The Last Thing You See (6 page)

Then the hood of the car made a loud, metallic crumpling sound, and I felt it move under us as our weight finally seemed to put a dent in it.  It startled me a little, but the effect it had on Nick couldn’t have been more dramatic if a gunshot had suddenly gone off.

He gasped as if in panic and pushed my hand away, leaping off the car and standing next to it, facing away from me as I scrambled to a sitting position.  I looked around wildly for some kind of danger but saw none.

“What is…” I began.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s OK.  We’ll pop the hood and push it out from the other side, no harm no…”

“No.” He turned around and moved his hand back and forth in his direction and mine.  “This.  I’m sorry about this.  I can’t.  We need to go.”

“What are you…”

But he was already walking back to the gate.

You don’t know the meaning of ‘awkward’ until there’s a man between your legs who apparently really doesn’t want to be there.  I wasn’t sure if Nick would want to continue training me in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but he did eventually confirm by replying to my messages.

Now Nick was in my ‘guard’, which meant that I was on my back, he was kneeling between my legs, and my legs were wrapped around his waist.  It hurt to have him so near and yet so far.

Physically he was near, but mentally he seemed to have put up some walls and was doing his level best to maintain them.  I tried to talk to him about the night at the lookout, to find out what I did wrong, but he avoided the questions with apologies and the training.

It made me doubt everything I’d seen, heard, and felt that night, everything I’d felt since I met him.  I couldn’t have been
that
bad at kissing. I mean, nobody had ever complained before.

For me, it had been the most romantic few seconds of my life. I’d never been able to open up like that to anybody else.  Despite my doubts, every fiber of my being was screaming out to feel that way again, to not let something like that slip through my fingers.  If only Nick would let it happen.

“Again,” he said.

I grabbed the right cuff of his jacket with my left hand, hooked my left leg over the top of his arm, and moved my right leg so that my shin was sideways against his belly, then hooked my right arm under his left knee, kicked out with my left leg, and pushed with my right leg.  The combination of movements rolled us to my left and we ended up with him flat on his back and me crouching over him with one knee on his stomach.

“Good!  Now, from here you could just punch me in the face mercilessly, which would look great, but look where your shin is, right on my bicep with my forearm trapped behind your knee.  You’re basically in position for a biceps slicer.  It’s brutal, but most people wouldn’t know the kind of damage you’re doing, so maybe not any good for your movie.”

“Hmm,” I said, my mind elsewhere.

Nick looked at the clock and then back to me.  “Looks like we’re out of time.”

I sighed.  “I guess so.”

I stood and Nick rolled to the side, off the mats, and regained his feet near the wall.  All I wanted to do was wrap my arms around him, rest my head against his chest, and feel him hug me back.  I looked away before I just embraced him on impulse, afraid he’d push me away.

“I’m gonna get going, Harper,” he said.

I turned back to him.  “Can you wait until after I’ve changed?  I need to talk to you.”

“Harper… I can’t do…”

“OK, just listen.  I don’t know what happened the other night, but it hurts.  You understand that?”

“I don’t want…”

“I know.  You don’t want me to be hurt, but I am.  I poured my heart out to you, Nick.  You think I tell that to everybody?”

“No, I…”

“I tell it to
nobody
.  Who could I tell?  I can’t talk to my family, I can’t make them feel like I’m ungrateful for everything they did.  If I talked to somebody else, it would probably go straight to the gossip magazines.  Do you know how it felt like to finally have somebody to talk to?”

Nick looked down at his hands, idly working at the knot on his belt.  “Yes, I do,” he said quietly.

“This isn’t you, Nick.  It would be too easy to pretend like you don’t feel anything, a big tough ex-Marine, all tattoos and scars, who doesn’t care about anything anymore.  But I know you do.”

It was almost too quick to spot, but when I said ‘scars’, I saw him flinch and then tug his rash vest down to make sure his stomach was completely covered.  I furrowed my brow.

“I see
you
under there, Nick.  I’d be crazy to not want you in my life, to paraphrase one of my favorite people.”

Nick smiled unhappily, still looking down.

