“Uh, kind of shit, I guess,” I said. Nate was my best friend, that was true. But even then, we weren’t exactly…close. And since he’d gotten serious with Brent Elwood, I’d clammed up even more about things around him. Nate had a big mouth, and Brent was in the industry. Well, anadjacentindustry. I was pretty sure I never wanted to go back to acting, but I also wanted to keep my options open, and my reputation semi-respectable.
Life in Hollywood—hell, life just growing up in my family—was always precarious, and growing up in the spotlight had been traumatic in a way that no one ever talked about. As a child actor I was only ever one mistake away from fucking up, and everyone around me had taken delight in reminding me of that, from my agent to my friends on set to my own sister.
My biggest mistake? Letting that anxiety cloud everything I did. I misread call times or forgot to check for updates; some days I didn’t have new lines down, and I lived in terror of last-minute script changes.
I’d found it easier to learn my lines if I painted while Annie read them out to me, and for a while, the painting-listening-repeating had been a comforting routine. I’d relied on Annie so much during those years onCamelot Courtto run lines with me, double- and triple-check my call times. But things changed so often on set that I didn’t always get the memo, literally. Or I’d show up havingfinallymemorized all my lines, only to find the whole scene had been scrapped, and how had I not known about it?
I had tostop being so damn lazy. I shouldbe more like my sister, who was alwaysso professional.
I’d actually beenrelievedwhen I was fired. I wouldn’t have to hear about how much I sucked every damn day. I could just chill at home, and assume whatever I did would be the wrong thing anyway, until at least I genuinely didn’t care.
I didn’t care if it was unwise to park my tempting car in Jack’s neighborhood.
I didn’t care if my friends were all starfuckers who were using me for my money and connections.
I didn’t care if my father froze me out and treated Annie like the Golden Child.
Because if I didn’t care about anything, then nothing that happened could touch me. My expensive therapist had pointed that out once, and I’d laughed at her. “Sounds like a sensible way to live,” I’d told her, and then quit therapy and been a lot happier for it.
Or so I’d thought, up until recently.
“Dude.” A decorative cushion slapped me in the face.
“Fuck!” I threw it back at Nate, angrier than the situation called for. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I asked you, like,three timeswhere your sister is. She ghosted me when sheknowsshe owes me.”
It was a source of irritation to me that, while Annie would barely talk to me these days, she still contacted Nate regularly for her party drugs. I probably could have told him to cut her off, and he would have, but if nothing else, I knew Annie would be safer getting her shit from Nate than going out to some sketchy neighborhood.
Like the one Jack lived in.
God, I couldnotkeep my mind off him.
“You got a six-figure endorsement deal for my sister?” I asked Nate. “She’d text you back for that.”
“Fuck you, man, I’m serious. She left me on read for, like,daysnow. Is she out of town? Cooking up something big?”
Talking about Annie was just making me anxious again, and I didn’t want to admit how damn worried and scared I was. Not to Nate, who’d blab to Brent, who’d sling an arm around my shoulder and lean in way too close while he pretended to be offering comfort. “Don’t you get it?” I snapped. “Disappearingisthe thing she’s cooked up.”
“Disappearing from view to increase publicity? Bold move,” Nate snickered.
“Scarcity mindset, dickwad. You don’t want something if you can get it all the time.”
Nate made a face. “What the fuck ever. Next time you talk to her, tell that bitch she owes me.Cash.”
Even Nate didn’t know that Annie and I weren’t in regular contact these days. That was something I kept to myself and—I assumed—Annie did, too. The fact that Annie kept quiet about our strained relationship was one thing that kept me hoping we might make up one day. That maybe she was ashamed of how she’d acted, and might reach out with an apology.
Maybe. Or maybe it was wishful thinking.
Either way, Nate’s problem with my sister was just that—hisproblem, not mine. My sister, even though she was several minutes older than me, and supposed to be theresponsibleone, had always had a bad habit of leaving me to tidy up after her. I was beyond tired of it. But I was also beyond tired of the conversation with Nate. “I’ll let Her Highness know,” I told him. “But—”
I broke off as Nate jerked upright on the sofa. “Shit,” he said, staring hard at the windows behind me. “I think—yeah—I think there’s someone wandering around out there.”
CHAPTER20
JACK
I should have givenMiller a gun.
