HDU #2: Dirt (17 page)

“This publicity
might actually draw the mainstream audience and help us at the box office since
— ”

“I don’t give
two shits about the box office,” he interrupted her, his stoic face
contradicting his gruff tone.
 
“I
care about Oscar.
 
The Academy.
 
And not to shock anyone, but the
Academy cares about politics and its own reputation, which includes what movies
and which actors they give their precious awards out to.
 
Comprende
?”

As Terrence’s
assistant nodded, another knock come on the door.
 
Without waiting for a “come in” the door swung open to
reveal a purse-lipped woman in a fitted pantsuit and an ultra-tight,
white-blonde ponytail.
 
Amanda
didn’t recognize her but judging from his sigh, Liam seemed to.

“And look who’s
finally arrived to have a nice little chat about how the hell to fix all this.
 
Your lovely publicist.
 
I love dealing with my actors’
publicists,” Terrence said to Liam, the dead look in his eye conveying his
sarcasm.
 
“Why don’t you two stay
in here.
 
Jennifer and I will step
out and talk to Perrin.”

Before Liam
could protest, Terrence and his assistant exited, slamming the office door
behind them.
 
Alone in the corner
office with Liam, Amanda’s shoulders slumped with the exhaustion it had taken
to finally find the voice to speak.

“Liam.
 
I am so sorry that I’m putting you
through — ”

“No more
apologizing,” he interrupted her.
 
“It’s done, Amanda.
 
You
weren’t the only one who was careless here.”

“It was my inbox
the information was in.”

Liam flashed her
something of a smirk, which surprised her considering the circumstances.
 
“In case you didn’t realize, I have an
inbox too, Amanda.
 
I never deleted
anything from mine either, it just happened to be yours that was hacked.
 
We just… forgot about being
professional by the time you got here,” he said as he sat down one on of the
chairs in front of Terrence’s desk, his broad shoulders expanding under his
white T-shirt as he leaned forward on his knees.
 
“Kind of forgot it was a job,” he said.
 
“At least I did.”

Her lips stayed
pursed despite her desire to actually smile.
 
“Call me crazy but that kind of feels like a compliment.”

“I’d say it
qualifies.”

Though it didn’t
quite manifest on her anxious face, Amanda could feel a grin.
 
She squinted, tilting her head as she
recalled Liam’s words from a few minutes ago.
 
Her attempt to subdue her coy question failed.
 
“What exactly did you mean before?” she
blurted, unable to help herself.
 
“About how you only knew brotherly love before me?”

Liam’s lips
twisted up, his forehead furrowing as he lifted his gaze to flash her a
smirk.
 
“I would think that’s
pretty easy to interpret.”

Amanda felt the
smile actually touch her lips at his reluctance to clarify.
 
“Sorry.
 
I have to have it spelled out explicitly.”

His look was one
of mock concern.
 
“Your basic comprehension
skills need work.”

“Don’t be an
asshole.
 
Just say it.”

Liam bit his lip
back.
 
He gazed at Amanda for a
moment, getting her hopes up before breaking into a laugh.
 
“Shit, I almost forgot.
 
I never gave you your birthday
gift.”
 
Amanda shook her head,
rolling her eyes at his change of subject.
 
His smile was full of satisfaction as he studied her
annoyance, bringing her hand out before retrieving a tiny manila envelope from
his pocket.
 
“Happy birthday,” he
said, slapping it into her open palm.

“So
romantic.
 
Thanks.”
 
She kept her deliberately dull eyes on
him as she tore the top off the little three-inch paper sleeve.
 
Upon turning it over onto her palm,
Amanda stared at the small, shiny object.
 
Feeling Liam’s gaze fixed on her, she tried to contain her massive,
dorky smile but her quivering lips didn’t stand a chance.
 
“To… your apartment?” she asked slowly,
quietly while holding up the little silver key.
 
Liam shook his head.
 
The moment he did, Amanda felt herself blush hard, immediately mortified
by her presumptuousness.
 
Christ, Amanda, you’ve barely been dating
for real.
 
He’s not going to ask
you to move in just like that.

“No.
 
Not my apartment.”

“Right.
 
Sorry.”
 
Amanda nodded as she bit her lips back sheepishly.
 
“So… what is this thing for?”

“The house on
Verbena.”

Amanda felt her mouth
part.

“Ours.
 
Not Logan’s.”

Ours
.
 
She had never thought of herself as someone sentimental but
the word instantly rendered her knees useless.
 
Taking the seat across from Liam, her wide-eyed look asked the
questions for her once again speechless tongue.

“You were
right.
 
We can’t help loving this
stupid city even though it’s so goddamned crazy here all the time.
 
Which is why we need the house.
 
