Page 35 of Act Like You Don't Care
I glanced up at him, startled, and froze for a second before setting out the second shoe for him.
"Sorry," Tam said quietly. "That kind of talk is for public spaces. I get the lines between the real me and the role I’m playing mixed up sometimes. Hazards of the trade."
I forced what I thought was a pretty good smile and shook my head. "No problem at all. I'm glad you're taking it seriously enough that lines are a little blurred. Makes you believable."
He took a deep breath and smiled brilliantly back at me. "Hard work and dedication." He jumped to his feet and reached for the battered jean jacket he'd hung over the back of the hotel room's chair last night. "We better get going if we're going to grab anything to eat before we start blocking out the shots."
I reached for my own jacket and gestured toward the door. "After you."
Miles
We heard nothing from Tam’s stalker for a week. My blood pressure started rising as we hit days four and five because the only conclusion that made sense was that he was coming here, looking for Tam. Dad pulled half of the L.A. perimeter and sent them out to us to hang around the edges of the film crew, watching for anyone trying to get to either Tam or me.
As for me, I spent the whole time carefully not telling Tam that it was worrying me. He was tense enough over the wait, as his daily question, “Has anything happened yet?” showed. So every time he asked, I’d shake my head and tell him there was nothing to worry about, that we’d have plenty of warning before the guy got anywhere near him. His belief in me began to fade over time, but I held firm against his frustration, fully aware that at some point, I was probably going to get an up-close-and-personal view of the famous Laydon temper that the tabloids talked about. The signs were all there.
I just hoped it could hold off until we were done filming here and I could tuck him away someplace safe.
They were filming in an older section of the city, with rough-looking buildings and shops that didn’t appear to have changed since the nineteen-twenties. I sat with the location unit’s director because it kept me close to where Tam was. Will hadn’t come with us, but there was another young man who seemed to filling his role. I’d quietly found out his name and where he was from and passed it on to Jim to make sure he’d been background-checked by our own firm, not just the studio.
Tam was wearing a bunch of make-up again to make him look beaten-up. The current scene had him striding grimly down the street, one hand hiding a prop gun under the long canvas jacket wardrobe had put him in. He passed two storefronts, then turned into a third one and Dominic yelled, "Cut!"
The almost eerie silence of the filming disappeared immediately in the melee of barked orders from the film crew and the grips as they began pulling everything back in case the director wanted to do the scene again. Tam came back out of the shop and followed Dominic over to the monitors to look at the shot.
I jumped out of my chair and gestured for Tam to take it.
“I’m fine,” he said and waved me off.
“I’ve been sitting all day,” I told him. “Relax while you can.” On top of the worry about the stalker, I was also starting to worry about him on a personal level. We still had two days to go on the location shoot and they’d been pushing the schedule harder and harder. Tam was getting up early, working late, eating whatever could be jammed into his mouth in between scenes, and when he wasn’t working he was fretting about the lack of contact by the stalker. This morning he’d walked into a door he simply hadn’t noticed and I could only be grateful that he wasn’t driving—the thought of him wrapped around a tree or a streetlight made me physically sick, beyond the professional nervousness that came with the job.
Tam shrugged and sat, his eyes closing briefly. I moved to stand behind him, my eyes on the crowd around us, my hands working the knots out of the muscles in his shoulders. He hadn’t been this tense in LA, but then again, he hadn’t been working eighteen-hour days either.
His co-star, Mike, wandered up to us, dressed for his next scene, which would come after the next one Tam was shooting. He had left his husband and baby home—smart move. “You enjoying the shoot?” he asked me.
“It’s interesting,” I said neutrally. Tam made a noise that wasn’t quite a sigh and his head drooped a little, then he snapped it back upright and all the knots were back in his shoulders. “Too much?” I asked him.
“You’re going to put me to sleep,” he complained, but not like it was serious. He reached up to pat one of my hands, then sighed when Dominic gave the signal to pack up and move on to the little convenience store two blocks away from where they’d be doing the interior shots that followed this one.
I held out a hand to help him out of the chair, which—as I expected—he ignored, but then he came over to lean against me for a moment. I pressed my lips against his forehead, a move that was coming much too easily to me, and said, “I saw a couple of little restaurants if you want something to eat.”
Tam shook his head. “I’m good. I think we’re breaking for lunch after the scene in the farmhouse.” He raised a hand to his face, grimaced, and put it down again. “Itchy.”
“Not much longer, if I understand the schedule right.” As comfort went, it wasn’t much, but Tam still sighed and took a step back to stretch.
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to the rest of the scenes,” he said. “Why don’t you check out the restaurants while we film in the store and tell me where you’re taking me to lunch?” He sent me a cocky grin, accompanied by a wink.
I smiled and shook my head. “You know I can’t do that,” I said, hating myself for even having to say it.
Just as I expected, it ruined his comfortable, slightly flirtatious mood. His face drew down into those hard lines that spoke to the effort he was putting into not making a public scene, but his only response was to nod and turn sharply away to scan the surroundings.
“There’s a little pizza joint that looks good,” Mike offered. “I haven’t had pizza in ages. Lew took it off my menu when the studio asked me to lose five pounds.”
I rubbed at the back of my neck and stared incredulously at him. “I don’t understand how either of you needs to lose weight. I worry about Tam blowing away every time the wind comes up.”
The omega laughed and turned back to us, the strained look mostly gone, blown away almost like my fictional Tam. “Flattery will get you… well, I’ll let you find out.”
Mike laughed and scuffed his foot on the ground, then grinned up at me conspiratorially. I shook my head and started to walk over to Tam, but my phone rang with Dad’s ringtone. I reached Tam just as I finished saying, “Hello?”
Tam draped himself over my shoulder and, to anyone else, it would have looked like he was watching the action around us as the crew tore down all the equipment, getting it ready to be trucked down to the next location. In reality, I could feel him listening to my side of the conversation, straining to make out what my father was saying.
