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Present Day
I’d barely touched down in LA from my very quick trip to Canada when it was decided that I had to go straight to Cooper’s office, despite it being five in the morning.
I didn’t want to go; I wanted to sleep for the next week. Crawl into a hole and disappear until I need to be back on set in a few weeks to begin the final season. I could feel the tension in my shoulders and spine. My head and back ached. My heart ached. The last thing I wanted to do was go to my manager’s office with my entire public relations team to dodamage control.
After hours of going back and forth on how we were going to “spin this” for appearances, we are finally pulling into the gated community where I live in Beverly Hills and the exhaustion from being on the go for almost twenty-four hours, including a flight to another country, is hitting me hard. Coupled with the feelings of annoyance over where things are forced to stand between me and Paxton, makes me feel like the walls are closing in. We make it through my private gate and up the driveway and my eyes flit to Emmett, my gardener, trimming the hedges that line the driveway and I give him a wave through my window. When my door opens, Damian, who’s been quiet ever since we left Cooper’s office, stands next to it just as he always does.
For the first few months that he was the head of my security, he wouldn’t even let me into my own house when I returned from being out without doing a thorough sweep of the property to make sure I wasn’t in danger. But after he had a top of the line security system installed that he could access twenty-four-seven through his phone and a gate you needed a perfectly clean background check and fingerprints to get through if you weren’t already on my carefully approved list, he backed off.
I slide out of the limo, push my sunglasses to the top of my head, and narrow my eyes at him.
“Why are you being so quiet?”
He’s still wearing his sunglasses so I can’t see his eyes. I’m not surprised he doesn’t take them off, though I know he’s looking at me.
“What would you like me to say?” he asks before turning and walking away. “I assume you’re not going anywhere right now?”
I fall into step with him and he enters the code to my front door. I leave the door open so the driver can bring my bags in, but I follow Damian towards the kitchen which is located in the back part of my house. “No. I don’t have any plans to go anywhere.”
We walk into my state of the art all white kitchen, and he stops, placing his hands on the island in the middle of the room, and lets out a sigh.
“So, you’re staying with him?”
“I am not staying with him,” I scoff.Though I kind of am, I suppose.He removes his sunglasses and shoots me a look that says he’s not buying whatever I’m selling, giving me that one arched eyebrow that is both sexy and annoying. “It’s not that simple, Damian.”
“Isn’t it?” A scowl finds my lips and I think he regrets his choice of words because his eyes soften slightly. “He’s cheating on you, Shay.”
“I know that Damian. I saw it with my own two eyes, remember?”
He nods before turning to face me head on and I see the sincerity in his eyes but I can still sense his irritation. “You deserve better than that, you know.”
My heart squeezes in my chest hearing his words, knowing that he’s right, and also that maybehewants better for me. “I know, but my PR team is not advising me to stay with him forever.”
“Let me guess, just through award seasons?”
I hate how transparent this all seems and how obvious it is as to why I would stay with him. “It’s not just about that. Being with Paxton has opened a lot of doors for me professionally and to their point, I don’t want to risk blowing up a relationship that might be directly connected to me landing a role in a movie or my next potential project.”My father did always say it isn’t what you know it’s who you know,and as of late, Paxton knows a lot of people.
Right now, it seems that my team is on the same page that he owes me.
“You don’t need him, Shay. You’re very talented. People are beating down your door to work with you. You’re up for an Emmy this season. Your career is at an all-time high.” I push away the smile that is pulling at my lips after hearing what I believe to be his version of praise.He thinks I’m talented?
I stop myself from going down the rabbit hole of what his words mean and remember why he felt the need to say them. “For television, sure,” I argue, “but there’s a whole different world that I have yet to break into and withLA Dreamsgoing into its final season, I want to keep my options open. I haven’t decided what’s next and the idea of movies does seem like the logical next step. I’ve been doing television since I was thirteen and I’m twenty-three. I just want to see what else is out there. I’ve been playing the same character for ten years across two different television shows and there’s a lot of pressure and speculation and excitement surrounding what my next project will be.”
My parents always wanted me to have a well-rounded portfolio. They always said whenLA Dreamsended,pending it ended on the studio’s terms and not for getting canceled,movies would be the next natural step. They didn’t want me to risk getting typecast into the role I had been playing for years: the popular, quirky, loveable, and very outgoing girl that everyone had come to love. A flicker of pain moves through me that this is the first major decision I’ll be making without them.
“So, you’re using him?”
I blink rapidly recalling the very same question I asked my PR team when they laid out this plan. “They want me to use the situation to my advantage,” I say repeating back the very words they had said to me. Damian rarely has much to say about my career unless it directly affects my safety. There were times he’d advised against appearances or parties, of course, but that was the extent of it so for him to have this much to say is out of the norm. He doesn’t reply. “Are you judging me?”
He shakes his head. “No. That’s not my job.” He lets out a sigh. “I just don’t know who you have looking out for your personal interests and I wouldn’t want you getting forced into something you don’t want. Maybe this is the right thing for your career, but is this the right thing foryou?”
I let his words wash over me as I move towards my refrigerator to pull out a bottle of San Pellegrino. I’m grateful my assistant went shopping while I was on my five-minute trip to Canada because there was hardly anything but takeout in here when I left. I grab a container of strawberries and pull them out.
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “Do you think this is a bad idea?” Damian is smart and perceptive and can see things most people can’t.Obviously, with his line of work.He can see a million different ways something could play out within a second.
“I don’t think he should get away with what he did or what he’s doing.”
“He’s not gettingawaywith anything. We aren’t together. We were never a couple that engaged in a ton of public displays of affection and he’s in Canada so it’s not as if we would be spotted out socially anyway for the next few weeks. There are a few events we’re scheduled to appear at together over the next few months and thenmyPR team will re-evaluate withhisPR team over what comes next. I don’t even need to talk to him except while we’re in public.”
