Page 64 of Shine For Me

Fox

After more than five weeks of filming in Wilmington, the entire production picks up and heads to the Outer Banks for the final twelve days of shooting. The drive takes much longer than I thought, but June and I travel together in a chauffeured car. We spend part of the trip learning our lines—June has been recording all the changes for me—but we both end up falling asleep after an hour or so. No surprise, considering how brutal our filming schedule has been lately.

I wake up about an hour before our arrival to a flurry of notifications on my phone. I scramble to silence it, hoping not to wake up June on the seat next to me, but I’m not fast enough.

“Group thread?” She asks through a yawn.

“How’d you guess? Could it be the fact my siblings and cousins have been texting me nonstop all day?”

She smiles, but there’s concern in her sleepy eyes. “You’re really bummed out, aren’t you?”

“Nah,” I say. “I’m the lucky one here.” I gesture at the hired car driving us to the coast. “I mean, I get to go live in a swanky beach house, just a few blocks from the ocean, rent free, for the next two weeks. And my insanely sexy girlfriend will be right next door. What do I have to complain about?”

Her cheeks get all pink, the way they do every time I use the word girlfriend, but she doesn’t accept my brush off. “You’re still allowed to complain. Your entire family is hanging out in your favorite place this week, Fox. I know you miss them.”

I do miss them. A lot. This is the first time in my life I’ve had to miss our annual summer trip to Tennessee. My mom and dad own an old farm house on a good bit of land where they lived before getting married and right after Rose was born. Then my uncles bought the neighboring land and built a huge log home. The entire extended family has gathered there for a week every year since I was born. Kayaking, swimming in the creek, late night bonfires, playing board games and riding ATVs with my cousins—it’s always been my favorite part of summer.

It feels strange to know they’re all there right now without me.

“I’m sorry you weren’t able to get away for a few days,” June says, reaching across the bench seat to take my hand.

“Me too,” I admit. I had hoped I might get to fly out for at least a night, but we’re behind schedule and there just isn’t any time. Rain in Wilmington made our last few days there stressful as we were scheduled to shoot street scenes in town. We were supposed to head to the coast for our beach scenes two days ago, but that got pushed back, too. Now we’re going to need to cram everything in to the next twelve days. The crew is stressed. Gabe is a nightmare to be around. And everyone is getting pressure from the studio to finish on time.

So no quick trip to the mountains for me. And it’s looking like our time on the beach—which I’d really been looking forward to—will be less about relaxing in the sand and more about working our asses off to make up for lost time.

Of course, the woman sitting next to me makes it all a heck of a lot more bearable.

The last few weeks with June have been pretty damn amazing. Yes, we’ve been busy as hell, and our schedules haven’t always matched up. There have been plenty of days where we barely saw each other, despite our neighboring hotel rooms. But there were also some perfect moments mixed into all the madness of a movie set. Sneaking out to share lunch on a picnic blanket on a tiny scrap of lawn next to the sound stage parking lot. Secret meetings in her dressing room in between shoots. Sleepy mornings waking up in bed together before our call time. A perfect afternoon off exploring the city—we had lunch at a hole-in-the-wall bar then stumbled on a dusty used bookstore, which made June so happy you would have thought we’d found buried treasure. I spent an hour trailing her around the creaky, overstuffed shelves, holding her books while she kept adding “just one more” to the pile.

I’ve always enjoyed hanging out with June, both at work and off. But I had no idea how much better it would be to spend time with her now that I’m allowed to pull her into quiet corners to steal a kiss. Or hold her hand. Or stare at her happy face while she exclaims over a stack of ratty old paperbacks—there’s something about June Cain when she’s fully, unabashedly happy that just gets to me. Honestly, I’m not sure I’d change a single minute of the last few crazy, over-worked weeks.

“Hey.” I tug on her hands, pulling her a little closer on the bench seat. “I might be disappointed not to be in Tennessee, but I’m pretty happy with the company I have here.”

And there’s that blush again. God, she’s cute. I wonder if the people who see her perfect face on big screens across the country have any idea how much more beautiful she is in person, just like this—a little shy, a little awkward, no fancy clothes or make-up. Not glamourous. Not perfect. But so real.

“I promise we’ll still have a good time on the beach,” she says. “I have plans.”

My eyebrows go up. “You have plans, huh?”

She gives me a flirty little flutter of her eyelashes that makes me want to pull her into my lap and kiss the hell out of her. “I do. Big plans.”

“What kind of plans?”

“If I tell you it will ruin the surprise.”

“Hmm.” I study her face. “Please say some of these plans involve you in a bikini.”

Her eyes flash with amusement as she arches an eyebrow. “What part ofsurpriseare you not understanding, Fox?”

I’m debating whether or not to try to coerce it out of her—one thing I didn’t know about June before I started getting her naked is that she has absolutely no tolerance for tickling—when June lets out a little noise of pleased surprise and presses her face to the window. “Look!”

I lean over her to see a stretch of blue ahead of us—the Atlantic Ocean. “We must be getting close now.”

The rest of the drive provides nice views of the ocean as we make our way through the little towns that dot the barrier island, the ocean off to our left. I’m surprised when the driver pulls up to a house directly on the beach—the whole cast and crew are supposed to be staying in rental properties a few blocks away. But June just gives me a wink as she moves to climb out of the car.

“Is this the surprise?” I ask, scrambling after her.

“Maybe,” she calls over her shoulder.