Pierce, Nine Months Later
Her hair was a mess, an absolute mass of blond locks tangling across her face as the wind whipped up the cliffs.
All I could see were snippets of Artie’s features—the corner of a plump, red mouth, one arching blond brow, a glimpse of an arctic blue eye.
And she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever had the luxury of witnessing.
“I’m really loving the fact that my hair tie snapped,” she muttered, wrestling with her hair. Frankly, I was surprised she didn’t have an army of them at her disposal, since she was normally so prepared and put together. However, there was something off about Artie today, something I’d noticed when we’d set out scouting that morning. It wasn’t fragile, exactly, but almost . . . precarious, as though she needed cheering up.
I’d done a decent job of that thus far, the shadows receding from her eyes, a smile creeping into the edges of her lips. She’d definitely been laughing at my crappy jokes during the last ten minutes of the drive.
“Here,” I murmured, unable to watch her struggle with her hair any longer. I gathered the locks at her nape and twisted them into a quick braid that I tied off with a rubber band I had around my wrist. My sisters would probably kill me for daring to put the strip of tangle-inducing, albeit effective at containment, material into another woman’s hair.
But desperate times called for desperate measures.
I could pray for forgiveness to the hair gods later.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” she asked, curiosity dancing across her face.
That was much better than sad, and so I shared. “My sisters.”
“I didn’t know you had sisters.”
I grinned, kept sharing. “I’m the baby of the family,” I told her. “They’re much older—as I love to remind them—and settled with kids of their own.”
“That’s nice.” She smiled. “Are they in L.A.?”
“God no.” I mock-shuddered. “They want nothing to do with the Hollywood crowd. Not that they’re not proud of me. It’s just . . .”
“A lot.”
“Yeah. That.” I shrugged. “And they’ve got kids of their own. Obligations and partners and their own jobs. I’m just the little brother they tortured by making me play dress-up.”
She held up the braid I’d put into her hair. “Well, I definitely benefited from all that dress-up experience, so if I ever meet them, I’ll have to thank them.”
“They’d love that,” I said with a smirk. “They like your movies more than mine.”
“Seems to be a lot of that going around.”
I mock-glared. “Sisters are the worst.”
“I happen to think they have impeccable taste.” She smiled beatifically. “But seriously, how was it growing up as the baby?”
“It had its perks. Besides imparting the braiding skills, they looked out for me and didn’t make me feel too awful when I tried to trail along after them and their friends.”
“How much older are they?”
“Ten and twelve years.”
“Oh fuck.”
My feet skittered to a stop, eyes darting around. “What? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Artie.”
“It’s nothing.”
I tugged at her braid. “Nice try with the lies, but don’t try and bullshit a bullshitter.”
We stared off for several minutes before she caved. “Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “But the only reason I’m telling you this at all is because we’ve always been honest with each other.”
“Brutally so,” I grumbled.
She rested her head on my shoulder, fluttered her eyelashes up at me. “You love my honesty.”
“Is that what I’ve been feeling?” I narrowed my eyes. “Loving your honesty when you nixed my rewrite of Bethany’s death scene?”
“You’ll love it when the reviews come in raving about it.”
“That’s if Eden can do it.”
“Eden will nail it.” Artie nodded ahead. “Come on and take a look at this outcropping. When I saw the pictures, I thought it would be perfect for the opening.”
I followed her, spent all of three seconds looking and knew immediately she was right. We’d pan up the cliffs, watch the wind whipping around the heroine’s hair, her clothes, witness the paper flying from her hand and spinning and tumbling over the edge. “You’re right.”
She grinned, clasped her hands to her chest. “I do love it when you’re honest with me.”
Honest, as in I often still woke up hard after dreaming about her all night? Or maybe honest as in I still jerked off to the little sounds she’d made when I’d licked her pussy?
Instead of asking her either of those questions, I brought us back to the previous topic, the one she’d so masterfully avoided. “So, what were you oh fucking about before?”
She sighed. “I hate it when you’re smart.”
“Lie.”
Another sigh. “I also hate that you have two older sisters that are younger than me.”
“Age is just a number.”
