“I think I sprained my tongue,” I muttered, yawning as I poured us both a cup of coffee to go.

“You? I’ve got a serious case of cock jaw. And yawning only makes it worse so stop doing that. You know it’s contagious.” Her hair was wet from the shower and she looked like her energy had finally run out.

Damn shame too, because I was kind of hoping she’d be able to drag me out to the car since my legs weren’t cooperating—barely shuffling me from one end of the apartment to the other. The idea of shooting on the beach set this week made me groan into my pitch-black coffee. I already felt like I was trudging through sand.

Fuck it, no better time to buy an ATV. That’ll be so much easier than walking.

Kaiti eyed me over her travel mug, dark circles under her eyes. “Would I be a total wuss if I cried uncle and asked for a twenty-four-hour hiatus from all the sex? As impossible as it sounds, right now I kind of want sleep more than orgasms.”

I shook my head, snapping the lid on my cup and grabbing my keys off the counter. “Not at all. I was thinking the same thing. My fantasies have shifted from wanting to ravage you for hours to wanting to find a shady spot on that beach today and grab a nap.”

She moaned her best sex moan, nodding. “That sounds so fucking hot. Say it again.”

“You and me…” I began, giving her a smoldering look. “Sneaking off, hiding from prying eyes, lying in the warm sand, getting so close our limbs tangle together, and taking the world’s longest, hardest, deepest nap.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” she cried, throwing her head back even as she grabbed her purse. She tugged on one of my hats and moved toward the door. As she held it open and waited for me, she asked, “Was that as good for you as it was for me?”

“Better,” I chuckled, totally ignoring the semi I was sporting. While I waited for her to lock up, I thought about how perfect my Kaiti-girl really was.

Goal for the day: napping with my love.

* * *

“Wait, so they have us on a beach but we’re not supposed to get sand on us?” Kaiti looked down at the PA who was dusting the sand off her calves with a little brush, careful not to smudge the bronzer they’d applied to even out her skin tone.

“Pretty much,” the girl replied, shrugging. “Just wait until the wind picks up and I have to fix your hair every five seconds. Entire takes ruined because of wayward bees, the occasional chopper flying over trying to snake pics of you guys shooting… It’s a circus out here but it beats hearing shit from the critics about us shooting on a sound stage all the time.”

“I got clipped by a rogue Frisbee once,” I told her, nodding along with the PA—Vicki? Nicki? I couldn’t remember her name, which I felt kind of shitty about. She’d spritzed my abs with oil more times than I could count—the least I could do was remember her name.

Maybe I’m more like Michael and Sky than I thought.

How disturbing.

“Vicki, you know this place pretty well, right?” Kaiti asked, smiling. Of course, she knew the woman’s name. She would have asked right off and shaken her hand, making friends because that’s just who she was.

Vicki—whose name I vowed to never forget again—nodded. “I helped set everything up when we first found this place for the show. Why?”

Kaiti looked at her with a sly smile. “So, theoretically, if someone wanted a quiet niche to take a cat nap, you’d be able to point one out?”

Vicki chuckled and nodded. “The best spot for theoretical naps would be behind the catering tent because the dunes behind it are pretty big, so they offer great shade and privacy.”

“You sound like you know from experience.” I grinned at Kaiti as I teased Vicki.

She blushed and looked down, brushing a few stray grains of sand from Kaiti’s ankle. “Something like that.”

I gave Kaiti a wink and went to scout the location, just to be sure.

When I returned, Skylar and Jenna were with Kaiti and Vicki, and my jaw clenched at the sight. Jenna, I wasn’t worried about, but Skylar needed to step off. I knew her friendly act was precisely that—an act, and she needed to go peddle her bullshit somewhere else.

I gave Jenna a friendly nod and turned to Vicki, who was standing after being shooed away by Skylar. “You were right, Vicki. Thanks for the tip. Maybe you can join me and Kaiti for lunch later, if Bryce and Joey aren’t running you ragged.”

She blushed a little as all eyes turned to her. “That’d be great, Mr. Lane.”

“Call me Gavin, please.” I smiled brightly at her and felt something in me shift. Maybe it was the way Kaiti was grinning at me like I’d done something she was infinitely proud of, or the way Sky was sneering like someone had just stepped on the toe of her new Manolos. Either way, it was kind of awesome to think that one little gesture had made Vicki’s whole day.

It also made me feel like an abominable asshole for not having done it sooner.

