Page 19 of The Burdens We Share
I take a shaky step back, my legs suddenly feeling too weak to support my weight, and I hurry towards the door, tears in my eyes. I swing it open and find Dallas with his back to me, still on the phone at the foot of the trailer stairs.
“Dallas,” I whisper, my voice shaky.
He must hear something in my voice because he turns around immediately and looks up at my face. “Travis, I’ll call you back.” He hangs up the phone without another word and rushes up the stairs, stopping directly in front of me, “What’s wrong?”
I start to shiver, “He was in here.”
Dallas rushes past me and looks around the trailer as if searching for someone. When he finds nobody, his eyes settle on the rose and the note. He pauses for a moment, just staring at them on the table and his back is to me so I can’t see his face. I want to see his face so I can get a good idea of what’s going on in his head, but even that would be a useless effort. Dallas is impossible to read.
He reaches for the note slowly and takes a moment to read it. When he’s done, he places it back down on the table with calm, steady hands. How is he so calm? He slowly turns to face me and his face is expressionless. “How are you so calm?” I ask, saying the exact question on my mind.
Dallas takes a step closer to me and I take a shaky breath. He leans down, angling his face close to mine and the little hairs on the back of my neck seem to rise. “I promise you, Ivory I am anything but calm.” He lowers his eyes to my trembling hands at my sides before he brings them back up to my face, “I’m going to comb through every second of security footage from this set and see what I can find. I promise you, he will not enter your space again.”
One single betraying tear rolls down my cheek, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
His nostrils flare in anger and his brows draw together. I see the fury in his eyes as he growls, “I know you don’t know me and my word doesn’t mean anything to you just yet, but it will.”
I take a step back, putting distance between us. I don’t trust myself not to grab onto him like some meager child grabbing onto a parent or to oh I don’t know,kiss him. I sit down on the barstool and suddenly my head starts to ache slightly and the room starts to spin. My head must wobble because Dallas suddenly looks alert as he reaches for my face in his rough palms. He holds my head upright for a second before what looks like concern flashes behind his eyes only briefly. God forbid Dallas ever shows emotion for more than a second. “Ivory, look at me. Are you okay?”
I nod, my lids taking longer around blinks. “I’m fine. I think I just got a little lightheaded.” I try to pull my face away from his hands but he holds me in place.
He assesses every square inch of my face before he releases me and takes a step back. “You’re stressed and probablydehydrated.”
The room comes back into focus and Dallas turns to grab me my water bottle. He hands it to me and I accept it, chugging the whole bottle. When I finish, my eyes land back on the table with the rose and the note and I feel my face pale. Dallas takes a step to the side, blocking my view of the table. “Don’t look at that, look at me,” he demands and oh my God did the sound of his voice saying those words get me. My stomach is doing backflips.
“I’m going to handle all of this. You have nothing to worry about,” he promises.
I nod, agreeing even though I know the promises he’s making are out of both of our control.
Chapter 8
Dallas
The rest of theday on set was spent with the little devil reading and studying her lines, and me combing through security footage on my laptop, only ever a couple of feet away from her at any given time. We’ve fallen into a comfortable silence, both focused on our own respective tasks.
I glance at her and find her with her brows creased, focused on what she’s reading. I make sure to keep my glances at her relatively short because I find it nearly impossible not to stare at her for hours. I’m enamored by her and I wish I could tell you why. Aside from the fact that she is devastatingly beautiful and puts every other woman to shame—face like art, eyes like smoke. There’s something else about her that makes it impossible to look away.
Call it intrigue. Maybe I’m intrigued that the little devil can focus on reading lines rather than snorting them. Though from my knowledge, she and her friends have left their recreational drug usage in the past.
I take in the focus, the dedication on her face for what she’s doing. She’s passionate about so many things from her modeling to her guitar playing, and now this. It’s impressive to have accomplished so much at such a young age—especially through sheer talent. She’s only twenty-two and she’s done much more than many people at my ripe age of thirty.
The passion is clear on her face. As I watch her, the memory flashes of her face when she poked her head out of the trailer earlier. How truly terrified she was. That kind of fear? Itchanges a person. The expression on her face was one I never want to see her make again. There is something about her fear that fuels my anger. The way her face paled and her body started shaking. I realize how different things are for her than they are for me. She’s a very small woman and she can easily be overpowered. If someone wished her harm, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’d be able to take her down. The thought makes my jaw clench so tight I swear I hear a tooth crack.
The fact that he broke into her trailer today, on set when he knew I was here with Ivory, makes her stalker all the more dangerous. He knows she’s under protection, and instead of feeling threatened, it only made him angrier, and more likely to act. When I find him on this security footage and identify him, he’s done. I’ll personally deal with him before I hand him over to the authorities.
Ivory yawns and I realize how late it’s gotten. It’s almost seven. It must be dark out. We’ve been in here all day. My stomach growls and I realize I’ve been so busy weeding through security footage that I haven’t eaten anything. And she hasn’t either. “We should get going. We can grab dinner on the way back if you’d like?” I offer, though I have a feeling that she might turn me down at the prospect of sitting across a table from me and sharing a meal. I’m no fool, I know my presence makes her squirm. I quite enjoy the sight of it. It’s a weakness I’ll never admit aloud.
She looks up at me with tired eyes and frowns, looking extremely worn down from the emotional rollercoaster of a day. I made sure she wouldn’t have to look at either the rose or the note again, but it didn’t erase her earlier emotions. “I’m okay. I honestly just wanna go to bed.”She says it like it’s a fact, but her eyes say otherwise.
I give her a disapproving look, “You haven’t eaten all day.” And her breakfast was surely insufficient if she ate in the shortamount of time it took for me to install her security system.
She frowns, “I’m really not hungry. My stomach is in knots.”
I absolutely refuse to let him work her up so much that she can’t even think of eating. I rise from the barstool and close my computer, tucking it under my arm. I can finish weeding through the footage later. “Come on. We’re going to get food.”
She groans, “I said I’m not hungry.”
I take a step closer to her and force sternness into my voice, “Get up.”
