Chapter Four
Ginny had trouble focusing for the rest of the day—and it didn’t help that her costar still hadn’t learned the finer points of emotion, bellowing his lines at her as if he was shouting a villainous manifesto at a superhero. Which was what he’d been doing in his previous role, so maybe he hadn’t realized he was playing a banker now.
Thanks to Damien’s dramatics the scene probably would have been a loss even if she’d been on her game, but her distraction certainly didn’t help.
She hadn’t told Jack when she would meet him. Or where. Admittedly, it was a small town, but it was driving her mad not knowing when or where or what he would expect of her when he did see her.
And if a part of her hoped that the sexy Brit bodyguard was with him, well. Who could blame her? He was hot. And she was allowed to notice when men were hot. She was a pariah. Not a corpse.
By the time Klein—their writer-director and fearless leader on this passion project—called a wrap for the day, Ginny was a nervous wreck. Her only consolation was that a lifetime of hiding her emotions meant that no one around her could tell anything was wrong.
The wardrobe mistress, Monica, walked with her back toward the town’s one hotel, where the entire cast and crew had been put up for the duration. Several of the crew members were stacked three and four to a room in deference to their budgetary constraints, but Ginny, as the star, had scored a room to herself—even if it was the smallest, cheapest room in the hotel.
Most of the crew piled into vans to return to the hotel, but it was a lovely evening and Ginny was in no hurry to get back and face Jack, so she walked the one and a half miles instead. Monica kept up a running commentary the entire time about how ungodly horrible Ginny’s leading man’s performance was, but Ginny had thoroughly learned her lesson about running her mouth and kept her opinions on his suckitude to herself.
Right now she could only hope that Klein would manage to get a decent enough performance out of Damien to keep the entire film from being a joke. She really needed a win right now. Even if it was a tiny little indie film that would languish in obscurity if they didn’t get lucky on the festival circuit.
“Ginny!”
Ginny became aware of her surroundings, startled to realize they’d made it all the way back to the hotel already. And Jack had been waiting on the side patio, watching for her.
“I’ll see you later, Ginny,” Monica promised, her wide eyes locked on Jack—she’d probably never been this close to a bona fide celebrity. He wasn't quite Tom Hanks yet, but he was on the brink of becoming a household name and everyone around him could feel it. This film’s crew was made up of mostly recent film school grads and long-time assistants who were trying to level up—not the Hollywood power players who scored jobs on Jack Cooper films these days.
“Right. G’night, Monica,” Ginny murmured before dragging her feet over to the patio where Jack waited.
The hotel didn’t have a pool or hot tub, but they did boast a fire pit and Jack sat in front of it, a glass of something that looked like vodka but was probably spring water in one hand. Most nights since the film crew had arrived, the guys would unwind out here after hours, their laughter lasting late into the night, but tonight the patio was abandoned in deference to the god among them.
Only Jude and the woman who’d been filming earlier with her cell phone sat with Jack. It was tempting to look to Jude—her friendly face—and try to glean some clue as to what was coming, but Ginny resisted the urge, focusing on Jack as she approached and he stood to greet her.
“You’re causing quite a furor among the crew,” she commented as he drew her toward the open chair next to the fire pit. “They’ve been playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon all afternoon since they figured out they’re only one link away from you through me.”
Jack frowned. “Didn’t they already know we’d worked together?”
Ginny shrugged, taking the seat he’d saved for her. “I was barely in Dax Scott after the editors got through with it. I think most people forget that I was working with you and Dame Agatha when The Tape came out. That sort of eclipsed everything else.”
Jack leaned forward in his chair. “Speaking of The Tape, I have a plan.”
Her stomach knotted nervously. She didn’t like the sound of that. “Jack…”
“I want to do what I should have done six months ago.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see. Tomorrow.” He grinned, little boy eager. He really was sweet. It would have been endearing if he wasn’t being so annoyingly vague.
“I don’t like surprises.” Any affection she’d ever had for them had been killed by the Surprise! Your career is over! Tape.
“Trust me. This is a good surprise.” His phone rang over the last sentence and he dug it out, frowning at the ring tone. “That’s my agent. Excuse me.”
He strode off to the far edge of the patio and Ginny glanced at the girl, who smiled and assured her, “His heart’s in the right place,” before standing and moving after him.
Alone with Jude, she glanced across the fire pit at him. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you,” he admitted.
She looked across the patio, where Jack was still on the phone with his agent. She couldn’t handle him tonight. His heart might be in the right place, but her day had been crappy and she just wanted to get away from it all. She wanted to pretend to be just Ginny again.
She glanced back at Jude. “Do you want to get out of here before they come back?”
Jude looked as startled to hear the invitation as she was to issue it, but he didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely.”
He unfolded his long limbs, standing with surprising grace as she rose from her own chair and hurried around the front side of the hotel and to the street, with one last glance over her shoulder to see that Jack was still distracted and hadn’t noticed their escape.
