Dario guided them through a few variations: Her looking coyly back over her shoulder. Their foreheads pressed together. Dario crouching beside them, with both of their faces turned toward the camera. Every now and then, she would rock her hips slightly—not enough for anyone else to notice, but enough to make his vision go white at the edges.
“Now who’s being unprofessional?” he grumbled, tightening his grip on her hips in an attempt to hold her in place.
“Still you, it feels like.” She adjusted her thigh, dislodging the sheet, and her gloating smile disappeared.
Shane followed her gaze down, but he already knew what she was looking at, peeking out from under the strap of the dance belt: the small black linework tattoo of a cartoon ghost on his hip, no bigger than a quarter, slightly blurred with age.
When she looked back up at him, her self-satisfied expression had been replaced by genuine shock.
“You never got it removed.” It was a question, but it wasn’t.
He pushed the rest of the sheet aside to see her opposite hip. She did have a tattoo there, but when he looked closer, it was a symbol he didn’t recognize.
She’d gotten hers covered.
Of course she had.
…
“This doesn’t need to be anything more than it is.”
That’s what she’d said to him the first time they’d had sex—the first time they’d done anything besides flirt and eye-fuck, really—in her hotel room after upfronts. He’d nodded in agreement, but since she’d said it straddling him while his hands diligently worked at her bra clasp, he probably would’ve agreed if she’d said “chicken salad sandwich.”
Later, once enough blood had returned to his brain to belatedly process it, he was relieved. It wasn’t that he was opposed to commitment. But he’d been living in L.A. for less than a year at that point, and his life had already been upended by unexpectedly landing on the show. Adding a new relationship on top of that would’ve been a disaster. Plus, he barely knew her, and they were co-workers, for fuck’s sake. Keeping it casual was the only option that made sense.
In retrospect, the option that would’veactuallymade the most sense would have been to not sleep together in the first place, but for some reason, that hadn’t crossed his mind.
He was grateful she’d been so direct about her expectations, saving him the trouble of trying to decode what she wanted from him. True to their word, he hadn’t slept over afterward, and they didn’t talk at all between upfronts and the start of production on season one. He’d been ready to write it off as a onetime thing. But then, their first week on set, he’d gone to her trailer to run lines and ended up going down on her instead.
Their only attempt to define the relationship had been about a month after that, when they were already spending two orthree nights a week together—but only after work, never weekends. He’d been drifting off to sleep, lulled by the soft drone of the TV in her darkened bedroom.
“Are you seeing anyone else right now?” she’d asked casually, her warm breath ghosting against his chest.
He wasn’t.
“Have you been tested recently?”
He had.
“Do you want to stop using condoms, then? I have an IUD. Just let me know if…if anything changes.”
It wasn’t very romantic, but then, that was their deal. And to be fair, he never took her on a real date the entire time they were together. The two of them dating in public would be a whole Thing with a whole other set of pressures, more trouble than it was worth. Their arrangement was about superficial attraction, convenience, and stress relief. Romance was never a factor.
So there was really no explanation for why, after a few more months, when he looked at her—when they sat side by side, half-asleep, in the makeup trailer; when she slipped inside herself with terrifying focus while studying her script or waiting for them to call “Action”; when she slid into bed next to him at the end of the night, draped in one of his T-shirts—his heart stuttered out a pattern that almost felt likeforever.
Not every time. Not enough to do something about it. But enough to mess with his head.
To add to his confusion, his friends at the time had been pulling him in the opposite direction. Not only did they disapprove of Lilah in particular, they felt like he was wasting his time being tied down byanyone. He should be keeping his options open, taking advantage of his freshly minted status as the star ofthe hottest TV show in the country. With Lilah, they reasoned, he had the worst of both worlds: all the burdens of monogamy, with none of the benefits.
The tattoos had been his wake-up call. That half-suppressedforever,etched on his skin.
He had no fucking idea why he hadn’t gotten it removed, though. He’d meant to. But he had to wait six to eight weeks for it to fully heal before he could make an appointment, and after that he kept putting it off, and putting it off, until he barely even noticed it anymore. Now, though, his stomach turned at the sight of it. Even though they’d broken up, their chance at forever destroyed before they’d even made a real go of it, she was still branded on him.
Shane knotted the sheet in his fist.
“Don’t read anything into it,” he growled. He was surprised by the ferocity of his reaction, but he’d been edging all day, courtesy of one of his least favorite people on the planet, who was currently still clinging to him like a barnacle. Sweat beaded at the edges of his hairline. This might be the thing that finally broke him.
Lilah said nothing, just ran her fingers over the tattoo one more time, lashes downcast, her expression cryptic.
