Page 36 of Hollywood Crush

I walked over to the ornate windows and opened a couple to let a breeze and perhaps some pollinating insects in, then took the watering can from its hook on the wall and filled it. I studiously didn’t make eye contact with Patrick where he sat in the chair. Any time I did risk a glance, he was looking over at me. I watered the peppers directly behind him and he craned his neck backward to get a peek of exactly what I was doing.

“This place is beautiful,” he said.

“Lovely little village,” I replied. Well, it was more of a grunt.

“No,this.” Patrick stood up and gestured around. “Your hotel. This little place. It should be in all the magazines. It should be on AirBnB’s hidden gems page. There should be websites clamouring to stay and review here.”

“Thank you,” I replied more politely. “It’s taken a lot of work. And a bit of money from the filming.”

“Well I for one am glad I came out here. And so is Daniel.”

“What?” I looked around frantically for a second like Danny might pop out of my cucumber plants.

Patrick laughed softly. “He’s in a specialist hospital in Manchester, as you didn’t think to find me or anyone else and ask.”

I felt a hot flush of shame run through me. I had avoided the cast and crew for the last couple of days specifically so the topic of Daniel wouldn’t be brought up.

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied. “He wouldn’t want me there.”

“Wouldn’t want you there? The last thing he said before he was completely anaesthetised was your name.”

Fuck.The little pinpricks of shame felt like a stab to the stomach now.

“Throughout our little fake relationship, every time he touched me, or looked at me, or talked to me, he would talk about you. What you’d done in here, or where you had taken him on a day trip, or that you had been down to watch filming. It took me a stupidly long time to realise why but Ihonestly don’t think either of you have realised. I don’t know how aware you are, or how aware he is that you two are obviously in love with each other.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said reflexively. Though the thought very much did matter to me.

“And I think if you’d both been honest with each other earlier on then we would have avoided all this crap. I didn’t need the publicity from this relationship all that much, I just went along with what our management had suggested. In hindsight, I wish we’d both been strong enough to tell them to shove it.”

I looked at Patrick. The worlds that he and Danny inhabited still seemed unfathomable to me. How could he for a second think that all this was normal? Fake relationships, brand deals, so much money and power passing between a few people. The world they lived in was far too big for me.

“He’ll want to see you,” said Patrick.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, it was one of the last things he mentioned before going into hospital. And all he’s bloody talked about since.”

“He’s awake? He’s OK?” I asked.

“Well, not really awake per se. More drunk on painkillers and whatever fluids they’re so desperately pumping into him.” Patrick smiled. “We’ve had to shut him up more than once when he started mentioning someunspeakableactions going on in the hotel gym. I’d never have used theequipment if I’d known what it was being used for by others.”

I felt my cheeks heat. “So what do I do? How do I make this right?”

Patrick stood up and held out a hand to me. “You drop everything and you go to him.”

And I did.

Chapter Thirteen

Daniel

The days had felt hazy, but I was somewhat aware of them passing. Nice nurses and doctors with concerned frowns drawing their eyebrows together. And Stacey, a constant presence at my side. Each time I woke up, or looked up, or called out, she was there. And I was grateful. But even through the fog of painkillers and being carted into operating theatres I was sad that it wasn’t him.

I finally started to come round from the painkillers properly and the world looked much clearer. I reached for the glass of water on the bedside table and took a deep drink.

“God, I feel gross,” I muttered through the fuzzy feeling in my teeth.

“You look it too,” said Stacey. She was sat up in an armchair and knitting something. Next to her was a basic cot that I guessed she had been sleeping on. The rest of the room was plain, but well equippedand private. A flat screen TV adorned one wall and there was a big window on the other that showed a bright blue sky.This certainly isn’t NHS,I thought. “How long have I been out?” I asked.

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