“Quoting my mantra back to me doesn’t discount the fact that I slept with their baby brother and they’re younger than me.”
My pulse picked up. We didn’t talk about our night together, didn’t even allude to it. Not ever. That she’d mentioned it—
“Who cares that they’re younger?” I asked carefully.
Artie shrugged. “I don’t, not really. Just that it’s the truth, and I’m a woman over forty, which means that half of society already hates me and the other half thinks that I’m a shriveled up prune.”
My brows drew together. “I’m part of society, and I don’t think that.”
“Okay, so one percent of society thinks I’m all right.”
“Artie.” I touched her arm. “You’re beautiful and capable and smart—”
She groaned, batted me away. “Don’t try to be logical when I’m having a weak moment.”
“You’re far from weak.”
She sighed. “And you’re too damned sweet and honest, but I’ll take the compliment anyway.” She visibly shook off her insecurity, replacing it with a mask I knew too well—calm and charming and totally superficial. “I’m just having a weird day. Must be all these hormones, you know how they flare in old age,” she added with a chuckle.
I hated it, hated the mask, hated the way she used it to prevent her from having to present herself to the world.
But it also wasn’t my place to push.
She’d chosen to put the distance between us, and that was where it would stay. I didn’t have any right to barge through barriers, not when our intimacy hadn’t extended to more than one night. Plus, now that we were working together, it was even more critical that the distance stay in place. We needed to be collaborators, friends, soundboards, but we also shouldn’t be anything more than that.
Not the right time.
Even if I wished it was.
“Just be happy you weren’t living here two hundred years ago,” I said, purposefully going along with the reappearance of Artie’s mask and allowing her to change the subject. Vibrant blue eyes met mine, and she proved that whatever chemistry we had that made us seem to always be on the same wavelength was still in effect.
“Because of the dresses.”
“Yup,” I said, reaching out for her braid and pretending to make it flap in the breeze. “The fabric would blow you and all this hair right off the cliffs.”
She grinned. “Just in time for a dashing hero to dive to my rescue.”
I snorted. “More like, she’d save herself.”
Artie laughed and leaned close enough that I could smell the soft, floral scent of her shampoo. “You’re learning.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “But alas, those dresses were heavy, especially when they got wet. I think she’d need that dashing hero to swoop in and save the day.”
“Should we test that theory?” I teased, giving her a mock-shove toward the edge. “I bet those jeans will absorb a lot of water.”
“Don’t you dare!” she said on a gasp, darting away from me.
“Come on,” I cajoled. “It’s not that far of a jump.”
“Not that far?” She swept out her arm. “It’s like fifty feet!”
“Meh.” I snagged her arm, lightly tugging her back to the cliffs. By now, we were a good ten feet from the edge, but she shrieked and yanked away from me.
“So not funny, Pierce.”
“From my angle, it was hilarious.” She rolled her eyes, spinning on a huff. “Careful,” I warned, seeing she was headed for some loose rocks.
“Nice try—”
She slipped.
What happened next was something my mind could barely process, let alone my body ever having hope of replicating it. I lurched forward, grabbing Artie by the waist, attempting to steady her so she didn’t take a header in the sharp rocks, but she was off-balance, limbs flailing . . . which meant that her fist flew up and clocked me right in the eye. I groaned, lost my grip on her, and our feet got tangled, propelling us to a painful collision with the rocky ground.
The only reason I was able to hold on to my man card in the clusterfuck of limbs was because I managed to grab her arm and spin us slightly, so I took the brunt of the impact, Artie landing hard on my stomach.
We lay there for a few moments, me with a smarting eye, an aching set of butt cheeks, and her . . . thinking who knew what? Eventually, though, I managed to squeeze out. “Are you okay?”
She groaned. “My ass.”
I could second that notion. “Want me to pick us up a pair of those donut pillows?”
“Hilarious,” she muttered. “This is your fault.” She started to push out of the circle of my arms then stopped, staring out at the cliffs. “Can you imagine how pissed our insurance company would have been if we fell off the fucking cliff?”
