AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Five
Darla
If you asked me a few days ago what my personal version of hell is, I’d have said something like: a gridlocked traffic jam in a heatwave with no water in the car. Snaking the shower drain after putting it off for a week. Airplane food.
I wouldnothave guessed that hell is spending the whole morning with Jesse Hendry’s lips against mine… but that’s on me. That’s a lack of imagination on my part.
“Take five, everybody, then we’ll go again.” It’s midday, but the stubble on my uncle’s jaw makes it seem closer to midnight. He scrubs a hand over his sandpapery chin, squinting at the playback on the camera screen. His baseball cap has slipped to a rakish tilt. “We’re all set with Jesse’s entrance to the water and the dialogue. Now I want the kiss of life shot from all angles.”
Oh, boy.
I steal a glance atRiptide’s star. Jesse Hendry almost always has a smile for me, but not today. Today, he won’t meet my eye. He’s standing beside Franklin with his arms folded over his bare chest, a towel slung around his broad shoulders, his expression stony.
Do I have bad breath? I’ve crunched so many breath mints on our short breaks already, I’m gonna need to visit the dentist.
My legs ache as I shift my weight from foot to foot. I’m swaddled in a thick, blue towel, but the salt water makes my skin feel greasy underneath. This whole ‘extra’ thing was fun for about twenty seconds, but I’ve been seriously over it for hours now.
It’s not the waiting or the repetition. I’m used to that—it’s all part of being crew, too. It’s not even the constant dunking in the ocean, or the red marks where the fishing net has started to rub my calves, or the hot sun and my pounding headache.
It’s not even the anxiety of being bared to the cameras in a swimsuit anymore.
It’s Jesse.
He’s barely spoken to me all morning. Barely looked at me, except when we’re filming. And he’s so precise with where he puts his hands, so eager to lunge away from me every time Franklin yells ‘cut’, that… well.
They’re not paying him enough for this.That’swhat it feels like he’s saying.
And I get that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but if he snatches his hands off me like he’s touching a dead fish one more time, I’ll toss a clump of seaweed in his eye.
“Okay, reset,” Franklin calls from where he’s collapsed into his folding chair for once. His assistant waves her clipboard, fanning my uncle’s ruddy cheeks.
Jesse turns on his heel and marches across the beach without a word. I cap my water bottle and hurry to catch up, my stomach churning.
“You don’t have to be like this, you know.”
Jesse glances back at me, startled. His blue eyes narrow as he slows. “What?”
I nearly trip over a ditch in the sand, but I draw level with him. “You don’t have to be a huge, massivejerk.”
Jesse rears back, his shoulders bunched round his ears. There are muscles on this man that I’ve never seen before.
No wonder he lifts me so easily. No wonder he doesn’t even seem tired.
That was comforting, for exactly one take.
“I’m—what?”
I beat Jesse to the marked spot fueled entirely by my anger. It means I’m red-faced and out of breath when I get there, but it still counts. And I’m too mad at him to even care about peeling the towel off and tossing it to one side, his eyes bouncing down the length of my body then back up to my eyes.
His towel follows mine onto the ground. I drop to my knees, then lay in the sand.
“Ten inches to the left,” someone calls. We wriggle and huff, getting back into the right position.
“The sun will have moved anyway,” I grumble. “It’s not like we’rethataccurate.”
Jesse’s mouth twitches, but then he’s stone-faced again. He kneels beside my body in his kiss-of-life pose, strong fingers already knotted together. “What did you mean back there?”
Imogen comes over. Brushes us both with powder, spritzes our hair with water, and gives me a hideously obvious wink. Jesse ignores it. “Darla?”