“But I don’t want to be hurt.  I can handle it if you don’t want to be with me, I can even take things as slow as you need.  I can’t live with the idea that we didn’t give it a chance if it’s what we both wanted.”

Nick raised his eyes to meet mine, the fear in them so out of place in a man his size, with his strength, with his background.  I could understand that though.  There’s no training in existence to make you immune to the pain you risk when you give somebody your heart.

“So what’s it gonna be?” I asked.  “You wanna give us a shot?”

My words hung out there all alone for a few seconds and I thought he might just let them drop without an answer.  He closed his eyes, a little longer than a blink, and then looked at me. I was sure my heart was doing a thousand beats per minute.

Nick bent down and wrapped both arms around my back, one just below my butt and the other at chest-level, before lifting me clear off the ground in a tight embrace.  I returned it eagerly, having his arms around me felt just as good, hell, just as perfect as I thought it would.

His face was buried against my neck and I leaned my head on his as I wrapped my legs around him.  We held each other so closely that, for a moment, it was hard to feel like we were two different people, but finally he pulled back.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, Harper, but I want you.  I want you more than anything.”

He leaned in and kissed me, hard, like the brakes had just been taken off, turning around and pushing me against the wall.  By the time we broke our kiss, I was breathless from more than just the latest workout.  I bit my bottom lip.

“I want you too… so much.  But I’ve got to go.  Appointments,” I said, bordering on blowing off my schedule for the foreseeable future.

Nick nodded, slowly releasing his grip until I slid down the wall to my feet, his muscular weight still pressed against me.  I pulled him down for another kiss, touching my tongue to his and then nuzzling against him.

“This Friday is the Fans Choice Awards.  You wanna be my date?”

“I thought you were already going with that Lucas guy.”

I did my best to show my mild disgust with a single facial expression.  “He can take a balloon with his picture on it, he’d prefer it that way.  I said I want
you
.”

“I don’t have anything to wear.  Unless this is suitable?”  Nick pointed at his gi.

“Let me take care of that.  I really gotta go, though.”

I squeezed out from between Nick and the wall and made it a few steps across the mat before bouncing back to him, giving him another kiss before pulling away again.  I wanted to do cartwheels and backflips all the way to the changing room.  This was happiness.

The first time I was ever in a limo was on prom night. A bunch of us hired it and split the cost.  I thought that was pretty classy at the time, but it was an absolute piece of crap compared to this one.

It smelled new, as if the company unwrapped a fresh one every time they received a booking.  Secret compartments were everywhere, in some cases blended into the upholstery so cleverly that I felt like a super-spy when I pulled a panel off and discovered some champagne flutes.

First it picked me up from my apartment, where a woman had arrived with a make-up bag to help me get ready for the award show.  If word ever got back to the guys in the corps about that, well, it just didn’t bear thinking about.

She wouldn’t take no for an answer or see my reasoning that I was just going to be sitting in the audience.  She had a job to do.  So be it.

I stepped out of the limo when it came to a stop in front of Harper’s door and walked towards it, seeing it open before I closed the distance.  Harper appeared there and drove all other thoughts out of my mind.  Obviously she’d spent a fair bit of time with somebody fussing over her appearance too.

Harper rocked the natural look, and I’d seen her in a gi more often than anything else.  It was easy to forget that she was a movie star sometimes, but this was not one of those times.

She wore a plain, not that anything could truthfully be called plain on her, red dress that hugged her feminine shape closely and dipped not-quite-scandalously-low at the front, revealing the enticing swells of her breasts.  Her make-up was more pronounced than usual, but still subtle.  Her lips were pink and glossy, a little fuller than usual, and so very kissable. Her eyes were accentuated with some eyeliner, and she had just a touch of extra color to her cheeks.

It looked like the most time had been spent on her hair, which spilled over her shoulders in waves and a few ringlets.  She was perfection.

Close behind her, seeing her off, were her parents and brother.  I shook hands with them all, having never properly met them before, and they all expressed their thanks about what I did for Harper that day.  Her mother’s smile was about as tight-lipped as any human could pull off, though.

Thankfully, Harper insisted on heading back to the limo pretty much straight away and we were sipping champagne within minutes.