Maybe it wasn’t the industry that needed to change, maybe it was me. Let the Skylars and Michaels of the world walk around with their perfectly sculpted noses in the air—that didn’t mean we all had to.

Kaiti was right. I’d been so set on staying away from the assholes and phonies I’d missed out on some genuinely great people along the way.

She was chatting with the other actresses, nodding at all the right times and making all the right comments, but I could tell the upcoming scenes had her on edge. She had wrapped her arms around her middle, one hand intermittently checking that the sarong she was wearing was still tied tight while the other did that finger tapping thing that meant she was struggling.

The producers and directors wanted Meadow to seem out of place, so they’d suggested a more modest suit to go with her less than worldly background. She would stick out in her pale suit when compared to Tia, played by a barely-covered, preening Skylar, and sultry Layla—who Jenna played. They were both in black, bejeweled scraps of fabric barely thick enough to floss with and didn’t seem to mind the attention they were drawing.

Personally, I thought Kaiti blew them both out of the water. She was curvier, with perfectly toned skin, not too sun-kissed and not too pale, which was a perfect match for the sky-blue suit she was wearing.

I’d been looking at her for over an hour and I was still fighting to find my breath. And my dry mouth was from it continually hanging open.

Note to self: when you’re surrounded by some of the tiniest bikinis allowable by state law and still only have eyes for the woman in the Carolina blue one-piece who keeps giving you subtle smiles, you know you’re truly, madly, thoroughly in love.

“Hey Kaiti, did you see that you’ve already amassed a following?” Joey strolled over, his pant legs rolled up, feet bare from when he’d ventured into the water.

Kaiti did a double take when she realized he was serious. “After one trailer? I only said like five words in the whole montage.” Her wide eyes shot to me and I gave her a shrug.

“The fans are going crazy already, speculating which one of the guys Meadow will throw in with—evil Warren or our golden boy here.” He hooked a thumb in my direction.

Skylar scoffed, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “People really need to find better things to worry about.”

“You weren’t saying that when Tia’s fiancé got splattered and your pic was all over the place. Poor Tia, how will she ever recover?” I rolled my eyes, turning back to Kaiti. “She ate up that attention like she was starving for it. Don’t let her fool you, baby.”

Sky made a disgusted noise. “Jesus, now you’re calling her baby? Whipped much?” She loved taking her little jabs, feigning like they were all in fun.

Until she smarted off to the wrong person like she’d just done.

“Jealous much?” Kaiti shot back, eyes flashing with anger.

Skylar leaned in but stayed well out of reach as she sneered. “Been there, done that. Repeatedly. So why would I be jealous?”

Kaiti gave her a cocky grin that made my dick twitch. “Because if you were as good as you say, he wouldn’t be calling me baby these days, now would he?”

Sky looked my way and said, “We’ve all gone slumming a time or two, right Gavin? I mean, Michael was a nobody when he and I had our fling and now look at him—his name in the headlines all over the world. And he has me to thank. Just like Kaiti will owe her career to you and your indiscriminate dick.”

“It still discriminates against some people because lord knows nothing deflates my cock like the sound of your whiny, nasal voice.” I winked. “Guess that surgery for your deviated septum had some unfortunate side effects.”

“Bastard,” she hissed, even as Kaiti and Jenna chuckled under their breath.

She whipped around and poked a finger in Jenna’s direction. “What’s so funny?”

Jenna shrugged but couldn’t wipe the smile off her face, though she did try.

Skylar stormed off a minute later.

It was a low blow but she’d had it coming.

And she really did talk like she had a cold ever since her nose job, I wasn’t lying about that. I just hadn’t seen fit to bring it to her attention until she’d started in on Kaiti.

My Kaiti-girl, who had oozed confidence in the face of a pretty ugly reminder of my past and didn’t back down from anyone—especially Skylar.

My Kaiti-girl, who was most definitely getting the good loving as soon as we both had the energy.

* * *

On the way back to Kaiti’s, she was quiet. The shooting days were shorter when we were at the beach location, but not by much. Night scenes always came into play and could be more soul-sucking than any other segments of the show because lighting issues were the general rule rather than the exception. It also took a long time to set up for them in the first place, which I was grateful for today simply because it allowed Kaiti and me the time to catch some shut-eye, even if we’d had to forego the outdoor nap in favor of sneaking off to my trailer.

