Page 40 of Dream (Fighting Fate)

I frowned. I didn’t want them to win. “Do you think if I flashed my cleavage at him, he’d miss?”

Josh spat his beer out, spraying it all over the bar top, Dean laughed, clapping his hands together in encouragement, and Corey smiled like he thought that was a great idea. Aiden, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes, looking from the white ball, then up to me and back again.

I moved slightly, playing with the top of my tank top. Loud laughter came from the other side of the room, letting me know that Lance, Cain, and Jace were all now fully engrossed in our game.

I heard Josh groan. “Fucking hell. Just kill me now.”

Aiden took the shot, and to my amusement, missed. His eyes narrowed fully when he straightened, and he squared his gaze on me. “You . . .”

I pressed my lips together contritely and gave him a sheepish glance. “I’m sorry. That was mean.”

“No, no,” Corey said, moving to the table. “All’s fair in love and pool.”

I glanced over at Josh, to find his arms folded on the bar, and his head buried on top of them. I hoped he wasn’t mad.

Corey sank the rest of our colored balls and tried for the black, but missed. He assured me it was in a pretty tricky place for Dean to get a good shot at it, though. And he was right. Dean hit it hard, making it bounce from one side to the other, leaving it just out from the corner. I’m pretty sure for anyone else it’d be an easy shot, but I had no idea.

Corey pointed out where the white ball needed to hit the black in order for it to go down, so I lined it up as best I could. My excitement made me hit the ball harder than I should have, though, and it bounced next to the pocket and flew toward the other end of the table. I sighed in disappointment, but then Corey yelled out, and I turned to see it trickling closer and closer to the end pocket before dropping in.

My mouth dropped open with shock. “Does that count?” I asked, not really sure. I mean, it wasn’t the pocket I’d been going for.

He grinned. “It sure does.”

Throwing my arms up in the air in a victorious V, I turned in a slow circle. It had been a fluke, but I would take it. As I handed the stick to Corey, I filed the memory carefully away. These were the moments I wanted to look back on when the summer was done.

Chapter 24

Josh

All the guys had started ribbing me the minute Liv left to go back to her aunt’s. I hadn’t realized they’d get so much amusement out of my discomfort, but apparently, it was funny for a movie star to need a cold shower. They loved her, though. All it had taken was one game of pool. She was that incredible. I didn’t know how I was supposed to make myself give her up.

As I sat back on the deck, happy the guys had been able to drop in like that, I sighed with contentment. As much as I loved my job, it was times like this that really made me feel alive.

But then my cell had to go and ring, bringing reality back like a slap in the face. I was ready to ignore it, but when I saw Lucas’s name on the screen, I laughed.

Sliding my thumb across the screen, I stood and walked over to the rail. “Lucas! What are you doing, man?”

Lucas’s voice came through the speaker, loud and teasing. “Hey, hot shot. Long time, no see. How’s things been?”

Lucas was the first real friend I’d made in this industry. When I was first starting out, Lucas helped me out when no one else would. With both our schedules packed tight these days, the chances for us to catch up were too few and far between. “Yeah, you know. Good, but fucking busy.”

He laughed loudly. “I’m hearing you!”

At twenty-two, he wasn’t that much older than me. But he’d been where I was now and had successfully come out the other side. He was now a major contender for most A-list parts, and got to pick and choose which movies he wanted to do. Action movies excited him the most, but he was careful to keep his foot firmly in a few different genres to ensure his fan base was kept broad.

“So, how’s it all going, man? Greyson playing nice?” I said, looking out at the ocean. Greyson was the agent we both used.

He sighed. “Greyson’s been fine. It’s fucking Nicko that’s been giving me shit. He won’t stop harping on about my fucking image.”

Nicko was Lucas’s manager. I raised my eyebrows at that. “You know you can’t win, man. If you stay out of the spotlight, you’ll only get ribbed for not getting enough publicity.”

He growled. “I know. It’s really fucking getting to me at the moment, and this movie is making it ten times worse. I mean, it’s a great script, and I think it’s gonna do really well, but there’s so much public interest in it with Ana and Charli and Meg out there flaunting their shit all the time. For fuck’s sake, if you read all the gossip sites, I think I’m averaging about ten different fucks a day.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I knew what the bloggers were saying about him. In the eyes of the media, he was the definition of a manwhore. Truth was, though, he wasn’t that much different than I was. Sure, we both picked up girls occasionally and enjoyed ourselves, but we sure as shit didn’t pick up ten different girls a day. Hell, I didn’t think I’d even done two different ones in one day. “A lot of that has to do with the movie, though, don’t you think?” I said, leaning my elbows on the railing.

The movie he’d just begun to shoot, Date Night, was more or less a romantic comedy. It was loosely based on the TV series The Bachelor, and there were a lot of female roles that had been cast to some pretty high-profile actresses. The problem with that, of course, was that most high-profile actresses didn’t like to be outdone by their competition, especially Ana Tate, Charli Donovan, and Meg Prescott.

And that was where Lucas’s problems lay. He was rumored to have slept with each and every one of the female cast members. And there were a fucking lot of them in that movie.

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