Page 36 of Royal Crush

ALERIC

The first pullof smoke into my lungs made them ache. It was a reminder of why I needed to quit—why this one vice was a shitty one at best. But the habit itself was soothing. I turned the cigarette case in my left hand, clicking my nails on the top with every pass.

I would have given a limb or two to have Charls still alive right now. I wasn’t sure he’d have any real advice to give me. The modern cinema would probably confuse the shit out of him, and he was probably turning over in his grave at the thought of streaming television.

And it was strange to miss a man I’d only met for a collection of hours, who gave me a single gift that he probably forgot about the moment he handed it off. But it was my little world right then. He was the only part of my past that didn’t make it feel like my soul was trying to claw its way out of my body to avoid feeling all the hurt from back then.

“They didn’t write a no-smoking clause into your contract?”

I whipped my head to the side and narrowed my eyes at the man standing a few feet from me. He looked vaguely familiar, and it took me a second to realize who he was. Otis Quinn—anew actor who had been discovered the way so many new actors were these days: from some viral video.

He seemed like a decent guy—he’d been a carpenter or a plumber or something before getting snatched up by a studio to star in a handful of straight-to-streaming romances. I wondered if fame and the illusion of money had gotten to his head yet.

“Did they write one into yours?”

“My management did.” He sauntered over—a sway in his hips that I recognized as a kind of come-hither gesture—and he flopped down next to me. The delivery bay was high enough off the ground it terrified me, but at this point, I was almost praying for an accident that took me out. A couple of broken legs meant not seeing Camillo for a while.

We’d been filming for two days, and I hadn’t seen a single wink of the prince on set, but I knew that wasn’t going to last forever. And if I thought it was awkward before, God only knew what it was going to be like now that he’d had my tongue in his mouth.

Otis made grabby hands at me, and I passed the cigarette over to him almost on autopilot. He took a drag and sighed. “Fuck. I need new management.”

“Trust me, you don’t. My old manager got me hooked when I was eleven.”

He blinked at me. “Holy shit. You’re not joking, are you?”

Pulling a face, I shook my head as I took the smoke back and flicked the ash from the tip. “Nope. Cigarettes at first—to see if the nicotine would work in keeping me calm. Also compliant. The more I wanted it, the more they could use it as a bribery tool.”

“Do I want to know how bad it got?”

I grinned down at my feet. “So. Filming today, are we?”

He took my change in subject with grace. “Our meet cute.” He smiled, and I spied dimples in each cheek. Yeah, it was no wonder he went viral. “You not get the script?”

“No, I did.” And I’d read it. I’d read it so many times my eyes started to blur in my attempt to fill my mind with anything other than Camillo. Of course, that was a ridiculous idea, considering I was reading the story of him. “Sorry. It’s been a weird couple of days.”

He smiled at me, sweeter than I probably deserved. “I get it. This is all weird for me. I feel like I should be used to it by now.”

I laughed. “Trust me, it doesn’t get easier. It’s always surreal and confusing. At least, it was for me. I never could understand why people were so interested in me, you know? I was just this…this fucking goblin who memorized lines on a paper. They expected so much glamour.”

He snorted and shook his head. “I still get calls from old clients. The other day, I did a job for this old lady—she’s turning eighty-nine. Totally blind, hasn’t watched TV since it was in black and white. She has no idea who I am except Otis, the guy who unclogs her shitter.”

“That sounds amazing,” I told him, and I hoped he believed me because it was true. Fuck, what I would have given for at least some semblance of normal in my life. But my parents had dragged me into this before I was really able to form sentences on my own, and the claws of the industry had never let me go, even when I was broke and jobless.

“I like the money, but I miss how simple things were,” Otis said. “It feels like nothing I do will ever be the way it was. Like, will I ever meet someone authentically?”

“Yes,” I told him. I met Camillo authentically when he yelled at me for smoking. The thought made me smile a little. “But once they know, it doesn’t stay that way.”

“They—the dickheads with the cell phone cameras?”

“And the people with social media who will analyze every move you make and try to figure out whether or not your life is falling apart. And the people who are in love with a character you play and will dedicate whole social media pages to hating your partners and find ways to actually reach them and harass them.” The bitterness in my voice was heavy.

“They did that to you?”

I snorted. “Oh, God no. I was underground during my formative dating years. I guess that was the only good thing that came from my breakdown.”

He looked at me sideways. I knew he wanted to ask, and I appreciated when he didn’t. “So do I lean in or lean out?”

“Not a clue. If you figure out the answer to that, let me know.”

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