Page 4 of Act Like You Don't Care
The cab showed up and I strutted out into the darkness, ignoring the crawling sensation up my back.
* * *
Jack had a hell of a house.Three stories, four pools, a private movie theater, two kitchens, and a private gym that could have given any high-end fitness club a run for its money. And tonight, it also had what felt to me like half the young blood of modern-day Hollywood crammed inside its walls.
This has got to be the most boring party ever.I threw back another shot of tequila and licked salt and lime off the collarbone of the guy I'd picked up almost as soon as I walked through the gates. He wasn't handsome, or even pretty, but he had a nice ass and from the way his pants fit him, likely had a nice package too. I'd find out later, I supposed, assuming I didn't end up sleeping things off in Jack's guest room. It wouldn't be the first time, but we'd had a sort of on-again, very off-again relationship last year and I didn't want to encourage him to think I was coming back around.
Oh, he wasn't a bad guy. Had the typical dark, movie-star looks that made my knees weak, but that was the problem—he was used to having that effect on people and more than once I'd gotten the feeling that if the relationship had ever managed to make it past public appearances and red-hot sex, he would have been expecting my next role to be the barefoot omega in the kitchen with a couple of kids running around.
I might want kids at some point. Might even someday be caught barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. But for sure it wasn’t going to be for a long time, until after my career was rock solid and I knew I could take a break in my filming schedule. Because if I was going to do the kid thing, I’d probably be doing it on my own. I couldn’t imagine the alpha that would be okay when I decided to pop back out into the workforce after a month.
Which meant that it wasn’t going to happen soon. Most of my time right now was spent proving to the world that omega didn't mean weak, or that I couldn't make my own decisions. At being so good that theyforgotI was an omega.
I was also determined to prove that being omega didn't mean I could be bullied either—I hated when they tried that, it set me off like nothing else in the world. My one true professional public meltdown, lovingly memorialized by the press, had been because of someone trying to bully me into doing a scene in a way that I knew was wrong. I won, but damn near lost my job over it.
God, this is depressing.I poured another shot of tequila and sprinkled my pick-up with more salt, reaching for another slice of lime on the table.
That damn letter.
The tequila went down like Mexican sunshine and I had a sudden urge to just hop on a plane and fly south, spend a week on the beach drinking and baking myself in the sun. With a grimace, I got to my feet. "Back in a minute," I told PackageMan and shambled off in the direction of one of the bathrooms.
The first two were occupied, the third—really occupied. I was going to avoid that one for the rest of the party, couldn't tell what you might catch given the number of people involved. I'd stopped counting at five, but it only puzzled me until I walked into one of the bedrooms and saw the crowd in the bed. By that point, I really needed to pee and take just a minute to myself, so I simply waved as I walked by and shut myself in the ensuite at the far end of the room.
This bathroom hadn't escaped the effects of the party either, but as long as I aimed from far enough away I didn't have to touch anything. The sink appeared clean and I ran some water after to wash my hands and splash it onto my face.You'll burn in hell...The words ghosted across the mirror in front of me and I stared at myself for a moment, wondering what was so special about me to raise that kind of feeling in someone. Yeah, I was a bit of a maverick, but I wasn't the first omega in Hollywood to play against their status, though I was the first to push it as far as I had. What the fuck, right?
Dammit, I wasn't letting that stupid piece of paper ruin my night. This place was crawling with security, I was as safe here as anywhere. I needed to buck up and get over it.
Harder than it probably deserved, I slammed the lever down on the tap to shut off the water and used a face cloth to open the door and escape back out into the crowd and noise, hunting oblivion.
Tam
Ididn’t end up going home with PackageMan that night. Didn’t end up going home with anyone, actually—the party hadn’t gotten any more interesting and at about three in the morning I’d called it quits and gone home, much to Jack’s dismay.
The lack of sleep hadn’t improved my temper any and it took all my professionalism not to yell at Will when I arrived at the location shoot in the morning with ten minutes to spare, only to find out it had been pushed back by forty-five minutes. As it was, I was only snippy, until Pete and Joon, our head of security, sat me down with a cup of coffee and some kind of pastry that was large and sweet and dripping with caramel.
They’d never feed me something like that in the middle of filming if whatever they were wanting to talk about wasn’t something huge. My heart leaped up into my throat, nearly choking me. I pushed the pastry away as if I could somehow avoid the terrible truth it represented. My mind jumped to the first, the only conclusion it could—the shoots weren’t working and they were going to do a late-production sub for my character. It would be disastrous for my career. Hell, it would end it completely.
I pushed the coffee away too. “What?” I demanded and winced internally at the sharpness of my tone. That wasn’t exactly conciliatory. Already, I was off on the wrong foot here. “Sorry,” I said, more politely this time. “Kind of tired.”
Pete looked at me with sympathy, which only ratcheted up the screaming of my nerves. “We need to talk to you about something,” he said.
“Is it the shoot? Is it not working? I can fix it, whatever you need. You know what I’m capable of. Yeah, I’ve been distracted, but I will absolutely be one hundred percent present from now on,” I babbled, then shut up when Pete and Joon shared a glance. Maybe it wasn’t the shoot? Shit, was it my fucking reputation? For that, Iwouldhave a melt-down. “What?”
Joon pulled a folder out of the messenger bag on the floor beside his chair. “We need to talk to you about these letters you’ve been getting,” he began.
“That? I saw that yesterday,” I scoffed and leaned back in my chair, relief flooding my veins. “It’s nothing, just some nut job. If you’re worried that it’s bothering me, it’s not.” It wasn’tthatbig a lie. I’d already almost half-forgotten it.
They exchanged glances again, which raised a whole storm ofWhat the Fuck?inside my head.
Joon pulled a sheaf of papers out of the folder. Athicksheaf of papers. The hairs on the back of my neck stood. It was an interesting sensation, in part because I’d thought that was writer bullshit and didn’t really happen, but I almost put my hand up to feel it, it was so strange. “What’s this?” I asked cautiously.
“All the letters we’re sure came from the same guy,” Joon began. “We had a security expert go over your mail yesterday. He agrees that there’s a risk here.”
“How many letters?” I reached for my coffee. The coffee was good, like velvet on my tongue and like a good kick in the ass in my brain. I’d have to ask where they got it.Focus, Laydon.
“It’s more than a dozen,” Pete told me with solemn intensity and began laying out the sheets, one at a time, until they stretched across the length of the table twice over. “They’re showing up more often now, too.”
My heart paused, then gave a great thump that made ripples in the coffee in my hand. “Come on, guys. Grady gets more weird stuff in a week than that.” Which was true, we’d laughed about it one day during a break in shooting. My pulse began to settle and I was able to lean back in my chair with most of my usual attitude.
