Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story (7 page)

“I never meant for you to feel that way.” I pinched the bridge of my nose with my good hand. “I never meant for any of this to happen.” I’d hoped to make Sarah understand, the but longer this conversation went on, the worse a hole I dug.

She laughed then, a cynical sound, but didn’t respond otherwise. Then she glanced my way again but quickly dragged her eyes back to the road. I ran my hands angrily through my hair and dropped them in front of me. I gasped when my knee collided with my rapidly-swelling hand.

“You’re going to need to get that looked at.”

“I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

“Good.”

She drove in silence for several more miles, and I wondered if she knew where she was going. Eventually, seeing the sign for the Pacific Coast Highway, she took the road north toward Malibu. When eventually she pulled off the road toward Zuma Beach, I was happy to see she’d chosen to take us somewhere we could finally hash this all out in private. Zuma had the added benefit of being neutral ground since we’d never been here together.

Sarah killed the engine and turned in her seat to face me, her back pushed up against the door. I mimicked her position on the opposite side of the car.

“You wanted to talk, so talk.”

“I’ve missed you,” I all but whispered.

“No, you don’t get to say that. You don’t get to sit there and tell me how you miss me, or how hard this has been on you when you’re the one that abandoned me in the middle of the night You didn’t even call me to find out how I was doing! You don’t get to try and make me feel sorry for you. You get to explain and that is all.” As she spoke, she sat forward in her seat, each word punctuated by a jab of her finger. They say redheads are feisty and Sarah certainly remained true to the stereotype. Against my will, a small smile tugged at my lips.

“That’s one of the things I love—”

She hollered at me to shut up before I could finish my sentence. “Don’t you dare use that word with me.” And then she burst into great big sobbing tears, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Sarah hated crying because she thought it made her look weak, but she was the furthest thing from that. She was strength and vulnerability rolled into one strong, formidable package. Still, her tears felled me since I’d been the one to cause them this time. Not her mom, not the insane hours she worked, not even her favorite Kleenex commercial. Me. It was all
my
fault.

“Don’t cry.” I put my good hand on her thigh and she flinched. I suspected if she’d had any more room in the cabin to move away, she would have used it.

Since there was nowhere for her leg to go, instead she flung my hand away. “You don’t get to touch me anymore.”

“Don’t say that,” I implored.

“As if I’d let you touch me again …” She sucked in a lungful of air. “Not after the last time.”

“Touching your leg in comfort is not the same thing and you know it.”

“There you go again, not even able to say it. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Say it Cameron, ‘When we fucked.’”

I grimaced. “It shouldn’t have happened like that.”

“Like what? Me drunk and begging you to fuck me?” Her voice had risen to a scream and her breathing had turned erratic.

Despite her best effort to always appear in complete control of her emotions, I knew she was close to breaking down. But just as quickly as she’d seemed to lose it, she took a deep breath, blinked, and then when she opened her eyes, her mask was back in place.

“No, like us both drunk and not considering the ramifications of our actions.”

She swiped at her drying tears and I was thankful she’d stopped crying. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do when a woman cried or that I thought less of her for having done so. It was just that when Sarah cried I couldn’t take it. It’d always been that way. The first time I’d watched her battle her tears had been when she’d mistakenly answered her phone and had to spend the next twenty minutes being degraded by her mother. I’d wanted to scream as her eyes had filled with shimmering, unshed tears. Even now, my chest physically ached when I thought about her being in pain. That her most recent anguish was caused by me made things so much worse.

“Oh please. I was fully sober by the time we made it to my bedroom. I knew exactly what I was doing and what I asked for.”

When my eyes grew wide with shock, a look of surprise crossed her face.

“Oh my god,” she whispered. “You were still drunk?”

I swallowed. This was the confession I’d been dreading most. “Yeah. I thought we both were.”

She groaned and covered her face with her hands. “Now would be a perfect time for the earth to open up and swallow me whole. The mortification I feel right this minute might be worse than what I experienced when you walked out on me.”

Shit. Fuck. I’d thought we were both blitzed out of our brains the entire night but it appeared that assumption had been wrong. Dead wrong. “You were sober.” It wasn’t a question.

