Page 37 of Act Like You Don't Care
We finished up in the convenience store and I went hunting Miles, because I wanted to know for sure what it was that had made his body go all stiff like that and had glued him to that phone so hard he couldn’t even take a second to talk to me. I found him huddled with Dominic as the equipment was packed up to be transported out of town to the old farmhouse we were filming the last two scenes in before we flew back to LA.
Dominic looked up, saw me waiting there with my arms crossed, and said a few more words to Miles before disappearing in the direction of the van.
I immediately grabbed Miles by the arm and pulled him off to the side. “What was that about earlier?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” he began. “We’ve got it handled.”
That wasn’t our agreement. I slashed the air in front of him with the edge of my hand, stopping him in his tracks. “No. Ineedto know. You promised me you’d tell me everything and you’ve been lying to me all week.”
“After filming is done,” he said and grabbed my arm to herd me toward the other van. “This doesn’t change much.”
I jerked away and stood in front of him, hands clenched into painful fists. “No. What is it?”
“What do you think?” he demanded. He sounded exasperated, which I thought he had no right to be. Yes, he was my bodyguard, but it wasmybody. “Let it go, just for a little while, okay? I promise I’ll tell you everything after the day’s filming is done.”
“I think,” I hissed, right up in his face, “that you’re treating me like some helpless omega. And you can fuck right off with that, do you hear me?” I hit him, flat handed, on the front of his shoulder, then went looking for Dominic. Fuck this. All of it. I was done with this charade.
A small voice inside my head wondered if this was real anger or just fear combined with the week’s heavy workload. I told that little voice to shut the fuck up.
Behind me, Miles made a frustrated noise and then his hand clamped itself around my upper arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m putting a stop to this.” I glared at him but something made me want to explain myself. “I’m not a child, but you’re treating me like one. You’ve never done that before—I don’t know what to think of it. Were you lying to me all this time? Handling me? I don’t want to be handled, Miles. I want to be treated like an adult. I don’t think with my womb, any more than you think with your cock.” A wave of heat rushed into my cheeks when I said that last word. Why? I’d never had a problem using the word before. Hell, I’d had a lot of different cocks in me—it was why I had the birth control implant put in, so I didn’t have to think about that while I was contemplating which cock I wanted to sample that day.
It felt different saying it to Miles.
Iwasa stupid omega, wasn’t I? But I wanted to believe that the Miles I’d gotten to know up until now was the real Miles. The person I believed he was would be a good measure of the kind of alpha I should look for if I ever decided to settle down with one.
His expression grew thoughtful, a twitch of muscle that it took me a few seconds to recognize. “I don’t want to screw up your shoot. This doesn’t make any difference to what we need you to do to stay safe. But it’s not good, Tam.”
“Then we’ll shoot until I get it right. It’s not like I don’t have a good idea what happened. Was it another pig?”
He shook his head. “No, not that.” His grip on my arm loosened, then he moved to pull me against his side. Sheltering me, almost. “Will you wait until you’re done filming your scenes?”
I thought about it. Part of me wanted to demand he tell me now, part of me wanted to meet him halfway. “I don’t think I can,” I confessed. “I can try.” My God, why was I compromising on this? I was the client, shouldn’t I get to make the rules? “No. It’s about me. I need to see it. Don’t push me on this.”
“In the car,” he said and started walking me toward the van.
I opened my mouth to protest, but he was right. Everyone was waiting for me. I still had to go through make-up to remove the plats and the fake blood from the last two scenes, then my hair needed to be trimmed and I had to change into my wardrobe for the opening scenes of the movie. “Fine,” I said, but I wasn’t really fine. I was angry and, underneath it all, scared that there was something Miles didn’t want to show me and I was starting to regret my choices. Maybe if it was that bad, I should do what he said.
No. I’d worked too hard to be respected as a man and an actor. I didn’t dare take a step back from that, not with all the other things I was having to compromise on.
We got into the van, taking the bench at the back, behind Mike and the older gentleman who was going to be playing our father in the next couple of scenes. I put my seatbelt on at Miles’s insistence, then held out my hand for his computer. At least I wasn’t shaking. Iwasstarting to feel a little sick to my stomach.
A worried frown creased his forehead, but he pulled out the computer, flipped it around so it looked like a tablet, and pulled up a scanned image of a letter written in handwriting that was becoming far too familiar. He did that reverse pinch thing on the screen to blow the picture up to the point where I could only see the first couple of paragraphs and a bit of the third, then handed the machine over to me. I stared at it for a moment, not reading. Making the decision on whether I even wanted to read it. But I’d fought Miles for this right and I couldn’t back down now. Never, ever back down from a win.
I regretted it almost as soon as I started. If that wasn’t a death threat, it was pretty damn close. The first two paragraphs made my head spin, blood leaving my brain in a panic and I had to stop and focus on my breathing and the feel of Miles’s arm tightly circling my shoulders.
I’m safe. I have bodyguards. Protection. Miles. He can’t get to me.I licked dry lips with a dry tongue and thought about other things, about summers spent in Oceanport with my cousins, about swimming in the lake and walking down the street to get ice cream at the little shop there. About running wild in the woods outside the town, playing cops and robbers, or making up our own stories for whatever TV series we were into at that age. The shimmering blackness at the edges of my vision began to recede, along with the feeling that I might throw up. I turned my eyes back down to the computer screen and kept reading.
Rememberthe evenings in the square? Remember how your mate-to-be would protect you? How good it felt to see to his needs, to make sure he had food and drink, to dance with him at his pleasure? I remember how happy you looked, doing as the Lord bid an omega to do, being as the Lord bid an omega to be.
That was as faras I could see without moving the picture but as soon as I reached out to shift it up the screen I put my hand back in my pocket again. Didn’t need the world to see me shaking like a coward.
The letter was wrong, though. I hadn’t been happy. I’d been happy for my fiancé’s attention, and desperate to do something that would please both my father and him. Desperate to do something to save what I’d later realized was a mating that was doomed to failure and misery.This is someone who knows me. Or knew me back then.That thought brought the return of those dark sparkles around the edges of my vision and I leaned back in the seat, taking deep breaths to ward off the lightheadedness.
“Tam?” Miles asked gently.
I felt him tug on the computer, but I hadn’t read the entire thing yet and I needed to. “No, just give me a minute.” I tightened my grip on the computer and swallowed hard against the bile rising in my throat. I knew my stalker. Somehow. “I’ll be fine. Just… bad memories.”
