Page 5 of Act Like You Don't Care
“This doesn’t feel like Grady’s stuff. We want you to have security. Personal security. On and off set.” Joon stared at me over the table.
“What?” I gaped at them. “No. Absolutely not. I do not need any more security than we already have.” I was careful, the studio was careful. I couldn’t go to the bathroom on location without someone going with me, just in case a fan got through the barriers. My condo was in a secured building and parking was all inside. I’d shopped carefully, damn it.
“It’s not an option,” Joon said gently. “I promise, we’ll hire the best. You’ll get used to it in no time.”
All I could think about was the pictures of me walking along escorted by two hulking brutes like some helpless fainting flower. They wouldn’t do this to Grady over a handful of kooky letters. Theyhadn’tdone it to Grady, obviously, or he’d be walking around with a couple of bodyguards hanging over his shoulders. So why me? Because I was omega? Not like that wouldn’t make studios think twice about hiring me if they got the idea they might have to include extra security.
I got to my feet, knocking my chair over in the process. “I’m perfectly capable of defending myself, despite what you might think. I don’t need a babysitter.” The coffee curdled in my stomach. I could see the headlines now. Omega in danger, surrounded by alphas for his own protection. The subtext being that I couldn’t do it for myself.Just fuck my whole career, why don’t you?I wasn’t sure this wasn’t worse than my original assumption about our meeting, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand here and entertain the idea. “Are we filming or what?” I slammed the coffee cup down on the table, kicked the chair out of my way, and stormed off for rehearsal.
* * *
My other co-star,Mike, who was playing my little brother, was already in the workout room for our fight practice when I got there. Off to the side, I noticed his new husband sitting in a chair borrowed from the supplies in the room, with their little boy in a stroller beside him. Mike was warming up with Colton Black, our fight coordinator, so I wandered down the side of the room to say hi to Mike’s husband, Lew.
“Hi,” I said, dropping down onto the floor.
“Hi,” he replied, still a little shy around me. Mike thought it was hilarious because he said Lew was never shy with anyone else. “How’s the shooting going?”
I hid a grin—Mike was definitely getting him trained on how to talk to actors. “Good. We were a little behind, but we got it all in only a few takes, so we managed to catch up. I’m not too late, I don’t think.”
“No,” Lew said with a smile. “We only just got here too.” His eyes drifted past me and he winced. “It does look real from the right angle.”
“That means he’s doing it right,” I said.
Colton shouted over, “Tam, you planning to warm up or planning to sprain a few things?”
“Coming,” I shouted back and made a face where Colton couldn’t see it. Just before I left, the baby offered me his rattle. “You keep it, kid,” I told him and booped him on the nose before jogging across the room.
“Don’t forget, Grady’s going to get in a few good hits before he escapes,” Colton reminded me as we finished up the warm-up.
I nodded and put everything I had into the modified punches and kicks as we ran through the scene, blending from Mike’s beating to my own rushed entrance to try to save him. In between rounds, I caught glimpses of Lew watching us closely, the baby now on his lap. He seemed happy with his life the way it was. For a moment, I tried to imagine my life like that but it felt like a pair of cheap sneakers that didn’t quite fit. I liked this better, as I blocked Colton’s attempted roundhouse with my arm and kicked him away from me for the fourth time.
Fifteen minutes before we were supposed to be in make-up, Colton called it quits. “You’re both good to go. Mike, watch that third fall. Make sure your hand hits the floor before the rest of you does. Tam, you need to pull your punches a little more, you’re going to scare the shit out of Grady.”
I laughed and made a joke and then Mike and I headed off to get cleaned up, made up, and into wardrobe. He and his husband walked ahead of me, their faces close together as they talked about whatever it was that newlyweds and newly-made parents talked about. Probably diapers and who had to empty the dishwasher.
Once upon a time, I’d almost fallen for that life. Like my cousin Rhys, who’d stubbornly gone ahead and married a Vinist. I’d dated a man who’d ‘left the Garden’, gotten engaged, started saving for a wedding. I hadn’t gone so far as to marry into the religion, or even get married, but my ex had been persistent about proper omega behavior at the end of our relationship, until I’d finally had enough and walked out on him. I’d heard since that he’d decided to go back to his church, back to being a full-blown Vinist, so maybe that had been his plan all along.
What if the letters were from him? It sounded like some of the crap he’d spout whenever I hadn’t been omega enough at home for him. Whenever I’d fixed something myself, or left him to cook his own meals because I was out auditioning or networking to get a part. Shit, I needed to tell Joon.
Could it really be that simple?
* * *
Joon foundme while the stagehands were resetting the props between the first and second take. Mike was off in a chair getting his make-up redone and I was hanging out by craft service and wondering if I had time to eat one of the chocolate avocado puddings before it was my turn in the make-up chair. There was nothing like being tossed around the set like a bean bag to wake up a guy’s appetite. Especially since I hadn’t been up to eating breakfast before I came to work.
“Will said you thought of something,” Joon said, casually surveying the offerings in front of us.
Fuck it, I can eat fast.I grabbed one of the puddings and a biodegradable spoon made of wheat from the table. “Yeah. I had an ex. He was a lapsed Vinist when I knew him, but I heard he went back into the garden after we broke up. That last letter kind of reminded me of him, of what he was like toward the end.”
Joon nodded and got my ex’s details from me, or what I remembered of them anyway. “I’ll have someone look into this.”
“Thanks,” I said and we parted ways, me to find a chair to eat my snack in, him to start the search for my ex.
Grady pulled up a chair next to mine. “That was a good fight. I thought you were really going for me at first.”
I laughed. “Colton said something about that. You and Mike were good too.”
Grady shrugged and, almost involuntarily, my eyes were drawn to the spread of his shoulders. Mike was good-looking, I could admit that, but Grady was something else entirely. All brute power, with the face of that one teacher in high school that everyone wanted to bone. He could play almost anything with looks like that and, while I made it a rule not to fish in the pond I was working in, the temptation he presented was undeniable. Add into it that he was a genuinely nice guy, funny, and had almost no ego at all and he was perfect husband material. His fanbase thought the same thing, with every second comment about him being along the lines of wanting to take him off the market, but he just shrugged it all off with a smile and a joke.
