SHANE

 

May 30th

KBC Studios

Los Angeles, CA

 

 

“Again!” Sutton cries.

I give her a meager head start before launching after her. She’s short but she’s fast. She sprints across the fake grass that’s too green for reality with fierce determination that nearly leaves me lagging behind her. Nearly. I use the length of my legs and the strength coiled inside them to overtake her, passing her at the last second before we turn and run back to the starting point. We’ve been at this for the last hour. My lungs are screaming. My legs are on fire.

It feels so good I can hardly stand it.

Sutton is true to her word. Since we slacked off yesterday, we’re working twice as hard today. I feel like I’m being punished, but I like it. I like running with her. She’s a competitor, like me. She wants to be the best at everything she does and she will not rest until she’s beat me back to the line at least once. I could let her win and end this whenever I want, but I’m no sucker. I don’t let people win and she wouldn’t be happy if I did. No, this ends when she wins for real or we both die trying.

“Again!”

I chase her across the faux field with a smile turning into a grimace. We’re in the same park where we filmed the opening scene for DNA. It’s on the KBC lot. It’s been in a hundred TV shows and movies, shot from different angles and dressed up to look new every time. It’s deserted now, becoming our own personal playground. And when Sutton kills me with these sprints, they can bury me here.

“I give!” I shout. I limp to a stop, my right foot hovering above the ground. “I give! Fuck! I give!”

Sutton slows, jogging back to me. “What’s wrong?”

“Cramp,” I growl through gritted teeth. “Hamstring.”

“Get on the ground. Put your foot in the air.”

I do as she says. She straddles my leg still on the ground and pushes against my foot held in the air.

I growl as it painfully stretches the muscles along the back of my leg. “Shit.”

“Just breathe. Keep breathing,” she pants.

Her face is flushed red from running. Her long, blond hair is pulling free from her ponytail that hangs over her shoulder, tickling my calf. She adjusts her hold on me, pushing harder. Making me bark in pain. She doesn’t let up, though. She knows I need to stretch it out or it will only get worse. She uses her whole body to hold my leg straight and I’m still worried I’m going to accidentally kick her over. Her chest is pressed against my calf, her stomach flat against the back of my knee. I can feel her breathing. It’s erratic and exciting.

“I think I’m good,” I tell her roughly.

She shakes her head. “Shut up and breathe.”

“I’m trying.”

I really am. It’s just hard to focus on breathing when I’m getting a boner, but I can’t tell her that. If I don’t get it under control soon, she’s going to see for herself. Why do her breasts have to heave like that every time she breathes, glistening with sweat and—Oh shit.

“Do you watch baseball?” I ask her, staring up at the sky. Anything but the swell of her tits in that yellow sports bra. Kodiak yellow.

“No,” she chuckles.

“I do. I watch the Mariners. There’s a game on today.”

“Wow. Great.”

“It’s a big one. They’re playing the Dodgers.”

“Shane, seriously, why are you telling me this?”

I shake my head, my eyes fixed on a cloud that looks like a teacup. It reminds me of my grandma. That helps. “I’m just making conversation.”

“Okay,” she mutters, unimpressed.

Her body is slick with sweat. Mine is too. It’s mingling together where we’re touching, turning hot. Moist.

“Damnit.”

“Just a minute more,” she consoles me gently.

That, her voice being tender with me, is more than I can take. It’s worse than her skin against mine or her breasts bulging with every breath she takes.

I meet her eyes for a second, shaking my head. “It’s fine. I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

She lowers my leg slowly, letting me drop it to the ground. I’m relieved that my shorts aren’t bulging noticeably as Sutton drops to the ground next to me. She starts stretching her own body, bending it in half with impossible ease.

Working out with her is the best and worst idea I’ve ever had.

“Hey,” I grunt, sitting up quickly. Too quickly. My head swims a little from the blood rush. “Do the thing again. The Milan thing.”

She laughs, shaking her head. “No.”

“Come on!” I plead, scooting closer to her. “I’m injured. You owe me.”

“I didn’t injure you. Your pride did. You could have quit at any time.”

“Just once.”

She looks at me hard. Finally, she sits up with a sigh and I know I’ve won.

Sutton straightens her face like she’s slipping into character before she affects a perfect British accent. “Darlings, I loved it. I adored it, but it didn’t resonate. I didn’t feel the love. Make love on the stage so I can see it, otherwise I simply won’t believe it, lovelies.”

“Jesus, that sounds just like her,” I laugh. “That’s creepy good.”

“I swear, she says ‘love’ in some form at least five times per sentence,” Sutton promises me in her normal voice. “You’ll never be able to unhear it. You’re going to notice it every time she talks.”