I saw how relaxed you were when we were
there, how peaceful you looked.
 
Being at that place for even a few days did us both a lot of good and I…
didn’t want it to be our last time.”
 
Liam shrugged.
 
“So, now you
can go whenever you need to get away.
 
Maybe as a writing retreat.
 
Or just a weekend of quiet.
 
Which I’m assuming you’ll need after all of this bullshit.”

Amanda chewed
the corner of her lip, her eyes still wide with disbelief as she peered up at
him.
 
“Would you come too?”

“Of course,” he
grinned.
 
“Half that house is
mine.”

Amanda
laughed.
 
Staring back down at the
gleaming key, she took in as deep a breath as she could.
 
“This is… incredible.
 
I don’t even know what to say,” she
murmured, running her fingertip along the smooth, cold metal.
 
“I love this,” she exhaled, mentally
kicking herself the second she did.
 
Asshole, she scolded herself.
 
Chickened out on the last word
.
 
She peered up at Liam, wondering if
he’d noticed.
 
His expression was
unreadable.

“Good.”
 
He gave a little smile as he took her
hand and brought it to his mouth, brushing a soft kiss onto the back of her
hand.
 
“Hopefully we can go back in
a few months when Logan is home.”

Amanda nodded,
chewing her lip.
 
“Yeah,” she
murmured just as the door to Terrence’s office opened again.
 
Filing in were Terrence, his assistant
and Liam’s extremely tense-looking publicist.

“Alright.”
 
Liam rose to his feet again, his frame
towering over eveyone else’s by at least five inches.
 
“Anyone care to fill me in on the discussion?”

“
Love
to,” Terrence boomed with
exaggerated enthusiasm, his energy seemingly renewed.
 
“Well, see.
 
Perrin and I agreed on a simple plan that’s just about the only solution
we could think of for this situation.
 
And when you agree to it, Liam, things’ll go back to as normal as
possible for production and perhaps I won’t immediately nix the prospect of
ever working with you again since I do still want you to star in
The Legends
,” he laughed.
 
“Let’s be honest, I didn’t invest all
that training in you for just one movie, really.
 
You’re Superman.
 
You’re still my top choice to star.”

Amanda glanced
over at Liam, who nodded with a look as eager as she’d ever seen on him.
 
His Adam’s apple rose and fell at the
mere mention of the upcoming film.

“
So
,” Terrence continued, clapping his
hands together.
 
“What I have is
one small thing that I need you to do so we can continue the production of
A Soldier
with zero distraction and no
further headlines about bullshit.
 
And once we’re done with this film, we can concentrate on getting you
ready for
The Legends
.
 
Sound good?”

Liam
nodded.
 
“Sounds good.
 
Just name what I need to do, I’ll do
it.”

Terrence
smiled.
 
“Alright.
 
And I’ll actually need you too, Amanda,
if you’re willing.”

“Of course,”
Amanda managed with her best attempt at a gracious smile.
 
Terrence beamed.

“’Perfect.
 
Cause this little stunt actually
requires the both of you,” he said, a placid smile on his thin lips.
 
“What I need is for you two to break
up.”

Chapter 9

The terms were listed as the
following:

1
. Publicize breakup by tomorrow, June 10th before noon (Perrin will draft
statement)

2
. Be sure to convincingly portray a split couple to the public.
 
Avoid attending the same public
events.
 
If simultaneous attendance
cannot be helped, ensure that there are no run-ins or photographs of any kind
together.

3
. Do not speak to interviewers about the breakup.
 
“No comment” will be the answer for any
questions regarding one another.

4
. Limit contact to phone calls or text messages if you must.
 
No in-person contact after tomorrow,
12PM EST.

5
. Absolutely no visiting each other’s apartments or being near the
general vicinity.
 
Amanda will stay
off Mercer Street.
 
Liam will not
go east of Avenue A.

6
. Maintain image of breakup until after February 24th Academy Awards.
 
Breakup must remain past production of
The Legends unless A Soldier wins an award in any of the following categories: Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role

7
. Liam will avoid any sort of negative press/troublesome behavior (i.e
fighting, public drunkenness) that may be interpreted as related to the
breakup.

8
. If any of the above terms are broken, the contract between Liam Brody
and Rambis Films for The Legends will be nullified.

By the time
she’d chewed her pinky nail down to as far as it would go, Amanda had had
enough of the silence in the Mercedes.

“I wasn’t about
to be the reason you sacrificed everything.”

She turned to
him.
 
The decision she’d made for
them had her heart weighing down her entire chest.
 
It felt as if it would force her to double over at some
point.
 
But she stood by it
nonetheless.

“I thought you
would understand that considering the way you feel about everything Logan did
for you.”

