Page 23 of Declan
“Is that all they said about me?”
“Why?” She cocked her head, her green eyes alert and missing nothing. “Should they have said something else?”
“No,” I responded, maybe a bit too fast. “Just making sure I don’t need to prepare myself for a bullshit rumor about a secret baby or some shit.”
“I remember that one.” She finished eating her sandwich before grabbing a stick of celery. “The girl was a crazed fan, right?”
“You could say that.”
I wished I could forget the whole ordeal. That had been a fucking nightmare and had resulted in me hiring Gideon.
Mary, a girl I’d had a very brief encounter with at an awards show after party, had stalked me. First, it’d been innocent enough emails. I’d even responded to a few, just to be nice. She’d learned where I’d lived at the time and had started sending me obsessive letters, saying how much she loved me.
Then, there were the phone calls and breaking into my house.
When I’d tried pressing charges against her, she’d claimed I’d gotten her pregnant and told a gossip magazine about it. I hadn’t even fucked her; all I’d done was talk to her at the party, take a selfie with her, and go on my way. But she’d crafted a huge story that had tarnished my reputation and dragged my name through the mud.
The pregnancy had been false, of course, and she’d later said I’d forced her to have an abortion.
People who believed her side of the story had begun threatening me to the extent that I hadn’t been able to leave my house. It came out later that she was lying, but the damage had been done by that point.
“Ah, good times,” I said to Jennifer.
“Hey.” She nudged my arm. “I want you to know that no matter what the media says, you’re a great guy, Declan. Never forget that.”
A great guy.I was many things, but I doubted that was one of them. Maybe anokayguy. But not great.
“I’m serious,” she said, gently elbowing me in the side as I rolled my eyes again. “They don’t see theyouthat I see.”
Sometimes, I felt a lot like the Scott character I was portraying. Good looks, a fat bank account, and power: those were basically the only things I had to offer anyone. Sure, I donated to charities, but that was just common decency when you had more than enough.
I spent so much time pretending to be other people—an agent, a Spartan, a soldier, a CEO of a big company—that I often forgot what it was like to be me.
Hell, I didn’t know what that even meant anymore, to be me.
I’d worn so many different faces in my life that I felt like an empty slate without them. Like I was a faceless character in a game, waiting for someone to come in and customize me to fit their design.
After lunch, we resumed filming. We got through most of the scenes for the day before the sky opened up and decided to pour on us. Tim had gotten what he wanted, though, so it hadn’t been a complete waste.
Gideon drove us back to the hotel, quieter than usual. That is, until he opened his mouth.
“Have fun last night?”
And there it is.
I inwardly cringed. “Not exactly.”
Keeping his eyes on the road, he frowned. “Do I even want to know?”
“Probably not.”
“Listen, Price,” he said, his voice deep and serious. Yeah, he was pissed all right. “You pay me to protect your ass. How am I supposed to do that if you sneak off and put yourself at risk? If you go and get yourself into a mess on my watch, that’ll come back onme. On my name. And in this business, a man’s reputation is everything.”
“I’m sorry.” I looked out the passenger window.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Just do better.”
“Got it.”
A silence passed between us. All that could be heard was the low purring of the engine. Gideon wasn’t much of a music person, so he very rarely turned on the radio. Probably another security thing. He liked to be able to hear everything going on around him.
“Reputation aside,” Gideon said, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. “I don’t want you putting yourself at risk because…well, I might be somewhat upset if something were to happen to you.”
“Somewhat?” I asked, my lips twitching with the smile I tried to hide.
His eyes flashed to mine before focusing back on the road. “Don’t push it.”
I didn’t check Kyler’s page that night. As much as I wanted to see if he’d posted anything about how he was doing, I knew I needed to back off. Better to cut ties now than to wait until I did something stupid, like try to get to know him and get feelings and all of that shit involved.
But fuck. I’d give anything just to have one night with him.
