“Sure is.” His smile is the blinding excitement of a kid at Christmas. “We don’t get these very often. Hold tight.” He swaps out his hook for a wide net and bends down to scoop it up. The octopus is a baked orange color, and even though I can barely see its face, it’s pretty clearly pissed about the situation. Frankly, I would be too if I had a hook in my arm and got dragged up from the bottom of the ocean. Jack sets it down gently on the deck, and the tentacles all wriggle in grumpy slow motion.
“Do we keep it?” I ask.
“No. Sometimes they get snagged on hooks, but they’re not for eating. He deserves to go back to where he belongs.” Jack pulls out a pair of pliers and cuts the hook caught in one writhing tentacle. We watch as the octopus slithers to the side of the boat and finds an opening that’s probably meant to help drain water away but is the perfect size for a world-weary octopus. One tentacle, then another drips over the side, and finally the head slides under and disappears. I rush to the rail and watch it disappear back down to its home.
I deserve to go back to where I belong too. Not in shame or with lies, but as myself. Sure, there will be a few closed-minded gatekeepers in Hollywood who won’t be so interested in seeing my name on their projects. Nervous producers and PR reps who are always muttering things about “the optics” without ever stopping to think whether those are issues and points of view we should be catering to. I’m Damian fucking Marshall. I’ve made more money in the last five years than anyone else in the industry. That’s not all going away because I show up with a man on my arm at a premiere.
But there’s a voice in the back of my head that says enough people might care. Fans who would say they felt let down or lied to, even though I never owed them anything. My family, who said being gay meant I’d never succeed. Angry news anchors and “family values” groups might make enough noise that things are hard for a while.
Though would it be harder than it is now? I’m a thousand miles from home, questioning everything and lying to the one person I want to be with.
There has to be a way to win this fight.
* * *
I half expectVin to be in my room again when I get upstairs, but it’s empty. I’m showered and dressed in regular clothes again before I find the note that someone must have slid under the door.
Come see me. V
That’s not good. The tension that evaporated with the touch of Jack’s lips coils back up again. If Vin had good news, he’d be lounging on my balcony with a bottle of bubbly. If he’s sending secret notes, I have to put on my serious face.
He’s on a call when I knock on his door. He lets me in but doesn’t invite me to join him at his laptop. He’s got a pair of headphones on so I can’t hear who he’s speaking with.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, he just walked in. No, he’s been out all day. Doing what? Fishing, lying low, like Roberta told him to.”
Not Roberta then. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.
“Okay,” Vin says, throwing me a quick glance. “Well, let me talk to him, and I’ll get back to you with a plan.”
Plans are good, aren’t they? If the conversation Vin was having was about how to break the news to me that I’d been kicked out ofShadow League, we wouldn’t be making a plan. Unless it was a plan to crash the bar and toast the end of my career.
Vin shuts the laptop and pulls the headphones off.
“I hate these things,” he says, fluffing his hair back up. “They give me a headache.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Who were you talking to? Did you talk to Cedric?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“But I talked to Ivy who talked to Roberta who talked to Cedric.” He looks me up and down. “What happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
He squints, then sniffs the air. I put an involuntary hand to my throat. Vin gets right up in my space.
“You got laid, didn’t you?”
“What? No. Can we get back to the matter at hand?” I push him off me.
The arch of his eyebrows says we’re not done with this topic, but he goes to the small fridge built into the wall and pulls out a bottle of water. He takes a long sip before he speaks.
“I talked to Ivy who talked to Roberta who talked to Cedric.”
“You said that already.”
“And Cedric talked to Anderson.”