She’d been obeying the rules, restraining herself and letting caution control her actions for the last six months. This tiny rebellion—even if it was just running off without saying goodbye—felt heady, and magnificent. Ginny didn’t slow down until they reached the corner and were hidden by the houses on the next block.
“Where are we going?” Jude asked, though he didn’t slow at her side.
“The locals told me about a pretty spot.”
“They did?”
She shot him a look in the waning light. It was getting dark fast, the summer sunset bearing down on them. “Not everyone thinks I’m the Antichrist.”
“I didn’t mean—” he started to explain, but she waved him off.
“I know, I know. No offense taken. It’s just been a day, you know?”
“Not every day your ex ambushes you at work?” he said, echoing their earlier conversation.
She smiled. “Something like that.” She slowed her pace to a less headlong rush and he matched her. Dusk closed in around them as the streetlights—few and far between in this part of town—slowly came on. There were no other pedestrians out at this hour, but the sidewalks were clean and even. It might not be a wealthy town, but they took pride in their community.
Ginny had always been good at playing pretend, sliding into her imagination and living in the possibilities of other lives. It was tempting to do it now—to pretend that this was her town, her boyfriend walking at her side. Or maybe a boy she thought she might want to be her boyfriend. To forget about scandal and mistakes and just be a girl walking with a boy on a summer evening, wondering if he would take her hand, wondering if he would have the courage to kiss her before he walked her home.
But then, as the silence stretched, Jude brought them back to reality as his soft, accented voice asked, “What happened between you two?”
Ginny shot him a look. Her expression was almost unreadable in the low light, but he could feel the wryness of it even before she spoke. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about my infamous scandal?”
“Sure, but I want to hear your side of it.”
Jude surprised himself with how true those words were. He’d never given much thought to her side of it before, but now he wanted to know if there was more to the story, pieces to the puzzle he’d never seen.
Ginny walked at his side, trailing a finger along a fence bordering the sidewalk, her red hair muted by the darkness. He thought for a moment she might not respond, but then she began to speak.
“Last year, I got the break of my life. Dax Scott; Edge of Vengeance.” She said the title with movie trailer drama, then dropped back into her normal voice. “ It wasn’t a lead or anything, only ten minutes or so of actual screen time, but I had this amazing speech and this kickass death scene and the rest of the cast was amazing. It was going to be a summer blockbuster for sure. I mean, if Jack Cooper was starring, how could I go wrong, right?”
They reached the end of the street and she stopped, squinting into the darkness. “I think it’s this way,” she murmured, leading him up a hill to the right. Jude followed silently, waiting for the next piece of the story he knew was coming.
“Things were great at first. Jack and I ‘became friends’,” she said, lifting her hands for air quotes. “The director seemed to like me. I was getting more auditions. I thought this could be it, you know? Straight shot to fame and fortune.”
Jude grimaced. He remembered that feeling all too well, even if his dream had been different than hers. “So what happened?” he asked.
“I had a bad day.” She grimaced. “Or, to put it more accurately, I had the mother of all shitty days. And at the end of it, someone I thought I could trust recorded me saying something I never should have said in the first place.” She huffed as the hill grew stepper beneath their feet. “I called one of the greatest actresses of our time a raging bitch who should learn to mind her own fucking business—and three weeks later the make-up artist who had recorded me was fired for something else and decided to make a quick buck by selling the tape to a tabloid site. Fame Game.” Her voice was saturated with bitterness. “J. Fucking Harrison Law.”
Jude’s stomach clenched as she snarled his name. He hadn’t forgotten for a second that he was the one who’d posted the tape, but he’d let himself forget that she didn’t know.
He should have told her who he was. Should tell her now. Guilt clawed up his esophagus but she was still speaking.
“Of course it destroyed my career. I’d built my brand as a nice girl, America’s sweetheart. And no one wants to watch Little Miss Sweet and Innocent when she’s really a bitch. Jack dropped me like a hot rock and my agent wasn’t far behind. The studio cut me out of the picture as much as they could without destroying the plot. And suddenly all those auditions I had were no longer available. Working on a little indie film that was hoping to capitalize on my notoriety was all I could get, so I took it and said thank you. And here we are.”
The crested the hill on her last words and Ginny stopped, gasping. “Damn,” she whispered. “That is one pretty sight.”
The town—which had seemed like simply another Podunk town in the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowhere—spread out below them, lights twinkling and reflecting off the river that threaded through it. It was gorgeous, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the woman at his side.
She wasn’t what he’d expected at all, recounting the facts of her downfall as if she was relating the plot of a movie. Was it a front? An act? Or was she really this woman in front of him, just trying to put her life back together, grateful for the chance to keep going?
And what role had Jack played? Why did he feel like he owed Ginny so much?
Jude cleared his throat roughly. “Did you love him?”