Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (27 page)

Sarah leaned down at the same time I sat up and our mouths came together in a fiery crash of desire, our tongues tangling and parrying. I pulled her tight against me while she rocked along my semi-hard cock, still buried inside of her. It was too much, the feel of her surrounded me, and in that moment I knew she was my whole reason for being. I told her with my body just how much I loved her, how much she meant to me, how I never wanted to be without her while she did the same. 

When I woke up sometime later I was on the floor with a blanket draped over my naked body. Disoriented and not at all sure where I was, I sat up and looked around the room, lit only by a fire blazing in the hearth. Sarah was nowhere to be found but when I heard the sound of water running upstairs I knew where she’d disappeared to. I stretched my body and sighed contentedly as I recalled all the ways I’d taken her; the ways she’d taken me.

A couple of minutes later she came down the stairs, a large, fluffy towel wrapped around her damp, naked body. No man in his right mind could stop himself from ogling the sultry sex kitten that was my woman. Seeing me checking her out, she smiled suggestively and moved her hand to the knot holding the towel in place.

“You can walk around naked all you want, but I’m tapped out for a bit,” I admitted begrudgingly before the terry cloth could drop to the floor. “Although come to think of it, I haven’t had dinner yet”— I licked my lips— “and you look good enough to eat.”

She laughed a throaty, seductive sound and shook her head. "How about you take a shower and join me in the hot tub?”

The blanket fell from my body revealing my heavy cock, already semi-hard, belying my earlier statement. Maybe I was ready for another go after all. Her eyes widened in disbelief and she bit down on her lip as she devoured me from across the room. When I passed her on the stairs, she dragged her nails down my naked back and my cock twitched and came fully alive. Turning, I hefted her over my shoulder and she squealed as I carried her straight into the oversized marbled stall, turned on the sprays lining the wall, and worshipped her body until neither of us could stand.

During the drive into town the next morning to pick up breakfast, coffee, and other provisions, I couldn’t stop smiling. I was filled with an optimism that had been absent from my life too often lately and it felt terrific to be able to look at Cameron without fear of our relationship falling apart without being able to do anything to save it. I’d stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the world to pull the rug out from under my feet. These past few days together had reminded me just how much I wanted him – not just as my lover, but also as my closest friend and confidante.  I could finally see the forest for the trees.

“Have I told you lately how much I’ve missed you? Missed this?”

Casting his eyes to me and then back to the road, Cameron reached across the cab and grasped my hand. Our palms pressed flesh to flesh, he squeezed. “I feel like I never see you anymore and it’s driving me crazy.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, because he’d had plenty of opportunity to see me. He just hadn’t availed himself of it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, scratching the stubble on his chin.

“Cameron …” I breathed his name as an elongated sigh, a note of warning in my tone. “You stayed away. Do you know how insulting it is for you to say now how much you missed me?” My voice was getting louder by the second but in the privacy of the car I didn’t care. “You could have saw me any fucking time you wanted to. You
chose
not to.”

Cameron gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white with tension. “I know, alright,” he bit out. “I fucked everything up. Is that what you want me to say? Fine, I’ve said it.” Angrily, his eyes flashed to me and back to the road. “Fuck this,” he murmured, pulling the SUV onto the side of the road. Killing the engine, he turned to face me, his back pressed against the door.

“You want to have a go at me?” Have at it.”

His eyes were hard and cold while mine glinted with angry heat. He fisted his hands at his side; I clenched mine in front of me. This was the conversation we’d been avoiding and now that it was here, I was primed to fight.

“You abandoned me from the word ‘go,’” I accused.

“You’re right, I did. Because you betrayed me.”

“I did not! Everything I did was for you. Do you think I enjoyed putting my own wants and desires aside so you could finally be successful?” He didn’t respond. “Well, do you?”

“Don’t pin that on me. You made that decision without even consulting me.” He laughed sardonically. “Such a martyr.”

“Me?! What about you? You got
everything
while I got
nothing
!”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. The only thing I ever wanted was you. When you pulled that rug out from under me after I’d
just
gotten a taste of what it could be like, do you know how that made me feel? What it made me think?”

“No, because you never told me. You just ran away. Again.” I sighed wearily. “Is that how it’s always going to be? Something happens that scares you and you’ll pull away? Because if that’s the case, I don’t know that I can handle it.”

“What are you saying?” His voice like ice.

“Nothing. I’m not saying anything.” I dropped my head against the window and swallowed the lump in my throat.

We stayed silent for several moments, lost in our own worlds. Cameron raised a good point. What was I saying? What did I
want
to say? As I weighed these questions, I admitted to myself that a major issue that still had the power to come between us were the unrealistic expectations I’d placed on our relationship. I’d wanted him for so long, had fantasized about what it would be like to call him mine, that when it finally happened I let fantasy overrule reality. Life could be messy. I
knew
that but I’d
forgotten
it as well, making everything harder than it needed to be.

I wasn’t proud of it, but as soon as I’d felt Cameron pulling away, I begrudged his success because I felt like I had sacrificed more than he did, that his success was because of what I’d given up. I hadn’t wanted to admit that he had sacrificed too because while I sat home alone while he was out with Jillian, I felt sorry for myself. And in my darkest moments, I wondered if it was all worth it. The reality was we’d both made the exact same sacrifice: each other. No wonder our relationship hadn’t blossomed but instead had withered until neither of us recognized the love we once shared.

And while Cameron had abandoned me, what was worse was I’d turned my back on myself. I was angry at myself for having let my anxiety cloud my judgment and overwhelm my sense of worth. That I had let myself feel diminished because people thought I wasn’t good enough made me feel embarrassed now. I didn’t need Cameron Scott to be complete; I was enough for me, I thought. I’d lost sight of those things. I’d lost sight of so, so much.