Liam remained
silent as the car turned onto Sixth Avenue, casually running his hand over his
buzzed head, staring out the window as if no one was talking to him at all.

She had said
“yes” perhaps too quickly.
 
Perhaps
she should’ve pretended to think about the proposition for more than a half
second after Terrence’s proposal.

“What I need is for you two to break up.”

Liam’s first
reaction had been to laugh but when a solid moment passed without Terrence so
much as cracking a smile, his reply had been simple.
 
“No.”
 
Even
after Terrence presented the official contract for
The Legends
, he had been steadfast.

But Amanda had
already been swayed.

Despite Liam’s
claim of equal responsibility, she was far too aware of the fact that her inbox
had been the one hacked because she had gone ahead and befriended Casey Mulreed
despite the multiple warnings.
 
It
was her one mistake as an industry rookie but a massive one and she wasn’t
about to let it ruin another career nearly ten years in the making.
 
Certainly not one of someone whom she
cared about so deeply.

“It’s only for
the next year,” Terrence had said with nonchalance, as if a year were really
nothing at all.
 
“Less,
actually.
 
Eight months, assuming
we win an Oscar.
 
I just need the
world to forget the Liamanda bullshit, that it ever existed.
 
I mean you can save yourselves for each
other all you want.
 
Pretend you’re
in a long distance relationship or something.
 
I just need you to stay away from each other till after
award season.
 
But hey, maybe by Fall,
we’ll find a way for you guys to meet in secret.
 
Or
depending on
the public reception, we can afford to let you two be ‘friends,’” he had said,
lifting his eyebrows as if to commend himself for his generosity.
 
“But for now, for these first few
months, I need the agreement to be strict.
 
After noon tomorrow, you two are separated.
 
No seeing each other.
 
At all.”

Without
consulting Liam, Amanda had signed the contract that Terrence drafted.
 
She had simply assumed he’d be on the
same page as her.
 
It was his
career on the line.
 
But upon
setting the pen down, Amanda had looked up to see Liam’s brows completely knit
as he stared at her.

It had taken
much more time but eventually, his signature wound up below hers.
 
And from the moment they left
Terrence’s office, Liam was silent.

By the time the
Mercedes pulled in front of his Mercer Street apartment, he still had yet to
speak a word.
 
Amanda could only
watch and follow as he climbed silently out of the car, barely holding the door
open for her when he entered his building.
 
She scowled but still trailed him closely, needing
desperately to hear at least one word out of him.
 
Once again, she wondered if he would tell her that he never
wanted to see her again.
 
Contract
or not, that they were broken up, actually separated.

But the silence
continued as they rode up the elevator.
 
Exasperated, Amanda leaned against the cold metal wall, simply glaring
at Liam and daring him to continue ignoring her in such a confined space.
 
He did.

“Liam, come on,”
Amanda pleaded once they were in his loft.
 
She dropped her purse to the floor, following him as he made
his way into the industrial kitchen and opened his fridge to retrieve a
beer.
 
“Can you just say
some
thing so I know even a little of
where your head is at?” She groaned when he gave her only the briefest glance
before opening his beer against the glass top counter, unflinching despite the
sound and the scratch that the bottle top left on the table.
 

“I don’t know
how you’re interpreting what I did but I signed Terrence’s contract because I
don’t want to stand in the way of what you’ve been working on for ten years,”
Amanda said, her face hot.
 
She
waited for him to respond.
 
Again,
nothing.
 
She closed her eyes to
stay coolheaded, speaking through her teeth.
 
“This is the movie and the moment your entire career has been
building up to.
 
I don’t want to be
the person who screws all that up.
 
Not more than I already have, at least.”

Once she opened
her eyes again, Liam was heading for the stairs.
 
Are you kidding me?

“
Liam
.”
 
Her cheeks burned with rage.
 
“All I wanted was to
help
you.
 
Jesus, you just bought two
multimillion-dollar houses and you want to keep providing for Logan and Heidi
and the kids, don’t you? How else are you going to do that if you don’t try to
fix this situation? What if no one wants you after this?” She gritted her teeth
as he continued on, reaching to grab him but only getting a handful of his
T-shirt to hold him in place.
 
“Listen to me.
 
I did what I
thought was the best for you.
 
It
guarantees you not only a job after
Soldier
but an incredible one, one that any other actor would kill for.
 
It’s exactly what you’ve always wanted
and I wouldn’t have signed the contract if it wasn’t.
 
It’s not like I had fun doing it, like it was in any way
easy so please stop making it harder and just
talk
to me.”

She could hear
the last bits of desperation in her voice turning into fury as he continued
looking blankly into the sitting room, lazily swigging his beer.
 
Her fingers tightened into a fist
around the cotton of his T-shirt.

“Just
say
something Liam, fucking
anything.
 
