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“Everything I need to know, yeah.”
“You’ve known me for eighteen years and I promise you don’t know everything about me.”
She grinned at him over her wineglass. “Are you hiding some big, dark secret? Did you murder a man in Reno just to watch him die?”
An odd expression crossed his face. “No, no secrets. People are just more complicated than that.”
“Everyone’s got secrets.”
His eyes met hers and held. “Not me. I’m an open book. You just haven’t read all the pages yet.”
She took up the implied challenge. “If you’re such an open book, tell me why you keep frowning at your phone. Who’s been texting you and stressing you out?”
He took a drink of wine as his grimace returned. “My agent. He’s pissed I’m staying out here for the whole week. There’s this party he wants me at on Friday, and he keeps trying to convince me to come back early.”
“Do you need to?” Brooke didn’t want Dylan to leave, but she also didn’t want him to lose an important professional opportunity just to hang out with her for a few extra days. She wasn’t special enough to be worth that kind of sacrifice.
“No.” He drank again as he shook his head. “I mean, probably, but no. I’m not doing it. I’m tired of going to fucking parties where I’m leered at and manhandled like a prize hog on the way to the slaughterhouse.”
It was hard to imagine Dylan in a situation like that. Sure, if she looked at him objectively as the person he appeared to be on the surface, it was easy to see him in that kind of setting where people were only valued for their looks. But when Brooke looked at him she saw so much more. She saw his kindness and his determination and his ingenuity. She saw her friend, who was so much more than what was visible on the surface. It raised her hackles to think of him being treated like an empty piece of meat.
“That sounds awful,” she said.
“It can be.” He scraped his thumbnail along the seam of his jeans. “It’s a whole industry based on appearances and projecting a certain image, trying to jump on the next big trend. Everybody you meet is fake, which makes it next to impossible to make real friends or have a meaningful relationship. Everyone’s got an angle, something they’re looking for, some way they’re trying to use you for their own gain.”
His eyes found hers again, and what she saw in the blue depths made her breath catch in her chest.
“You’re the only one in my life who’s a hundred percent real. When you look at me, I know you’re seeing the real me, not the person I pretend to be.”
Brooke didn’t know what to say. She felt a knot form in her throat and swallowed.
Dylan looked down at his lap again. “The truth is, I don’t know how much longer I want to keep modeling.”
“What would you do instead?”
“I’m not sure.” He took a long drink of wine. “I just think it would be nice to do something that’s about more than just my face and my body.” He sighed. “It’s probably a pipe dream.”
“No, it’s not. If your career isn’t making you happy, you should find something else that will. You could do anything you wanted. You’ve probably got talents you don’t even know about. If you have a dream, you should go for it.”
He looked torn. “Yeah, but I’m already doing my dream job, which is more than a lot of people ever get. I don’t know if I deserve a shot at a second one.”
It broke her heart to hear so much unhappiness in his voice. “Of course you do. Don’t talk yourself out of it. You deserve to be happy.”
His eyes flickered to hers and then away again. “Well, I’m not quitting the business just yet. I’ve got to get my ducks in a row before I jump ship.” He knocked back the last of his wine and leaned forward to snag the bottle off the table.
“It might be hard to give up all that money,” Brooke pointed out.
He scooted toward her and topped off her glass before refilling his own. “Money’s not that important to me.”
Her mouth twisted. “Spoken like someone with plenty of it.”
Dylan set the wine bottle back on the table and grinned at her. “Fair enough.” He was sitting much closer now. Close enough to reach out and touch.
Brooke felt an overwhelming compulsion to run her fingers down his arm. To feel the silky warmth of his skin and trace the curve of his muscles.
She sipped her wine instead. “You know, you’re probably the most successful person in our graduating class.”
He propped his arm on the back of the couch and rested his head in his hand. “Even more successful than Brandon Walls, who sells weed out of his car behind the Superette?”