“Worth it. Do Desmond now. The New York accent should be easy for you.”

“It’s fake!” she cries, crossing her arm over her chest to stretch it out. “He’s not from New York. He’s from Florida.”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes, fucking way. He’s from Tallahassee.”

“Okay, then do his fake accent.”

She shakes her head stubbornly. “I will not.”

“Come on!”

“No,” she chuckles. “I won’t offend my state like that. Pass.”

“Okay, fine. Do an impersonation of McKay. Unless you’re afraid of offending robots too.”

“No, I can’t. I love McKay. I can’t make fun of him.”

I fall forward dramatically. My fingers brush her leg; soft and warm in the sunshine. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“You love McKay?”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be weird about it. I don’t mean I’m in love with him.”

“No, I know. That would be too much to handle. This is enough. You love someone. You care about someone.”

“I love Clara too. It’s not a big deal.”

“Sutton has feelings,” I sing in an elementary school tone.

“Shut up, Shane,” she growls, but it’s weak. She’s smiling. She can’t stop smiling and I can’t look away from her.

“Alright, fine, if you won’t make fun of the people you love, make fun of someone you hate. Who do you hate on the show?”

“You?”

“Bullshit. I’m on the love list.”

She laughs at me. “Just yesterday you were trying to get me to like you. Now you’re convinced I love you.”

“I’m an easy sell.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

She’s trying to be flippant but she knows I’m right. She likes me. She liked having lunch with me yesterday. She liked walking on the beach with me afterward. She liked showing off her impersonation skills and making fun of the judges with me. She liked riding the Ferris wheel for the first time in her life with me as the sun went down over the ocean. She liked waking up knowing she would see me again today. I know all of that because I feel it too. I like Sutton Roe. More than I thought I could. More than I probably should.

“Are we doing lunch again today?” I ask her as I lean back on my hands.

She snorts. “No. Absolutely not.”

“You didn’t like your veggie dog?”

“I liked it fine, but that was a one-time deal. I told you that.”

“Girls say that to me all the time but they always come back for more.”

Sutton laughs in my face. “Not this girl.”

“You’re different, huh?”

“You can’t handle how different I am,” she promises.

I smile at her softly. “Doesn’t mean I won’t give it a try.”

She meets my eyes for a fleeting second before looking away. Her smile has dropped. Her face has that scared look she gets when things get too close to her, like a deer in the woods. She’s on alert and I need to back off if I don’t want her to run. But I’m looking at her beautiful face as she licks those pouty lips, and I’m thinking of a million things I’d like to do with her. Things she doesn’t want to hear me say but they’re in my head and rising in my throat, and I don’t know how long I can contain them. She’s hard as stone but I’d love to know what it feels like when she goes soft inside. I want to know what her eyes look like when they’re half-closed with ecstasy and she whispers my name like she needs it instead of being annoyed with it.

I want to be on her list. The Love List. I want her to love me or love being with me. Some sick part of me wants her to be in love with me even if I’m not in love with her just because she’s so damn hard, it’d be a thrill to break through all that stone to the tender part of her underneath. Has Sutton ever been in love with someone? Has she ever let anyone in that far? I doubt it, but the competitor in me wants to be the first. I don’t know what I’d do with the victory once I had it, but I can’t help wanting it. I can’t help how deeply and irrationally I want her.

I want to get as close as I can to the fire in her eyes without getting burned.

“What’s your family like?” I ask conversationally, switching gears for both our sake. “Are they here in California?”

She shakes her head sharply. “No. I don’t know where they are.”

“You don’t know where your parents are?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care to know.”

“So you guys aren’t close then.”

“No,” she scoffs. She casts me a hard smile. “They’re worse than me, if you can imagine that.”

“How is even possible?”

Sutton licks her lips, her face going pale. “It’s my mom, actually. I don’t know much about my dad. But my mom is… she’s more controlling.”

“That’s impossible,” I tease, trying to lighten the mood I’ve sunk us into.

“I promise you, it’s not. She’s also a diva. She burned through most of my dad’s money before they finally split and he stopped coming around, not that he was around much to start with.”

“Where was he?”

“Working. He traveled a lot. Mom did too, but she always took me with her. She was a stage actress when she was younger. That’s why she pushed me into it. Once I started working, she quit and followed me instead. She also started spending my money the way she spent my dad’s. She burned through almost everything by the time I was fifteen.”

“What’d she spend it on?”

“Jewelry. Clothes. Vacations.” Sutton shrugs. The move looks jerky, like a shudder. “A race horse in Argentina.”

“Damn. Did she leave with you anything?”

“Barely. After my first Tony, I was earning about eight thousand a week. I had over a million dollars in the bank at one point, but by the time I managed to get custody of my money, it was closer to half that. That’s when I quit Broadway and moved out here. Alone.”