“By that point, yes. At first, I was shitfaced, true, but when you held my face in your hands and caressed my cheek and I realized what was about to happen, I don’t know what sort of chemistry took over, but then I wasn’t quite so drunk anymore. It’s almost like my brain short-circuited and when it reset, became crystal clear. By the time we made it to my bed, I was perfectly sober. Everything that happened between us happened because I wanted it to.” She took a deep breath and then continued, “But apparently you didn’t.”

Holy fucking shit. I’d been operating under some very misguided notions about what had taken place that night. If she was telling me the truth, and I really thought she was, I hadn’t taken advantage of her. She hadn’t given herself to me without realizing what she was doing. Her mind hadn’t been incapacitated by the tequila we’d consumed.

That changes everything, doesn’t it?

“I thought … I didn’t mean … I never wanted to do that.” I couldn’t speak, my words were an incoherent babbling.

Unfortunately, in my inability to form a complete sentence had her misconstruing the words I had managed to stutter and it was bad. “Do what? You never wanted to have sober sex with me? Is
that
it?” Her words dripped with venom.

I didn’t want to act the injured party here, but the fact that she could think for even one second that I would use her like that made my blood boil. She was the best thing in my life, the most important person I had in L.A., and never in a million years would I have fucked her like it didn’t mean anything.

But that’s exactly what you did,
an ugly voice in my head sneered.

“No, god no. Sarah, if you don’t believe anything else I tell you, please believe that.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to say this entire time? That what we did was a mistake? That it never should have happened? Why is that? Is it because you’re ashamed that someone like you would stoop to being with someone like me? Because if that’s it, you can go fuck yourself.” She crossed her arms angrily over her chest while she waited for me to defend myself.

“When …” I stopped and looked at her solemnly. “When you freaked out about the condom, it snapped me out of … this daze, I guess you could call it. Up until then, I’d pretty much been operating on autopilot. I just assumed you were too.”

Shit. That hadn’t come out right. My whole apology was getting worse and worse by the second.

“What I mean to say is that I hated myself because I thought I took advantage of you. It’s why I couldn’t talk about it and why I’ve stayed away. I’ve been so ashamed over what I did.”

“What do you mean?” Her voice was barely audible.

“I never wanted it to be like that. I respect you too much. All night I told myself I was treading on dangerous ground and I needed to be careful. I tried so hard not to give in to what I felt because I didn’t want to risk our friendship. But no matter what argument I came up with, I just as easily tossed it away. Even as I did it, I was pissed at myself for kissing you, let alone … everything else. I felt like I took advantage of the situation, especially since I don’t normally never had sex without a condom but there I was, sliding into you like it was my right.” I swallowed. “I thought I took advantage of
you
and it made me sick.”

When I quit speaking she started crying again. Thank god it wasn’t ugly, chest wracking sobs like before because I didn’t think I could handle those right now. This was a slow progression of quiet tears cascading down her face. Quickly she swiped them away.

“You didn’t take advantage of me Cameron,” she whispered. “That night I wanted you like I’ve never wanted anything else in my life.”

My shock must not have registered because she still seemed unsure and refused to look me in the eye when she continued, her words a raw mixture of hope and anguish. “I don’t know how you didn’t know. Maybe between the two of us I’m the better actor.” She laughed, a tinkling little sound, and something tight and black unfurled in my chest. She sucked in a deep breath and captured my gaze. “The truth is, I’m in love with you.”

She dropped her eyes and the car went silent except for our labored breathing, the windows long turned to fog-covered glass. I could hear my heart beating in my ears, feel it hammering in my chest.

“Please look at me.”

“I don’t know what I’ll see if I do and that terrifies me.”

“Sarah,” I begged.

Slowly, hesitantly, she met my eyes and the fierceness of her expression stole my breath. Her own hitched and she licked her lips.

“Oh Sarah,” I said, my tone playfully exasperated. “How did you not know?”

She swallowed. “Know what?” The hope in her voice nearly undid me.

A small smile spread across my face and I leaned forward to rest my hand on her leg. I shook my head and chuckled at the direction the night – morning now – had taken. “I’ve been in love with you since that first night at the diner.”

She gasped, and like she’d done earlier, brought her hand to her mouth. “No …” she whispered, her tone unbelieving.