Outside would have been more fun, but the crew had invaded our little hiding place to store some malfunctioning equipment. We’d had to scout a new location since clearly, that one wasn’t as secluded as it had been back when Vicki first discovered it.

For now, my trailer was fine, though.

And once Kaiti’s trailer arrived, we could spend a little time breaking that in, as well.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I said, watching her from the corner of my eye as I drove us home. Home. I tried not to think too hard about how rarely I used that word, or how long it had been since I felt like I really had one. Not a house, of course—I had four of those scattered all over the country. Home was different, deeper than a set of walls could reach.

“I’m just tired. The sun really zapped my energy—not that I’d started the day with any to begin with,” she chuckled. “I will say, that was the best nap ever, even if it had to be cut short.”

“Agreed. If we hadn’t had that pesky TV show to shoot, I’d still be snoozing.”

She hid a yawn behind her closed fist, nodding. “Me too.” It was quiet again for a moment before she jokingly said, “So, should I expect snakes in my trailer or poison in my coffee now that I pissed off her majesty?”

“I’d keep my guard up, but that’s just good practice anyway around people like Skylar.” I chuckled along with her, loving that she wasn’t taking it all too seriously. She didn’t seem to let things get to her, at least not anything that was happening now. I knew she had some things in her past that she was battling, could see her steeling herself against it when she didn’t think anyone was looking. But if that stuff wasn’t getting to her, neither was Sky.

Kaiti had done her scenes—even the ones with Sky’s simmering temper barely hidden behind her Tia facade—without blinking an eye, and she’d remained front and center between takes, rather than stepping away and giving Skylar the impression that she was afraid, which she damn well wasn’t. She never backed down or averted her gaze, never gave an inch, though she wasn’t overtly hostile either. Just confident—like she’d been when she’d lit into Bryce in that mall.

I was proud of Kaiti on so many levels today. I only wished I could have found the words to tell her that without sounding condescending.

In the end, I decided showing her was much easier.

So, I did.

I took her back to her apartment and carried her to her bed, where I proceeded to hold her as close as I possibly could as we both drifted off into a deep, exhausted, contented sleep together.

We were home.

The week flew by in a blur of sand and sunscreen, leaving me exhausted and only mildly sunburned. The scenes in the water with Gavin, ones where Meadow started to realize her attraction to Tyler, were the most fun. As it turned out, practicing those scenes with him was quite the turn on. Something about the build of tension between the characters, the inadvertent brushing against each other in the water that turned into a near-kiss, was the hottest freaking thing ever.

Of course, once it was time to actually shoot the scene in front of the cameras, everything was different. There was no way my arousal would carry over into that situation, not with the past looming over my shoulder, getting harder to ignore as this week’s episode pushed the limitations of my bravado.

I was uncomfortable in a swimsuit with a camera pointed at me. Not that I had a problem with my body, I was quite fond of my curves. This was just the scenario that had spurred me out of that mall when Bryce offered the job. This episode, these moments where I felt exposed and gawked at and judged. The only thing worse in my mind would have been nearly-nude love scenes, which were still a distinct possibility—or probability since it was clear Meadow and Tyler were going to hook up.

By the time Friday rolled around, I was the most exhausted I’d ever been, both physically and mentally. My thoughts were like watching twenty people doing wind sprints in varying directions, almost leaving me dizzy. Anxiety was to blame for that, but I refused to give in—to lose to it now when I’d come so far.

Gavin walked up, trudging through the sand like he was barely staying upright himself. “Hey, new girl, want to grab some lunch?” He threw an arm around my shoulders.

“Sure. Let me just hit the shower and rinse this sand off my legs. Meet you in the food tent in five?”

He nodded and watched me walk away.

I headed toward one of the rinsing showers near the edge of our sprawling tent community. Feeling his eyes on me was vastly different than being watched by anyone else.

I turned back when I was halfway to the shower and he was still staring. “Move along, creeper, nothing to see here,” I called, teasing.

“I beg to differ!” he shouted back, waggling his brows as he finally started in the direction of the catering tent.

After a quick rinse, I took the long way around to join Gavin, staying on the packed sand between the tents to avoid getting gritty all over again. When I stepped inside, Gavin’s back was to me as he perused the fresh fruit on one of the long buffet tables.

“He’s probably thinking of making your plate himself, steering you toward the salad you so desperately need instead of the junk food you’re always stuffing in your face.” Skylar stood off to my left and slightly behind me, her voice low and hostile.

