefore, when Sasha told her what she had found out, it must have been such a shock to her that she believed the stories about him and Julia so much more easily. He didn’t blame her one bit, after all neither he nor Julia had ever refuted the rumors surrounding them. They had never confirmed any of them either, but it hadn’t mattered much. Apparently, their on-screen romance was so believable that everyone just assumed they were together in real life as well.
 

Nate had dreamt of being in the movies since he was nine years old and his brothers and their friends had sneaked him into the drive-in theatre one night to watch a screening of ’Where eagles dare’. He’d watched movies before, of course, but that one hit him with such force it knocked his whole being off kilter. He couldn’t imagine anything he wanted to do more than be a movie actor, after that night. He wanted to do what Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood did in the movie; pretend to be some cool hero and fight the bad guys and let people watch him do it on the big screen. He was mesmerized by the idea of making movies and he had worked so hard to make his dreams come true.
 

As soon as he graduated high school, he’d packed his bags and driven to California in his beat-up old pick-up truck. It had been a slim few years in the beginning. He’d scraped by somehow, doing odd jobs here and there; bussing tables, parking cars and even embarrassing things like dressing up in silly costumes and handing out fliers for different fast food restaurants. He’d gone to what felt like a million auditions, hearing so many ”no thank you” that after a while it almost didn’t hurt so much. But just almost. He’d learnt valuable lessons about the industry, hitting a few mines in the process, and developed a thicker hide to protect himself from the cynicism of the business. And still he had kept at it, never losing sight of the dream of one day being the one up there on that mystical silver screen, bringing different characters to life. Eventually his persistence, along with his good looks and natural charisma, had gotten him a few commercials and bit parts in various daytime-soaps and slowly he’d built a resumé and landed himself an agent.
 

Still, at twenty-two he had yet had to land anything substantial. The likelihood of him ever making it in Hollywood seemed slim to none. He’d been on the verge of throwing in the towel and head back to Oklahoma to rethink his career choices, when he’d gotten a call to audition for a part in a romantic drama. He told himself it would be the last audition he went to before quitting the business. The part he auditioned for was the male lead in the ’Time Traveler’s Tale’. Based on a bestselling series of novels, it was a part coveted by most every young actor in Hollywood but by some miracle he had been offered the part. Apparently, the chemistry between him and Julia translated so well onto film that the studio had hired him virtually on the spot. He’d signed a contract for all five films, making him suddenly financially independent.
 

The filming of the first part of the series was an incredibly magical time for him. Finally his dreams were coming true. He loved being part of a group of people as passionate about making movies as he was himself. He loved finally getting to sink his teeth into a main character, and getting to explore that character for the foreseeable future, after having languished for so long in the wasteland of bit parts with only one or two small scenes, many of which ended up on the cutting-room floor in the end anyway.
 

When the first Time-traveler movie was released and absolute chaos ensued, he felt as if he’d stepped on a runaway train. All he could do was try to hold on to his sanity and sense of self in the bizarre intensity of adoring fans who screamed and fainted at the sight of him, and the inane tabloid stories about his personal life. The loss of his privacy and personal freedom - no longer being able to move around without causing a commotion or being hounded by a dozen obnoxious paparazzi sticking cameras in his face - was by far the most difficult thing to come to terms with.
 

In the midst of all the craziness and the pressure from everyone around him vying for a piece of him in one way or another, he’d clung to his family and old friends who knew and loved him for who he was, not for what he happened to do for a living. It had kept him sane, and kept him grounded. His big brothers would never have let him get away with a swelled head even if he had been inclined towards turning into a massive Hollywood ego, which he wasn’t.
 

Despite the gilded cage his fame often felt like, he felt immensely grateful for his good fortune. The colossal success of the Time-traveler-series meant he was suddenly offered parts he could only dream of before. In between his contractual obligations for the Time-traveler franchise, he’d squeezed in interesting and challenging parts in smaller films - aiming to hone his craft and expand his range as an actor. Slowly the critics seemed to be warming to him. He had managed to prove, by taking roles diametrically opposed to the dreamy romantic hero he played in the Time-traveler, that he could bring a different audience, including men, to the theaters, outside of the Time-traveler-fans. He had films lined up back to back for the next two years, working for some of the best directors in Hollywood but also some of the most interesting young auteurs in the world. His future looked very bright indeed.