Unless what you really
want is for me to leave.”

A ripple of
chills shot up her arm when he suddenly wrapped his hand around hers, removing
it from his shirt with irritation.
 
His jaw was tight when he finally spoke.

“I love you.”

Amanda blinked,
letting go of him.
 
Her narrowed
eyes fluttered into doe-like wideness though her body still had yet to catch on
and relax.
 
Despite a swelling
heart, leftover heat continued to course angrily through her veins, their
reaction to Liam’s sentiment still completely delayed.
 
Amanda stared at him, at the tense look
she had never anticipated seeing paired with those words.
 
Her own jaw tight, she could tell that
her expression mirrored his as she returned them.

“I love you,
too.”

Liam set his
bottle down on the counter, rubbing the side of his neck as he gave a bitter
laugh.
 
“I thought about you every
day while I was in Jordan.
 
I was
in character and I still thought about you.
 
I just came home.
 
I wasn’t supposed to have to miss you again.”
 
He leaned back against the brick wall, his lips curled in
disbelief as he shook his head.
 
Amanda’s eyes narrowed once again.
 
She was sure that she detected a sneer and she was sure that it looked
accusatory.

“It’s not like I
won’t miss you, like I’m not going to have a hard time here, too.”

“It’s
different.”

Amanda squinted
at him.
 
“How.”

He lifted his
hard stare.
 
“You know I’m fine no
matter what but I don’t have that luxury with you.
 
Especially not after knowing how the paparazzi, how Pop
Dinner treated you while I was gone.”
 
He shook his head, his eyes flickering elsewhere again.
 
“I couldn’t stop it then because I was
three thousand miles away.
 
Now I’m
right here and I have to sit back and let them screw with you.”

“I can take care
of myself.”

“I know you can
but whether we want to admit it or not, double standards exist and between you
and me, I have a feeling the paparazzo’s going to be a lot more brazen with the
one who’s half his size.”

Staring at
nothing, Amanda’s head shook blankly.
 
“I don’t know what to tell you anymore.”

“Then don’t try
to tell me anything.”

Amanda felt her
eyes flicker.
 
“Fine.”
 
Her voice was colder than she had ever
heard it.
 
Her anger beyond
renewed, she turned on her heel.
 
“You know what, I’m not sure what else you want me to do at this point
maybe I should just — ”

A sharp breath
caught in her throat as he pulled her back before her sentence finished, the
grip of his fingers on her forearm desperate in a way that didn’t match his
stoic face.

Amanda shot a
hard glare at Liam, her mouth opening to snarl something though her lips
snapped shut and her arm froze in the midst of yanking away when she caught the
look in his eye.
 
It had softened
enough to expose a glint of torment.

Catching her
breath, Amanda’s gaze slowly relaxed, traveling from the look in Liam’s eye to
the tautness of his cheek as his jaw flexed.
 
A handful of her gauzy raglan in his fingers, she stood
before Liam, her chest heaving as her stare fell to her bare left shoulder and
the top of her bra, both exposed as his hand remained gripping her sleeve,
stretching it down.
 
She watched as
his own eyes dipped, his fist tightening just enough to stretch the fabric down
to expose a couple more inches of her bare skin.

Eyes downcast,
Amanda let go of a heavy breath, fully closing her eyes when she felt Liam pull
her into his body, one arm wrapped tight around her waist and the other cupping
the back of her neck.

The sigh she let
go of when he kissed her managed to be tired and hungry at the same time.
 
She let him take control and back her
against the counter, feeling the cold of the glass on her skin as he cupped her
jaws, his tongue hungry, angry as it parted her lips for him.
 
Amanda breathed hard, her mouth falling
open wider as she felt his hand tilt her head against his lips by a firm
fistful of her hair.
 
Her palms
pressed on the hard planes of his chest.
 
She let her fingers curl against them as his tongue swept hot through
her mouth.
 
The mere touch of her
fingers hooked into the denim drew a groan from Liam.
 
He pulled away from their kiss to watch as she undid his
button, his eyes interchanging between her flushed lips and busy hands.

As his jeans
fell around his ankles, Liam reached behind his back, swiftly yanking off his
T-shirt.
 
Once it was flung aside,
his hands pulled again at her top, his fingers hooking into the cups of her bra
this time so that he pulled them down along with her neckline.
 
As his hot mouth crushed over hers
again, Amanda hastily pulled her arms out of her sleeves and bra straps, pushing
the rings of jersey and lace cloth down her bare torso and past her hips till
they fell around her feet, leaving her in her ripped shorts only.
 
Liam gave one more long, hot sweep of
his tongue against hers before pulling away to let his eyes take her in from
head to toe, coming back up to take in the sight of her naked chest.