I’d prevented myself from imagining how this conversation might go, too afraid that I’d lay myself bare only for her to tell me she didn’t feel the same way. So many times I’d stopped my mind from picturing her face the first time I told her I loved her. I hadn’t dared let myself hope she could ever feel the same way. But now I had more than hope: I had the words.

“You should see your face,” I remarked, completely awed, before crawling across the car to plant a loving kiss on her forehead. My left hand splayed flat on the window behind her, while my injured right hand hang limp over the steering wheel. When she didn’t respond, I continued kissing her – her cheeks, her nose, her eyelids – tender little touches that lead me to her lips.

“Kiss me Sarah,” I muttered from between our touching mouths.

So she did. God, how she kissed me.

I put all of my longing
and desire into that kiss, as all of my joy at his confession backed my efforts. After several passes of his lips against mine, I pushed him back onto his own seat, following ungracefully in his wake. I banged my knee against the center console and caught my pant leg on the shifter before finally, fumblingly, straddling his body. Miraculously, I’d never broken the kiss. Not even once.

After several more seconds of what was quickly becoming the single best kiss of my life, I tore my lips from Cameron’s and rested my palms on his cheeks. “You infuriating, maddening, beautiful man,” I said, planting several more kisses all over his face. “You don’t know what this last month has been like for me. I missed you so much. I’ve cried myself to sleep wishing that I could do things over, that
we
could do things over. I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’ve missed you too, love.” He laughed again, a happy, wondrous sound to my ears then he shook his head. “You really have no idea how many times I’ve had to stop myself from calling you that, the word just on the tip of my tongue.”

I dropped my hands from his face, the reality of our conversation washing over me. I loved him. He loved me. I smiled a stupid, gleeful grin. I felt like the world had tipped on its axis and everything was right again.

No, better than right. Everything was perfect.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I wondered. “We could have saved ourselves so much lost time if you’d only just told me how you felt.”

He put his hands on my waist and I was reminded of the last time he’d done the same thing. A jolt of pure lust snaked down my body to that damp, needy place only he could assuage. My breath hitched and my body went soft with want, pliant in his hands. I wanted to ease the ache between my thighs but we were in the middle of a conversation so I told myself to hold my horses.

His own need riding him, Cameron had his own ideas about how to handle those horses. His fingers tightened on my hips and he tugged me toward him and then dragged me back along his sock, hard and unyielding beneath me. I closed my eyes on a moan as he repeated the movement. I didn’t know how long I would last.

He claimed my mouth lovingly, reverentially, his worshipful desire evident in the languid, sensuous kiss he delivered. As our tongues danced, the building crescendo of my orgasm took over and my hips undulated over the length of his bulging cock. When I cried out, he surged up against me, his body telling me what he needed better than words ever could.

I tore my shirt off over my head and reached behind me to unclasp my bra. At the same time, Cameron pulled his own shirt off and with only his one good hand struggled to undo the button of his jeans. I tried to get my pants off but ended up hitting my head on the top of the car before falling backwards into the dash, smacking my spine. We both erupted into fits of laughter as we realized just how
not
sexy our situation had become.  

“We don’t have to …” he started to say while at the same time I blurted, “Help me out of these, would you?”

He laughed again and leaned forward to give me a hard, quick kiss before dropping the seat back. That gave me more room to maneuver – albeit ungracefully – out of my remaining clothes before helping him slide his pants down his thighs. Some more shimmying on my end commenced and after several floundering moments we were both finally, blissfully naked. Sweating and breathing like we’d just ran a marathon, but wondrously naked nonetheless.

The time it had taken for us to remove our clothes had cooled our ardor, which forced us to acknowledge what we were about to do instead of rushing into it headlong. We stared at each other wide-eyed, evaluating what we were about to do and how it would change everything. We weren’t drunk and this hadn’t accidentally happened because the alcohol made us more uninhibited than normal. Us being naked together in the front seat of my car was a deliberate, calculated choice. No one –
ahem!
– could claim later they didn’t know what they were doing.

“Tell me you want this,” he whispered, taking his cock in hand and rubbing his hand down its hard length. The motion drew my attention, captivated me.

I shook my head, but didn’t move.

