"Hi," she says quietly, like she's approaching a wounded animal that might snap.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, and there's no heat in it. “Sorry I didn’t mean to sound aggressive.”
"Cassian," she says simply. She steps inside and closes the door behind her. "He was worried. He said you weren't answering texts, and he’s working and so is Pine.”
Yeah, everyone’s working apart from me.
Of course Cassian was worried. Cassian worries about everything.
"I'm fine," I say, and I'm already turning away from her. I move toward the couch, which is covered in scripts and empty beer bottles and all the evidence of a man slowly falling apart. "Just had a job fall through. Happens all the time."
"Does it?" Sharon asks, and she's moving around my apartment like she belongs there. Like she's not invading my space but joining it. She picks up one of the rejection emails and reads it. Her scent shifts. Becomes sweeter. More worried. "Jett, this says they're replacing you with the principal actor doing his own stunts."
"Yeah," I say, and I drop onto the couch. "That's the new industry standard. Why pay a professional when the actor's ego will do it for free?"
Sharon sets the email down carefully and then she does something that catches me off guard. She sits down next to me. Not far away, but close enough that I can smell her. Strawberry and honey, with a note of concern underneath. She's wearing some kind of soft fabric that looks like it would be nice to touch.
"How long have you been doing this?" she asks.
"Since I was eighteen," I say. "Fifteen years of breaking bones and perfecting falls and making sure actors get to tell stories about how brave they are. Fifteen years of being the backup plan nobody thanks."
"I thank you," Sharon says quietly.
Sharon’s smaller than me, curvy in ways that shouldn't distract me but do. Her brown eyes are focused on my face like she's trying to read something written in my features. Her legs are curled up underneath her body in a way that makes her look comfortable in my messy apartment.
"I know you do dangerous things for a living," she says. “But is it worth it?”
The words land somewhere in my chest and stick there.
"Why?" I ask, and I'm not sure if I'm asking why she's been watching me or why she cares that my career is imploding.
"Because you matter, and risking your life all the time, is it worth it?” she says simply. "To Cassian. To Pine. And probably to me too, even though I'm still figuring that out."
I lean back against the couch and run my hand through my hair. It's been styled back but the motion sends it falling into my face. I don't fix it. I just let it fall and stay there, a curtain between me and the world.
"I don't know what else to do," I say, and the words come out rough. Broken. Like I've been holding them in and they're finally escaping. "Stunt work is all I've ever done. It's the only thing I'm good at. Take that away and there's nothing left."
Sharon reaches over and takes my hand. Her fingers are smaller than mine, softer, warmer. She pulls my hand away from my face and forces me to look at her.
"That's not true," she says firmly. "You're good at a lot of things, like reading people."
"That's not a career," I say bitterly.
"Maybe not," she agrees, and I appreciate that she doesn't lie to me. Doesn't try to make it sound better than it is. "But it's something. And we can figure out the rest."
"We?" I ask.
"Yeah," she says. Her thumb traces circles on the back of my hand. "We. Because that's what people do when they care about someone. They help figure it out."
She's sitting so close to me now that I can feel the warmth coming off her body. I can smell her even more clearly. The strawberry and honey mixing with something underneath that's purely Sharon. Something that smells like home and safety and the opposite of everything my career has been making me feel.
I want to kiss her, and I want to pull her close and let her comfort me in ways that have nothing to do with conversation.
"I'm scared," I admit, and it's harder to say than I expected. “That I've wasted fifteen years on something that's becoming obsolete."
Sharon shifts on the couch. She's still holding my hand but now her other hand comes up and touches my face. Her palm is soft against my jaw.
"You are good enough," she says. "You're someone worth being serious about, Jett."
