Thatpissed her off. Her complexion swiftly went a blotchy pink.
“Where does Underhill think you are right now, Rebecca?”
She stared at him, probably wondering whether to equivocate.
But then her face crumpled in earnest.
“Oh, Johnny. He’s such a... Let’s just say he’d never punch a photographer, because it would mess up his manicure. I hardly ever laugh with him. He doesn’tgetme. He’s not like...”
She caught herself.
He knew she was about to say,He’s not like you.
He heard all this with increasing incredulity.
“So he got on your nerves and he wasn’t perfect and you just left because you can’t be bothered to work things out? That’s what you do? What the hell iswrongwith everyone when they think they can just fuckingwalkawayso easily?”
His voice escalated and escalated and then he sat down hard on the sofa and before he could help himself wrapped his hands across the back of his head and leaned forward and gulped in deep breaths, as if he’d just experienced an abrupt change of altitude.
And then leaned back and closed his eyes. And tried to steady his temper and the beating of his heart.
From the stillness in the room, he figured he’d done what he was certain few men had ever succeeded in doing: he’d shocked Rebecca Corday into silence.
What the hell had just happened? One moment he was happier than he could remember being. The next he was blown sky high and spiraling through the air, falling and falling and falling, falling with the full consciousness of how sickeningly painful the landing would be.
He should have said it. He should have said it.
But Britt had her fears, and he had his. His started with“L.”
And the irony was that probably the very thing that allowed them to see each other clearly was the thing that doomed them. They could use each other’s wounds to administer killing blows.
His whole body almost rang with shock, as if he’d finally landed after being blown sky high.
“I’m sorry if I scared your friend off.”
He opened one eye and then the other and looked at Rebecca balefully. She was now sitting across from him.
Rebecca sounded gentle, even contrite. Somewhat. And she did look concerned, though shot through that concern was a peculiar anxiety. The words “your friend” were purely tactical and so very Rebecca. An attempt to diminish. She seemed incapable of being anything other than strategic.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Rebecca,” he said, and his voice sounded odd in his own ears. Frayed and dull. “She’s not my ‘friend,’ and you didn’t scare her. She scared herself off.”
Though hehadchucked the metaphorical lit match right into that gasoline.
So he supposed he’d helped scare Britt off, too.
He closed his eyes briefly again. He wanted to be alone. But he couldn’t just tell her to scram.
“Let’s read lines,” she suggested softly.
He opened his eyes. He was a grown-ass man, and he’d endured misery before, and he knew surefire ways to at least forget it.
He took a deep breath and looked down at lines he now could have recited in his sleep. But he knew he would automatically deliver them with a subtle difference with an actress of Rebecca’s caliber.
Acting had always been his escape. And for a little while, via the magic of someone else’s words, he could become someone else.
Someone who for the duration of a script didn’t have to feel the burning crater in the center of him that felt like a Britt-ectomy.
J. T. awoke smiling. He stretched and reflexively reached for Britt.
