“No, I—”
“Neevah.” He reaches across the table to brush his thumb along my jaw. “I don’t talk about this with anyone really, but I’ll tell you if you want to know.”
Do I want to hear about the first woman he broke his rules for? Hear how she seemed special enough to risk his career, his reputation? Was she worth it?
Resignedly, I gnaw at the corner of my mouth and nod.
His hand falls away and, resting his elbows on the table, he steeples his fingers at his chin.
“I’ll start by saying it wasn’t all her fault,” he says quietly. “She thought we were headed somewhere I realized too late I couldn’t go with her. I could have pretended, let things ride until the movie wrapped, but that wouldn’t have been fair to either of us. As soon as I found out she wasn’t who I thought she was, I knew I had to end it.”
“She wasn’t who you thought she was? What happened?”
“I first met Camille at aVanity Fairparty. I’d heard of her, of course, and she’d heard of me, of course. Hollywood isn’t that big of a town. Black Hollywood? Even smaller. She was beautiful, obviously. Funny and warm and open. We spent the whole night in a corner talking, swapping horror stories about how phony things could get here. She seemed like me. Like she was tired of artifice—tired of the brittle beauty that people and this city are sometimes wrapped in.”
“Wow,” I say, my voice faint, my fingers tight on my fork. “Sounds like a fairy tale start.”
He shrugs, his broad shoulders moving in a careless motion. “I didn’t pursue anything with her because I was deep-diving into interviews and research for a documentary, which took me all over the world. The offer to directPrimalcame as a surprise, but not an unpleasant one. It wasn’t something I felt as much conviction around as I usually did my projects, but it was intriguing. I admit, when I heard Camille had already been attached to the project, it made it even more appealing.”
I grab the carafe holding the mimosa and fill my glass to the rim.
“It didn’t occur to me anything would actually happen between us while we were filming,” Canon says. “I’d never done that, never gone there with an actress I was directing. We were attracted to each other. Evan saw it, warned me not to do it. All my instincts behooved me not to, but for once, I thoughtwhy the hell not?”
A self-mocking smile ghosts his lips. “Maybe I was lonely, tired of being solo, horny. All of the above? Who knows, but it happened.”
“Indeed,” I murmur, gulping my drink.
“She made the first move. I might have eventually, but when we were going over the script in her trailer, she kissed me. I kissed her back, and that’s how it started. I can’t say I loved her, and I never told her I did, but I liked her a lot. And we were great in and out of bed.”
I choke on a grape, banging my chest and tearing up, wheezing to clear my air passage.
“You okay?” Canon asks, concern in his expression.
“Fine.” I take a long draw of my drink and wave my hand for him to continue. “Just went down the wrong way. Go on.”
“One night, I’d stayed over and was still in bed when I heard her on the phone with her agent.”
Did I truly ask for this? It’s torture hearing him talk about their intimacy, even in past tense, but I need to hear. I need to know, so I keep my face neutral while he goes on.
“She was lampooning another actress, another Black actress at that,” Canon says, shaking his head. “And demanding the other woman, one I knew personally, be uninvited to an event where Camille was presenting.For the next few minutes, I listened to her tear that woman apart and plot ways to slow her rise. Basically so she wouldn’t outshine Camille. She needed to be the ‘it’ girl and saw someone else’s success as a threat.”
His frown, the rigid set of his mouth and jaw, hint at what he thought of that.
“I don’t play that shit,” he confirms. “When I confronted her about it, at first she tried to deny it, but then turned it on me like I was crazy for questioning her motives. Over the next few weeks, it was like scales had dropped from my eyes and I saw other cracks in her facade. As beautiful as she was, there was no light inside, and I never touched her again.”
I should just be happy he says it stopped there, and I am, but the thought of Canon—my Canon—fucking that gorgeous woman… I swallow my jealousy and push out the necessary words. “So what happened next?”
“When I broke it off, she was furious. She claimed to love me.”
“Hmmm.” I practically hurl grapes down my gullet, barely pausing to chew. “And then?”
“Well, it wasn’t love. It was pride. That was clear when she presented the studio with an ultimatum: her or me. They chose her. The rest is history, even though no one wants to let me live it down. I’ve never been in love, but I know that’s not it.”
He’s never been in love?
How is that possible? Only as I think about it, neither have I. Can I count Brandon, my high school sweetheart who cheated with my sister, as love? The hurt of their betrayal, that lingered, but my feelings for him? Gone before freshman year ended.
“And when she got you fired?” I ask, pushing my plate away. “You confronted her about it?”