I bit back a laugh, heart settling now that I’d managed to get us out of the situation relatively unscathed—asses and left eye aside. “Probably really pissed,” I agreed, sitting up and taking her with me. “But I don’t know why you’re blaming me. I’m not the one who decided to tap dance through some loose rocks.”
“Oh, maybe because someone was threatening to throw me off a cliff in order to test his hero skills.”
I snorted as Artie slowly stood, stretching out her spine with a wince. “As if you thought I was serious.”
“Fair point,” she muttered. “Maybe I do need a hero to come in and save the day, since I can’t even walk on a flat surf—oh my God! Pierce. Your eye.”
I brought my hand up, gently palpated the skin around it. “It’s fine.”
“It’s already purple! Oh shit, I hurt you.” Her hands began flapping over my chest and face. “Oh my God. It’s already bruising, and I—”
“It’s fine.” I captured her hands. “Bonus is I’m going to have a hell of a story to lord over you the next few years.”
She froze and for the first time in the five-plus years I’d known her, Artie’s eyes filled with tears that weren’t because of a film or a book or a script. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hurt you and—” She sniffed as one glistening tear escaped. “I—fuck.” Jerking her hands back, she put them over her face. “I can’t believe I-I did that.”
“Hey. Hey,” I repeated, tugging at her hands when she wouldn’t look at me. “Artie.”
She shoved me back and strode away.
I stared after her for a few seconds, trying to figure out why she was so upset. It was clearly an accident, and one I’d thought we’d laugh about for years to come. But she wasn’t laughing. In fact, she was so close to distraught that my stomach was twisting itself into knots. There was something else going on here. I moved, pushing up to my feet, and crossing over to her.
“Artemis,” I said softly.
Her chin dropped to her chest for several seconds. Then she almost seemed to force herself to look at me.
The bottom fell out of my heart at the tear tracks on her cheeks, the reddened eyes, the remorse in her expression. “I didn’t mean to hit you,” she said. “I swear I didn’t. It was an a-accident.”
I dropped my hands to her shoulders, lightly squeezing. “I know that,” I murmured. “It’s just . . . you don’t seem to.”
Her lids closed. “I hurt you.”
“Babe. It was an accident.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” she snapped.
“And beating yourself up until your insides are black and blue for something you didn’t mean to do is?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me, sweetheart,” I said. “Explain to me why you accidentally hitting me as you tripped and fell is something that’s horrible and—”
“Because my dad did it, okay?” She pulled out of my hold and paced away, this time without the flailing and subsequent black eye. “He’d say it was an accident. He’d pretend that my mom or I fell or that something stupid and innocuous happened and we were just . . . too fucking klutzy to not get hurt and”—her voice dropped—“it would always be an accident.”
Her chest was rising and falling like she’d run a marathon.
And I was standing there, shocked by the revelation and unable to say a fucking thing.
“I ran into doorknobs, slipped and fell in the tub, tripped at the park.” She shook her head, voice dropping so it was almost inaudible. “So many fucking accidents.”
Finally, I got my shit together. “It’s not your fault.”
She scoffed. “It was my hand that hit you.”
“Not that, Artie,” I said gently. “What your dad did is not your fault.”
Her face crumpled and for a horrible few seconds, I thought that I’d said the wrong thing. But then she closed the distance between us and buried her face in my throat. Instinctively, my arms wrapped around her, holding her close.
I thought she’d cry, that tears would soak through my shirt, cooling the skin of my chest. Instead, I held her as her breaths rattled through her chest, as hot puffs of air beat against my neck, as she shuddered and vibrated and then finally, finally relaxed in my arms.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, forehead to my collarbone, tone beyond fragile.
“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about.”
Her shoulders rose and fell as she took one more deep inhale then let it out. “Normally, I’m not like this.”
“Artie.” I pulled back, crouched a little to meet her gaze. “You don’t owe me an explanation just because I’m here and saw . . .”
Whatever the fuck I’d just witnessed.
“Today is the day I lost her.” She turned away, spine stiff, braid I’d put in her hair less than fifteen minutes before disheveled and flopping over her shoulder.
I hesitated, took Artie’s hand. “Lost who, sweetheart?”
“My mom.”