I turned toward her and noted the celery and cucumber slices on her plate, no dressing or dip, no protein—just a few thin strips of vegetables. I gave her a saucy wink. “Oh, he can feed me whatever he wants. He’s never offered me anything I wouldn’t gladly open wide and take.” I gave her a huge smile as I walked away. “Enjoy your lunch, Sky.”

Gavin and I took our seats at a small folding table near the back of the tent, and I could feel Skylar’s eyes boring into me as I snagged the southwest chicken burrito from my plate. I slowly bit into it with a little groan while I shot a look her way.

“Um, babe…” Gavin cleared his throat beside me, looking down at the table as he cocked his head my way and spoke in a strained voice. “I don’t know what that was about, but if you keep making those noises, I’m going to need a little help with something back in my trailer.”

Two birds, one burrito.

* * *

We were about to head back for the afternoon shoot when my phone dinged in my pocket. I’d forgotten to turn it off but since no one usually called me during the day, it shouldn’t have made a difference.

I pulled it out and frowned at the screen.

Evie: 911—call me asap!

Evie was freaking out and it made my heart race. She was like me, not one to panic, so it had to be something big.

I turned the phone and showed Gavin the 911. I was already heading toward his trailer for privacy.

He nodded, gesturing toward the makeup tent. “I’ll stall the next scene if I have to. Go see what’s wrong.”

I nodded and quickly closed in on his private sanctuary as I hit Evie’s contact name.

She picked up on the first ring. “Kaiti? Where are you? Can you talk?”

“I’m alone. I commandeered Gavin’s trailer. What’s going on?”

She took a deep, uneven breath sounding on the verge of full-on panic.

“Evie?”

“The video. Someone found it and linked it to your name in the message boards and now it’s blowing the hell up.”

My legs turned to jelly and I dropped to the small couch that faced the door. “What?”

“I’m so sorry, Kaiti-bear. I don’t know how anyone would have known. The names of the girls in the videos were supposed to be sealed by the court, right? Because most of you were minors?”

I heard her asking questions but I couldn’t find the strength to answer.

“Kaiti, say something. Talk to me. Are you okay? Do you want me to come there? I’ll crash the set if I have to.”

I still couldn’t speak. I wasn’t sure I was breathing or if I even wanted to.

This had to be a dream—a horribly vivid nightmare playing out to mess with me because I’d been doing so well. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

Only it was.

“Fuck it, I’m on my way. Don’t hang up. I’ll talk to you the whole time.”

I shook my head, trying to argue but the words wouldn’t come, so I didn’t object.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap…

“All right, where’s our Meadow? We need to get this shot before the sunlight starts to wane.” Bryce looked around, asking me but not actually looking at me. We hadn’t spoken much, mostly because it had been so hectic, but my attitude let him know I still had a lot to say about what he’d done.

I should have lit him up first thing on Monday, but I hadn’t.

I could blame it on the crazy shooting schedule or the lack of sleep but the truth was, I knew I’d have to tell Kaiti about it either way, and I was afraid knowing what Bryce was up to would send her packing. She wouldn’t give a shit about her short-term contract or the rest of the episodes she was committed to shooting. She would be too pissed off to care, or at least that was what I thought.

I had to figure out how to diffuse it before I told her, to find a way to explain it so she wouldn’t feel violated as hell. Of course, that’s exactly what she should feel—hell I felt that way myself when I found out Bryce had a folder full of ammo to use against me. And I’d been working in the industry for years. I’d seen some shady shit in my day but Bryce’s little insurance policies took the cake.

The bastard finally shot a look my way and tipped his head toward my trailer. “Will you please go light a fire under her?”

I glared back at him. “I think she’s sick. Would you rather she dealt with that in private or should I have her plop down in your director’s chair and hurl on your sandals?”

“She didn’t seem sick at lunch.” He looked annoyed at my tone but didn’t dare retaliate.

Smart. Because I was way past giving a damn about saving his ass.

“Maybe it was all that crap food she stuffed in her face,” Skylar chimed in, sidling up to Bryce with a smirk.

“Go choke on a celery stick, hag,” I growled, turning toward my trailer. “I’ll check on her. Why don’t you do us all a favor, Bryce, and send Sky back to makeup? She’s got a big smudge of jealous on her face.”

“Prick!” she yelled at my back.

I kept walking, smile firmly in place.