He exhaled, relieved, and by the lights of the dash, I saw his face was filled with wonder and love. That raw, naked emotion rocked something inside of me. Never in a million years would I have thought we’d be together like this, but it was happening and despite how ridiculous it seemed, I wouldn’t have changed it for the entire world.

“There’s a condom in my wallet,” he said, recalling the horrible moment that started everything. I found his jeans sitting atop my pants and pulled the condom from his wallet.

“I can’t believe you came prepared,” I admonished, a smile lessening my rebuke.

“Hopeful, more like,” he responded with a smirk of his own. “I planned to tell you how I really feel about you, and yeah, I hoped you’d be receptive.”

“You’re lucky I have a weakness for you, Cameron Scott.” I ripped the foil open with my teeth and taking the condom from its wrapper, pinched the tip and rested the coiled latex on the head of his shaft. He hissed and his eyes screwed shut while his breathing came in rapid bursts. My own breathing had escalated as well, matching him gasp for gasp. Once his enormous cock was safely sheathed, I positioned myself over him and set the head against my slick opening.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

Our eyes locked, I told him the truest thing I’d ever known. “I love you with all of my soul.” Slowly, I lowered myself onto him and my whole body shivered as he filled me to the hilt. I stopped for a moment to savor the feel of him stretching me to perfection.

“You’re everything to me,” he whispered, running his hands over my body and then he moaned my name when I started to grind my body against his. Clutching me against him in a tight embrace, he thrust up and into me over and over again. Our joining was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I could feel him in every cell of my body, touching me, claiming me … loving me. I begged him for more, told him how good he felt. When my orgasm hit it was as if I’d been knocked outside of myself and as I watched from above, my euphoria swelled and exploded and poured out of me and into him. He drove up into me three times in rapid succession and then joined me in bliss.

We sat, our bodies connected, for several catching our breath and savoring the afterglow of our lovemaking. Eventually, he pulled me from the crook of his neck so that we were eye to eye. Pushing my disheveled hair away from my face, he kissed me tenderly. “I love you so much,” he whispered and it was as if the words instantly filled in a missing piece of my soul. Completed me.

We drove home sated and replete with our shared love. He held my hand and I stole fleeting glances at him every so often, hoping to cement the calm, happy look on his face into my memory forever. When I pulled into the garage we sat in companionable silence, not yet ready to break the intimacy of the moment we’d shared at the beach. Not wanting to let reality intrude.

We climbed out of the car and I retrieved my laptop and dry cleaning from the trunk before opening the door that led into my kitchen. Instead of following me in, Cameron stood immobile on the passenger side of the Passat, watching me intently.

“What?” I asked.

Bemusement colored his features. “Nothing,” he eventually responded.

“Suit yourself.” I turned to walk through the door.

“Sarah, wait!” He ran around the car and pulled me in to a tight hug. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I just want you to know that.”

His words were sincere, and while I loved hearing them, I was also overcome by a strong sense of foreboding.

We hadn’t had a chance to talk about him being cast as Xander and how it affected his career moving forward. After the night we’d just shared, I had no doubt Cameron loved me as much as I loved him, but what I couldn’t be sure of was that he’d always believe the words he’d just said. I worried that soon I’d be forced to compete with the glamour of Hollywood and over time I’d be found wanting. I silently prayed he would stay the same person I had fallen in love with, that he wouldn’t let the allure of stardom turn him into a different person. That he wouldn’t see what his life could be without me and choose to embark on that different path, one that would take him far away from me forever.

I could have asked him then how he felt about his sudden fame, how he reacted to what people were saying, but the conversation could just as easily wait until morning when we weren’t exhausted by our emotions and the late hour. Nothing was bound to change over the course of next few hours.

Pushing those dark thoughts away, I reached for his hand and smiled up at him, all the love I had for him shining in my eyes. “I know. Now let’s go to bed.”

I led him through the house into my bedroom, Duke following happily in our wake. I dropped my bag inside the door and hung my clothes in the closet before undressing and climbing under crisp, cool cotton sheets. Cameron took off his clothes, and smiling, shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe his luck. Once we were both under the covers, he pulled me up against him and wrapped his arm around my waist. As I held his bruised hand up to lay a kiss on it, Duke jumped onto the bed, walked in a circle three times, and settled down for his own slumber at our feet.

I closed my eyes on a happy sigh. Yup, everything was perfect.