“Would you agree it’s fair to say we each feel abandoned by the other? And we can both admit we never want that to be the case again?”

“Of course,” he replied, as if I was ridiculous for even asking.

“And are we ready to forgive each other and move past this?”

When he didn’t immediately answer, a small kernel of worry sprouted in my belly. Biting my nail, I held my tongue as I waited for his reply. I couldn’t force him to want to be with me. I couldn’t make our relationship work if he wasn’t just as committed as I was.

Finally, he broke the silence but he didn’t say the words I’d been expecting. “The worst part about all of this was not having you to talk to anymore,” he whispered, contemplatively. “Whenever I have a problem, you’re the first person I turn to to help me figure it out. When you’re the problem”— he caught himself and amended his word— “I mean, when my problem is about you, I don’t have anyone else. That’s why I run. Because I don’t know what else to do. My compass goes out of whack and I get lost.”

Lost
. He was right; we’d both been lost.

His eyes became hooded and a small smirk played at his lips. “And pardon me for saying it, but god I missed touching you. Last night was …”

“I don’t think our sexual compatibility was ever in question. You can hate me and still want to fuck me; we’ve established you like my body just fine. What I need to know is, putting your sexual wants aside, can you forgive me and move past your anger?” 

His eyes washed over my face and his jaw set. “Yes,” he bit out then asked, “You?”

“I don’t think I knew how irate I was until just now. Hurt, yes. Disappointment, certainly, but my anger just now was like a living, breathing thing that could consume me if I let it. I don’t want to be angry anymore. I want us to be in each other’s corners always, not at each other’s throats.” I swallowed. “I realized something else just now too.”

“What’s that?”

I notched my jaw. “I don’t
need
you Cameron but I
want
you desperately. So yes, I can move past this.” I rested my hand on his forearm and added, “And it’s fair to say I like your body just fine too.”

He laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You know you’re more to me than just sex, right?” He placed his hand atop mine, his eyes searching. “It’s more than just sex, Sarah.”

“I know,” I responded, because I did. I’d had sex before; what happened between Cameron and me was so much more than that. It defied words.

He nodded and the worry left his face. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take you every which way I can, any time I can, but when we’re together it’s something more. Every time I’m with you, when I’m
in
you, it feels like there’s nowhere else I’m supposed to be. I feel you in my heart. You’re my home.”

Okay, strike what I said before. I
did
need Cameron to complete me because the second I heard those words I felt something click into place, solid and strong. He was the other half of my soul and without him I was less a person. Our hearts recognized in each other its better half and for me to deny that connection – that completeness – was to deny us.

“You know, I used to watch you and wonder what it would be like.”

“You did?”

“Of course,” he admitted. “There were times I’d look at you and, I’m not ashamed to say, imagine us in bed together, fantasize about how you’d taste on my lips, wondered how you sounded when you came.”

My body shivered and I grew damp hearing him openly admit his desire for me. I wanted to climb across the center console and show him just how deeply the admission affected me.

Before I could, he continued speaking. “And while I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you, that’s not the sum of who we are. I love knowing that every minute I desire you, you want me just as much, but what I really cherish is that before sex was even on the table, I knew your mind and your heart.”

Tears welled in my eyes and my throat tightened with emotion. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip but I had a shit poker face and with one glance, Cameron saw the thin line I walked.

“Stay there,” he commanded gruffly. In one quick move, he was out of the SUV and around to its other side. Pulling open my door, he tugged me into his arms. “It’s okay baby,” he cooed in a low, placating voice as I unleashed a sob into his chest. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop the tears and soon my body was wracked with sobs, the pent up sadness of the past few months unburdened from my soul. Everything he’d said to me just now was what I’d wanted to hear for weeks and I was too overcome with relief to keep my emotions in check.

“You’re it for me Sarah. Just you.”

I nodded my head against him, acknowledgement that I heard him and he was the same for me. Wrapping my arms around him I burrowed even deeper into his embrace. “You too,” I mumbled back, finally bringing myself under control.

“This is too much. I’m done.”

“Wh … what … what are you …” I stuttered, terrified I’d misread him.

“Shhh, not that silly girl.” He placed a kiss on my forehead. “I’m telling Broderick I’m not playing along any more.” He maneuvered himself out of my arms and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Stepping away, he paced the side of the road, swiping at the keyboard. “Those PR people think they’re so great at their job? Fine, it’s time for them to prove it. Me and Jillian being together is the easy, obvious story and yeah, it’d be great for the movie but it’s not necessary.”

My voice broke on a hiccup. “Cameron, don’t do anything you might regret. I can handle it. It’s just been difficult.”
Hiccup
. “We’ll figure it out, make plans so that we see each other more, spend quality time together.”

He stopped pacing, turned to me, and shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Nope. Not good enough. It’s you and me, kid.” He returned to my side and tucked me into the crook of his shoulder. The wind could have whipped around me for hours and I might never have felt its cold.

“It’s done. No more hiding, no more lying. They can tell the truth about us or I walk. My name is out there now and if I walk away from the role of a lifetime—” he used his fingers to make air quotes— “people are going to want to find out why. If Broderick and his cronies won’t work with me anymore, I’ll have Julie book me on
The View
before they’re able to find someone to take my place. What will they do when I tell Whoopie Goldberg how they wanted me to hide my fiancé and pretend to be in love with my co-star. That’d be
terrible
PR and they’d have to perform some pretty serious damage control. If their fans out I stepped away from the movie because I loved you too much to hide you, those same women Broderick are counting on for the movie’s success will love me even more.”