I sit forward with a serious frown. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“You divorced your parents, didn’t you?”

“I became emancipated, yes,” She answers stiffly. She hates talking about this. So why do I keep asking? And why are her fingers trembling? “When the judge saw what she was doing with my finances, he let me separate from her. I haven’t spoken to either of my parents since the gavel fell.”

“Sutton, I’m sorry. I—”

She stands suddenly. Her steps are wobbly, nearly toppling her back to the ground.

I jump up to reach for her, steadying her. “Whoa, slow down.”

“I’m fine,” she lies. Her face is sweating but I don’t think all of it is from our workout. Her skin feels clammy against mine. “I got dizzy. That’s all.”

“That’s not all. You look sick.”

She chuckles shakily. She refuses to meet my eyes. “Thanks a lot for that.”

“Let’s get you back to the studio and find the doctor. You seriously don’t look right.”

“No. I can… I’m fine. I—”

Her eyes go unfocused. Her lower lip trembles.

She vomits on my shoes.

“Oh shit!” I jump back out of range, careful to keep my hand on her elbow to help steady to her.

Sutton gags and spits bile from her lips, her eyes closed against what looks like real pain. She’s dry heaving. Everything that was in her stomach came up on that first wretch, but now there’s nothing. Still, her body keeps trying. She hiccups and coughs, moaning weakly.

I come around next to her, rubbing my hand on her back consolingly. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Just let it out.”

“So embarrassing.”

“It’s not. It’s my fault. I made you run too hard. I shouldn’t have challenged you like that.”

“It wasn’t the running,” she whimpers pathetically.

When her body stills and the worst of it has passed, I take off my shirt and hand her a dry corner to wipe her face with.

“I’m sorry about your shoes,” she mutters.

“Don’t sweat it. I have others.”

“This is so humiliating.”

“We’ve all been there. But now we need to get you out of the sun. Come on.” I wrap one arm around her, putting my other hand under her elbow. “You’re going to the doctor.”

“I don’t want to go inside the studio like this.”

“You’re probably suffering heat stroke, Sutton. Or dehydration. You can’t just go home. You can’t drive.”

She shakes her head stubbornly. “I can’t go in the studio. Blood in the water.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re sharks,” she insists forcefully. “You think they’re just women, but they’re sharks. They can’t see me like this.”

I sigh, glancing around the empty park like it will give me an answer. It gives me jack shit because it’s not real. Nothing here is real. Not even the sharks she’s so afraid of.

“Okay, how about this?” I suggest in my most convincing voice. “I’ll take you back to my place.”

“Hard pass,” she laughs tremulously.

“You just vomited on my shoes. I’m not trying to hook up.”

“No.”

“Not even if I agree to watch an episode off the pen drive you sent me?”

She stiffens in my arms. Her eyes rise to mine; watery and intrigued. “Seriously? You’ll finally watch the show?”

“I swear it. And all it took to convince me was you putting your health at risk.”

“Six episodes.”

I frown at her. “Three.”

“Five.”

“Whatever. Yes. Five.”

Her hand goes over her mouth like she’s ready for round two. Only problem is, there’s nothing else inside her. She was all coconut water, and now that’s sprayed across the ground at our feet. She’s made of nothing but spite at this point. Even so, she won’t let me carry her to the Jeep. We make slow progress but when we finally get there and I offer to lift her up inside, she doesn’t complain.

I give her my sunglasses as well as my hat on the drive home. She doesn’t like it but she doesn’t fight me either. That’s how weak she’s feeling. She wears them both like a suit of armor against the world that roars around her. When I glance at her, I feel my heart tighten with worry. She looks like hell. Pretty hell, but still. Hell. Her face is pale, her lips almost white. I wonder if that pink hue I’ve always admired is lipstick. Maybe it’s fake and this is the real her. White as snow. Fragile and fierce.

“Two episodes, right?” I ask her, focusing on the road.

I’m relieved when she chuckles softly. “Nice try. It’s seven.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Takes one to know one.”

I smile, shifting my hands on the steering wheel. Reminding myself to watch the road and not her. “Why don’t we just make it an even ten?”

“That’s the entire season.”

I shrug. “Might as well, right?”

“It’s two o’clock. We’ll be watching until midnight if we do that.”

“I can hang if you can.” I glance at her with a smirk on my lips. The kind she loves to hate. “What do you think, Boss? Can you handle it?”

She smiles smugly. “I can do anything you can do.”

“One of these days I’m gonna get you on a football field and show you how wrong you are about that.”

“Do your worst, Shane Lowry. I’m tougher than I look.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second, Sutton Roe.”