Page 18 of Fate Fiction

My return trip was much slower, my panicked heartbeat had been replaced by a steady pumping of blood. The cramping of my leg and the dull aching in my chest helped me forget—for a few moments, at least—why I was running in the first place. My mind had completely been emptied. A few precious seconds passed by where I was totally fine again, then camp came into view and it all flooded back. I could run into Evan at any moment, I had endless opportunities to fuck up an interaction. The next week would be a long game of conversational Russian Roulette.

“Dani!” Sue’s head popped out her kitchen door and shook me from my stupor as I passed. “I’m glad I caught you.”

I slowed my jog into a walk and pulled out an earbud.

“What’s up?” I rasped. I was more out of breath than I’d expected, since the breakup I had fewer reasons to flee as of late. And six miles was admittedly pretty damn far.

A downright devilish grin spread across her face. “I thought we could do dinner all together tonight, since I’m cooking for four instead of fourteen. Evan was more than alright with it.”

How on earth was I supposed to say no, what could I even say? “Sorry Sue, I need to leave because I’ve spent countless Friday nights holed up on my couch writing about this man’s arms.”

Evan most definitely didn’t want me to join him. Not after our awkward introduction, and Sue told me herself that he came in search of solitude. Forced dinner with our ragtag bunch was anything but. Sue’s blissful unawareness of his status likely made for an awkward position on his part, but I couldn’t exactly hide out in my cabin like a recluse until he left the kitchen each night, as badly as I wanted to.

“Are you sure he said that?” I finally replied after staring at her blankly. “I’m really not trying to ruin his week Sue⁠—”

“He said he’d love the company.”

Easily a massive exaggeration on Sue’s part, but I didn’t call her on it.

“Okay then,” I replied nonchalantly, kicking around a pebble at my feet.

Spending more than the minute and some change I’d already spent with Evan wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my evening, but I had no other choice. And now thanks to the run that took up the better part of the afternoon, I had the honor of being perceived at my greasiest and sweatiest—exactly how every girl wished she could be seen by her celebrity crush.

I prayed to not be perceived. I wished for invisibility.

“Just ‘okay then’?” Sue crossed her arms and cocked her head. I hadn’t given her this much attitude since I was a teenager.

I needed to take a few breaths before calmly offering opposition to the proposed plans, “Sue, I really feel like he planned the trip to be alone and you may be forcing him to not be alone. That’s all.”

“Oh no, he suggested it,” she grinned at her own reply, some odd self-satisfaction in proving me wrong. “I offered to bring him dinner to his cabin. He said he’d like to eat with us in the kitchen, not even in the dining hall.”

The dining hall was attached to the front of Sue and Randy’s house. “Hall” may have been an understatement, it was a log structure with two long rustic wooden tables and benches for the guests who’d typically sit family style. An image crossed my mind of Evan and I sitting at opposite ends of the long table as though we were in some castle’s grand dining room.

No. I could not think of him in the context of Thorndown.

I shook away the thought and muttered some agreeable reply before slinking back to my cabin. I’d count down the minutes until the inevitable second meeting between Evan and I.

Out of the corner of my eye there was another strange motion from the shadow in his cabin that looked like a half wave. I hung my head low and reminded myself that I was still likely going crazy. My subconscious was fabricating illogical scenarios.

Someone of his fame and status shouldn’t have found the camp to begin with, how had he even managed to book the cabins? Did he force his assistant to find him the most remote place he could get to? Why had he shown up without a security team or at minimum an assistant, didn’t most celebrities travel everywhere with a right-hand man?

Maybe it was all a bizarre method acting ritual, he was working on a movie that required him to go off the grid and integrate himself with people on the fringes of society, much like Sue and Randy. And supposedly me. At least that had to have been how he perceived me.

Another mortifying thought.

What had Sue told Evan about me, and what was her explanation as to why I stole his precious alone time from him? Did he know anything about me at all?

Did he ask for a background check on me before agreeing to let me be here?

It was probably a strange blessing that I knew far more about Sir Erwyn the character than I did Evan McLeod the actor. My fandom ended with Thorndown.

I didn’t know any behind the scenes facts about his life, save for the fact that he was from a small town in Scotland, which was incredibly apparent from his accent alone. Aside from what he’d post on his curated Instagram—likely run by a social media manager—I had relatively limited awareness about him as a person.

There was no random trivia I’d have to pretend to not know when overhearing conversations between him and Sue or Randy, and for that I was grateful.

Maybe in a way it was sad that I had invested so much time into the character he played, but he was little more than the voice and ridiculously handsome face behind it. He was his own person, with his own interests, that existed separately from Sir Erwyn. I could do both of us a favor and work to separate him from his character.

Being a rational adult of sound mind I knew all of this, but it was still difficult to look at him or think about him and not see pieces of the character I was so fond of.