“Exactly.” DeLuca said the word like that was it, like Cole Masten wasn’t the biggest thing to happen to Hollywood since CGI, like he would just walk away and leave Cole with some second-rate asshole.

“I’ve paid your advance,” Cole sputtered.

The man looked at him like he was an idiot. “I’ll refund it.” It was, in retrospect, a fairly idiotic statement.

“Just… Just sit down for a second. Please.” The word was disgusting as it came out, rank with misuse, and he felt irritation in the midst of his panic. But it was the panic that drove this train, panic that pushed every retort out of his mind and left him broken and desperate, in front of this man.

The attorney didn’t sit; he stayed in place, his eyebrows raised, and waited.

“I’m sorry I’m late.” He risked a glance at his watch. Twenty-two minutes. This dick was giving him hell for twenty-two measly minutes.

It took DeLuca a quarter hour to get over Cole’s tardiness, but finally the attorney was re-seated, had downed an omelet, and the conversation had moved on to the matter at hand.

“You’ve lived your life as a celebrity for a long time, but in the courtroom, against your wife?” DeLuca tapped the table. “You’re equals to each other. You’re nothing to the judge. You’re normal.” He leaned back, and Cole looked away. Normal. The word was painful as it crawled in his ears.

“If I’m going to represent you, you have to know that life as you know it is over. You are not a bachelor yet, not until this divorce is final. You are my bitch, and I will say if and who you fuck, what you say to whom, and when and how you work. If you want to keep this movie as yours, you will leave this shithole of a city and go to Georgia. You will keep your dick clean and pretty-boy head down and do your job… nothing else. I’ve buried five of your fucks since Sunday, and my team doesn’t have time for the popularity contest your dick has entered. Before you break a paparazzi’s neck or barge into the hospital and finish that director off, let me do my job. We are going to return you to being Hollywood’s Golden Boy and remind everyone of who the slut in this relationship was. You listen to me, and I promise you that I will keep The Fortune Bottle yours—along with any other shared asset you want.”

“Just the movie,” Cole said quietly, his eyes on the table. “She can keep the rest.”

“I need you to commit to my terms.”

Cole shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“No drugs.”

“I don’t do drugs.” He winced at an early memory of Nadia, a line of coke down her back, his nose dipping to hit between each thrust into her. A stupid combination, sex and coke. Neither of them able to feel much, their highs better than anything going on between their bodies. In the early days of their relationship, the drugs had been something that bonded them. But they’d both grown up. Gotten smarter. Stopped doing a lot of things, come to think of it, together.

“Well don’t start. And no drinking. A beer or two is fine, but I can’t have you drunk.”

“That’s fine.” He rubbed his neck. “Anything else?”

“No sex. No relationships. No women. No men.” The man didn’t smile; he just leaned forward and stared at Cole.

No sex. That was probably for the best, his stream of fucking doing absolutely nothing to help his psyche. No relationships. Even less of a problem. After Nadia, he couldn’t imagine ever walking down that path again. No men. The easiest rule of them all. He looked up and met the man’s stare. “Agreed.”

Deluca held the eye contact long enough to be satisfied, then nodded and glanced at his watch, his wedding ring glinting out against tan skin and strong hands. “Then let’s go.”

“Go?” He looked up at the man, who was now standing, peeling a couple of bills off and dropping them on the white tablecloth. “Where?” He had a massage scheduled—had planned for Brenda the Masseuse to work off the hours of sex with her hands before he took her from behind, bent over the massage table. It’d be another fuck, another attempt to replace a hundred memories of Nadia. Eventually, those memories would be buried. Eventually, he’d be able to push inside a woman and not hear Nadia’s moan in his mind. Maybe he’d have to cancel the massage, but he wasn’t going anywhere with this man. He had zero interest in going to another meeting, another lecture surely planned, this one with publicists and more suits in attendance. He stayed in place in his seat. “Where?” he repeated stubbornly.

“Quincy.” The attorney smiled, and Cole felt off-balance by the change, the man’s answer taking a second longer to compute. Quincy?

“Right now?” He stayed in his seat, thought of a hundred good reasons to stay in Los Angeles right now. But his question was ignored, the attorney striding through the crowded tables, his shoulders wide and strong in his custom suit. The man could be a damn bodyguard, with his build and intimidation.

Cole sighed and grabbed his cell phone, rising from the table with a sigh.

It looked like, for the immediate future, his new role was as Brad DeLuca’s bitch. A role he’d never played, a role he already hated.

CHAPTER 19

I’d had a variety of jobs since my graduation from Quincy High. Fresh out, my new diploma stuffed in a drawer, it was Davis Video Rental. That was in the early Cole Masten days, when he was a twenty-five year old playing sexy high school quarterbacks who dated the nerdy girl and made her popular. I spent my days alphabetizing titles, catching sticky-fingered teens and watching movies on the twenty-seven inch mounted in the store’s upper corner. Each night, I’d bring home a couple of titles and watch more. By the time I’d worked through the entire Comedy and Drama section, Horror and Classic, I put in my notice. Life was too short for Sci-Fi or Western.

After Davis Rental, I drove down to Tallahassee. Applied at a handful of restaurants and bars, striking out until I found a Moe’s with a flirtatious manager who hired me on the spot. I struggled a little there. It wasn’t the restaurant or the stoners I worked with. It was the students, each ding of the door bringing in a fresh wave of individuals who were doing something, going somewhere. Each new face was a subtle point to the invisible sign on my chest that said UNDERACHIEVER in big bubbly letters. Prior to that job, my lack of continuing education, my lack of a life plan… it had never bothered me. I didn’t apply to colleges because I wasn’t really interested in them, didn’t have a childhood dream of leaving Quincy to become a marine biologist or whatever it was that high-schoolers were supposed to want. I liked to read and watch movies. I loved to cook and work in the garden. Before that job in Tallahassee, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with those simple pleasures. But for some reason, with that job, those students… I felt like less of a person each day that I walked in those double doors. And then one day, sitting in the parking lot before my shift, I couldn’t do it anymore. I just started up my truck and drove back home.

After that, I stuck to the county limits. Got the Holden job and moved in, grew roots through my soles and into the plantation’s dirt. I blocked out the images of smiling student faces and focused on the simple things I loved. And slowly but surely, the happiness creeped back in. And around that time, Scott Thompson started coming by. Once he won my heart, there wasn’t much thought about plans or college or Life Outside of Quincy. Love did that to you. Sucked you in and blurred out everything else.