“They hide in plain sight, Cam. You know I had that stalker who managed to get a job on my damn TV show.”
“I know, and they should have caught that in his background check. We can make sure that doesn’t happen here.”
“He was in my trailer,” Kennedy reminded.
“I know,” she repeated and put her hand on Kennedy’s back, wanting to offer her some comfort at the memory of a fanatic man who had gotten on set as a temp and found his way into Kennedy’s trailer when she was only seventeen years old, scaring the crap out of her. “This isn’t that, okay?”
“Of course, it’s not,” Zane added. “We’ll make sure you are safe, Kennedy. I promise. I can get whatever security you want there. If two aren’t enough, I’ll get four and tell them to stay out of the shots. You want ten, I’ll get ten. Hell, I’ll hire an army of mercenaries, if you want.”
Zane had been Kennedy’s agent since she first started acting, and he still felt responsible for the guy in the trailer, even though he’d had nothing to do with it. He’d always taken his role as their agent very seriously, though, treating both of them now honestly and respectfully, and Cameron appreciated that.
“I don’t think we need mercenaries,” Jessie said. “And an army would definitely get in the shot, but if you want more security, we’ll figure that out, okay?”
Cameron nodded and looked to Kennedy, who didn’t nod. She didn’t say anything at all. Then, Kennedy stood up, exhaled deeply, and headed into the kitchen.
“I’ll go,” Zane said and ran his hands over his face rapidly. “We need this, Cam. I’ve got nothing lined up for–”
“I know. I’ll do it. If you can get her to agree to it, I’ll do it,” she interrupted.
“Thank God,” Jessie said and flopped back against the sofa.
Zane walked off to talk to Kennedy, and Cameron sat back against the loveseat, wondering how in the hell they had all gotten here. She’d gone from being a bankable movie star who could play just about any role to being viewed as someone whoneeded anger management classes because she had dared to be clumsy during a strictly verbal altercation and accidentally hit a table with the back of her legs, causing a glass to fall over right as she’d been busy getting yelled at by her girlfriend for another actress flirting withherwhen she hadn’t even flirted back.
CHAPTER 2
Kennedy
“Hey,” Zane said.
He’d, unfortunately, followed her into the kitchen.
Kennedy poured herself a cup of her favorite Kona coffee and thought about how Cameron had used to be the one to follow her whenever she’d walked away from something. Ithadbeen Zane before her because Zane had been her agent and father figure since Kennedy had gotten her first job in a commercial, so she didn’t mind that he was the one who’d followed to check on her, but she missed the times when her girlfriend, the woman she’d once believed to be the love of her life, also wanted to make sure that she was okay.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“No, I’m okay,” he replied and sat down in one of the four stools lining the kitchen island. “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is that you two want to put Cam and me on camera when we’ve been barely holding our relationship together.”
“Barely holding it together? Since when?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed and tilted her coffee cup to her lips, preferring black right now instead of adding anything to it. “A while. Why do you think we fought at that party?”
“Because you were upset.”
“Any idea why?” she asked. “I suppose no one is asking that question. They’re just enjoying the rumors, selling countless pictures and articles, and talking about our lives like they are not real, but they are very real.”
“I know that. Are you going to tell me what caused that fight?”
Kennedy turned to stand on the other side of the island, facing him, and replied, “She was flirting with another actress. She says she wasn’t. I don’t know; maybe she wasn’t. Maybe I just saw what I wanted to see. Hands were on arms, and I thought it was Cam doing the flirting, but she swears that she didn’t, and Cam’s never been unfaithful to me. I know that. That night, though, it was just too much. I’d lost the Globe, my girlfriend, the woman who people keep asking me about in terms of why she isn’t my wife yet, was flirting with another actress, who is at least ten years younger than me, you’d just told me that you wanted me to play a mom for the first time, and I just realized that everything was coming crashing down around me. I yelled at her. I shouldn’t have, but I did. She yelled back. The damn glass fell. Cam cleaned it up because she’s a good person and didn’t want someone else to have to clean up her mess, and we left after. I honestly didn’t know it would turn into this whole thing where we now have to rehab the image of our relationship because it’s messing up our careers. I know Cam didn’t get that part because of it. I feel terrible. And I know I’m not getting offers for the same reason. Studios think I’m going to bring drama to their sets when I can promise youandthem that Cam and I have no drama. We…” She stopped.
“You what?”
“We have no drama because there’s nothing to be dramatic about.” She shrugged both shoulders. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Cam – I’ll probably always love Cam – but we haven’t had sex in at least two months; maybe longer. I don’t even rememberthe last time. Well, that’s not true. It was a quickie in the shower, and before that, I think it was at least a month. We’ve been going through some things, and we’ve talked about going to counseling, but we haven’t yet. Part of it is because we’re both a little scared of us going to couple’s counseling and it getting out now after the fight. Not everyone believes in the sanctity of therapy, and that’s especially true with celebrities like us. All it takes is some other patient sitting in a lobby, watching us walk out of a session, and it’s splattered all over the internet. We didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.”
Zane cleared his throat and asked, “Are you breaking up?”
“I don’t know. Five years is a long time, and I keep thinking about how good it felt in the beginning and how hard and fast I fell for her. I wonder if we can get that back if we work on us, but then we don’t work on us, we fight, and I wonder why we’re still together.”
