Page 39 of The Moon & His Tides
Not like the idea of your actor idol reading your heart poured onto so many pages.
Suddenly, I was desperate to get out of the car, as feral as a trapped animal in a metal cage.
A strong hand gripping my knee jerked me back to reality and I flinched, pushing myself against the car door.
“Hey, hey,” Adam murmured, coaxing me like a spooked stallion, only it didn’t work. He was too handsome and otherworldly sitting in his Aston Martin driving to the biggest production studio in London. “Sebastian, look at me.”
“I am,” I gritted out, but didn’t addthat’s the problem.
“No,” he said, driving competently, not looking at me but tilting his chin to invite my study. “Look at me. Tell me what you see.”
“You,” I told him, too earnest, embarrassing myself by exposing how much that simple “you” enchanted me. “Adam Meyers.”
“And who is Adam Meyers to you?”
There was something in his tone, a grim kind of warning, but I didn’t know how to be anything but honest.
“The first time I saw you on screen was inJoseph’s Courage. Your mama was crying in the foreground being comforted by your father and sister, but the camera was focused on you by the window. It was dark but the candlelight caught the side of your face and turned you to bronze, something lovely but cold and unfeeling. I’d never thought a man could be so beautiful until that moment. And then you turned, just a little, toward the camera, and a single tear track down your cheek made a mockery of the audience’s first judgement of you.”
I paused, remembering the scene so vividly I felt that same keen sadness now that I had then.
Inelegantly, I shrugged. “I followed your career after that. Everything you were ever in.”
“And you have a favourite?”
Warmth worked its way into my cheeks, and I was grateful he couldn’t see my blush beneath the olive of my skin. “Antony.”
“Ah, ‘eternity was in our lips and in our eyes.’ Very romantic.”
“It helped you were oiled and bare-chested, probably. Even though I’m only realizing that now,” I admitted.
That wrought a real laugh from the actor. “Well, I’m happy to hear it, then. People usually say it’s theJonathon Crosstrilogy orObject of Desire.”
“It was a good action series,” I agreed. “One of the best, for sure. And you were brilliant inObject of Desire, but it was too disturbing to be a favourite. I’ll never forget that scene with the bodies hung in the trees and you standing beneath them in a bloody rain.”
Adam’s smile was a slice of red across his face, wound-like and very much like the expression he wore as Alistair Flare in the film. “It’s one of the highest-rated films on IMDb, you know.”
“I know.” Again, I shrugged. “I liked you as Antony, Byron, Heathcliff, and Hamlet best. The classics. It’s the films that leave you with a feeling of having your chest carved out and what remains of your insides rearranged that I love.”
“And that’s the kind of screenplay you’ve written,” Adam said, a little smug at bringing the conversation back to his original point. “I read it in one sleepless night before I met you. Savannah didn’t say a word when she handed the pages over. She just looked me in the eye with an excitement I’ve only seen a handful of times when she found projects that were as near perfection as they could get. Projects likeObject of Desire. I missed an interview with Graham Norton readingBlood Oath, Sebastian, and an entire night of sleep.”
He paused as he pulled off the road into a massive car park and swerved too fast into an empty spot near the studio.
When he turned to me, his face was solemn with gravitas. “When I finished, I felt I’d never breathe right again. It’s that same feeling, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I breathed because that same vulnerability I’d feared minutes ago was stripping me raw again. Only this time, Adam was there to soothe the raw nerves. It was to inexplicably show that he understood my screenplay, maybe even that he understood a little bit about me for having written it.
“I called Andrea that morning.”
“Andrea…” My breath stuck in my throat for one dangerous second when I almost choked and died. “Andrea Felice?”
Adam’s grin was a slight curling of one side of his full mouth. “The same. It had to be an Italian director, of course.”
“Of course,” I breathed, struck dumb.
“We can discuss the particulars with him now.”
I watched mutely as Adam alighted from the car, his smart leather shoes clicking on the pavement as he rounded the Aston and opened my door for me. When I didn’t move, still too busy processing the miracle that was currentlyactuallyhappening to me, he reached down, gripped my forearm, and hauled me into the open air. One palm pressed to the center of my chest, pushing me to the side of the door as he closed it and then pinning me to the metal.
