TWENTY-EIGHT
CHRISTINE
I lope through the forest,willing the scent of decaying leaves to clear my head.
Fuck, I don’t know how Morgan did it. Didn’t she say she spent like two weeks with Jamie right under her nose, his suppressants failing?
It’s hardly been two hours and…
Fuck.
Morgan also didn’t take Jamie back to her hotel room and fuck him, expecting that to make anything better.
Last night was a mistake. I really thought… what, that he was going to sleep on the couch? Or something?
You didn’t think, Tee. That’s your problem.
I was…soclose to tearing off his clothes in the ravine. To havingwaytoo many questions to answer from the rest of the crew.
My mouth is still watering.
I really did mean to check on him from afar. He’d been pulling at my nose all morning, but his scent had moved away from heat. Just confirming that he was alright satisfied my alpha instincts. If he’s happier not seeing me, that’s fine by me.
The only thing that kept me from pouncing on Mylo was the lingering scent of his fear—that sharp, burnt edge of visceral terror. Even the memory makes me shudder.
I was already running when it hit me. Something about how he pushed off on that first jump was just…wrong. Maybe I smelled the heat on him and couldn’t help myself, maybe I made a game-time calculation that it’d fuck with his run, maybe I had a premonition, maybe my scent is what made him actually fall.
I don’t know and I don’t really care. If I’d been wrong, I’d have been left standing at the bottom of the ravine like a noble idiot. No sweat.
But as he fell a foot past the blue crash mats that had been placed based on his first two runs, failing to predict his change of course, all I could think was:
I’m here.
So it feels pretty fucking wrong to walk away now, but I have to.
I should be getting back to my own job.
But right now, I just need to getaway. Away from his scent, away from the growing unease when it’s not in my nose.
My body just moves.
I emerge from the trees onto the black sand beach, alone with the chill wind and the circling gulls overhead.
The ocean washes my nose clean. I walk over to a boulder jutting out from the waves, clamber up, and perch atop it, feet kicked out to dangle over the water.
This is one of our last days shooting out here, and I try to not think about that. Try to stave off that suffocating feeling, like there are sandbags piled on my chest.
I meant what I said to Mylo this morning: I don’t want to be stuck with him any more than he wants to be stuck with me.
It’s just that not all of my emotions agree with each other.
I find a pebble on the boulder’s rough surface—more a chip of rock, really—and throw it as far as I can. It creates the briefest flicker as it disturbs the water, then the waves swallow the ripples.
I can’t believe that of all nights, last night is the one where I could actually sleep. Even as I assure myself I just needed to get laid, and it doesn’t matter who, doubt lingers at the edge of my mind like an ever-present shadow.
As long as I keep moving, it can’t catch me.
That’s how I’ve gotten this far.