“Something your mom isn’t happy about?”

“Uh… well, she’s the one that kinda spearheaded that whole idea about me going to this show with Lucas.  She’s... pissed, shall we say?  But she’ll get over it.”

“Why would she organize your date?”

“Well, you know, she’s my ‘manager’,” Harper scare-quoted the word with her fingers, “so every public appearance is a PR opportunity that’s, like, in her realm.”

“I guess I’m not good PR.”

“Like I said, she’ll get over it.  Cheers!”

We clinked glasses and talked until we were nearly at the event center.  My jaw dropped when I saw the crowd of people there.  The flash of cameras was constant, spotlights searched for absolutely nothing in the sky, and we pulled up at the end of a long queue of limos, waiting our turn to get out at the start of the red carpet.

“Holy crap,” I said.

“Yeah, it can get pretty crazy.  This is a small one thankfully.  Sometimes it’s like walking a marathon. I don’t wear heels to those ones.”

“This is small?”

“One of the smallest.”

“Damn.”

“Once we get out of the car, we’re pretty much not going to be able to talk until we get inside.  I’ll have to stop a lot of times for photos, and maybe an interview or two.  Once we get inside it will be fine though.  Stay close so I don’t get lost, OK?”

“Yeah… I’ll do that.”

“And, um, can we keep ‘us’ on the down low for now?  Like our little secret?”

My heart sank.  “Why?”

Harper reached out and put her hand on mine.  “Hey, it’s not because I don’t want to shout it from the rooftops.  It’s all just… new, you know?  I just want to get to know it myself before we show it to the world.  Trust me, they’re
going
to find out eventually.”

“OK.  Fair enough.  Uh… does your family know?”

“No.  Like I said, just our little secret.  For now.  Just a little while, OK?”

I squeezed her hand.  “OK.  I understand.”

When we arrived at the front of the queue, I exited the vehicle first and I’d never seen anything quite like it.  It was pandemonium, the screams, the flash photography, the people everywhere. It was nuts.

Harper stepped out behind me, and there was no strobe light in the world that could possibly have flashed at that frequency.  I squinted against the glare and turned back to offer my hand to her, which she took.  The people behind the ropes, seemingly some mix of fans and photographers, lost their damn minds.

One of the security guys closed the door to the limo and tapped the roof a couple of times to signal for the driver to move on.  Harper walked ahead a few steps, put a hand on one hip, and pivoted to each side a few times while smiling.  People screamed like maniacs.

Moving on, I stayed close as she’d said I should.  So she didn’t get lost. Yeah right.  With all those people so close, so loud and fanatical, it felt like a dangerous situation.  I found myself naturally gravitating to her right hand side, putting myself between the crowd and her, on guard for anybody that might slip through the event security team.

This was her world though.  Harper put her hand gently on my arm and spoke through her smile, somehow barely moving her lips as she moved ahead again.

“Don’t worry, it’s always like this.”

She stood in front of a wall covered in logos of the major studios along with, presumably, the sponsors of the show and struck her pose again.  Both ahead of us and behind, as other limos dropped off more people, similar scenes unfolded.

“Harper!  Over here!”

“Harper, look to your left!”

“Your
other
left!  Big smile!”

I’d never seen so many faces I recognized on people I’d never met all in one place.  From further along the red carpet, walking against the general flow, came another one.  With a smile almost as wide as Harper’s came a face I would have voted to put in the dictionary next to ‘smug’.  Lucas Collins.

The cheering from behind the lines took on an even more feverish pitch as he approached Harper and they gave each other a light hug before smiling out at the crowd for a few seconds.  Lucas leaned in and whispered something in Harper’s ear before gesturing towards the frontlines of the throng.

Harper nodded and put one arm around his neck as he dipped her backwards, their faces poised so close they were almost kissing.   I clamped down on the green-eyed monster that suddenly thrashed around inside me. I’d seen the posters for Pandora Rising enough by now to know a recreation of the pose when I saw it, but it sucked to see that pretty boy get more intimate with her than I was allowed to in public.

Once they were upright again, Harper looked at me and I joined them.  It did my heart good to see his smile falter as I towered over him and we shook hands.