“Gotta replenish your fluids,” he said, grinning.
What was that supposed to mean? Guardedly, I stared up at him.
“Do you have to work in the morning?” he asked.
The morning. Work. My morning mocha at Java Jones.
“I ran into that girl, Alexis, this morning,” I said.
He looked annoyed. “That’s too bad. I would have thought she’d take her money and get lost.”
“How do you know her, exactly?”
His head nodded under weight I couldn’t see. “For a while, she was like my sister. Remember I told you I ran away from my parents with a woman?”
“She was someone in the p**n business, right? I mean adult film business.”
“Don’t be politically correct on my account, but, yes. Her name was Katherine. Everyone called her Kiki. She had more charisma than common sense, and like an idiot, I went straight from trying to date two high school girls at once to losing my virginity to a p**n star.”
I ran my free hand over his wet chest as he took his turn under the shower. “I hate that she took advantage of you when you were young.”
“We all take advantage. It’s what people do.”
A lump caught in my throat. I never liked it when someone said bad things about human nature. It was as if they were paving a future bad road with excuses.
He continued, “Kiki was Alexis’s mother.”
“Was?”
“Kiki hung herself.”
I put my empty beer can on the edge of the tub, then turned back to hug him. I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
He looked genuinely sad. “Kiki hung herself the week after I moved out and broke up with her for good. I said I was done with the adult film industry, and I honestly wished her the best. I thought she was going to be okay, but she wasn’t right in the head.”
I gazed up at him. Now we both had our arms wrapped around each other, and I couldn’t tell you who was supporting whom. I worried that if I let go, we’d both fall away.
“I thought of Alexis as a sister,” he said. “We were practically the same age, so I couldn’t see myself as a father figure.”
“She seemed so angry at you.”
“People misplace their anger. Her mother’s dead, so all that pain had nowhere to go. Grief is like a heat-seeking missile, and it burrows into the nearest heart.”
“It’s been a few years, though. She needs to move on and leave you alone.”
“When you’re famous, people refuse to disappear. Even when you give them money and they promise to be quiet, they keep coming back.”
I thought of the NDA I’d signed that day and pulled back.
Was I just a future problem for Dalton Deangelo?
Was that how he saw me?
Dalton had been staring down at our feet in the tub, and now he looked up at me. Water from the shower streamed down his face, and his eyes were red, but I couldn’t tell if he was crying.
Despite my fears, I felt my eyes water with sympathy tears at his pain.
“What about your parents?” I asked.
“My mother died of a drug overdose two years ago,” he said.
I mouthed the words “I’m sorry,” though my voice was cut off by emotion.
“Not as sorry as I am,” he said. “It was my hush money that fueled her utter collapse.”
The water cooled down, the hot water tank in the basement reaching its limits.
“And your father?” I asked, hating myself for my insensitive curiosity.
“The checks keep clearing, but we’ve not spoken directly since the fight we had the day I left with Kiki.”
I stood shivering as the water turned from cool to cold. I reached around Dalton to turn off the tap, since he hadn’t seemed to notice.
He chuckled, his voice hollow in the echoing bathroom now that the running water was stopped. “I told him I was going to be a big star one day, and I’d buy a big mansion and they’d beg me to live in the guest house.”
I pulled two towels from the cupboard and handed one to him. He seemed confused, then after a few blinks, started to slowly pat himself dry.
“I’m sorry about everything with your family,” I said.
“Your parents seem so perfect. I was watching them at the wedding, and during the speeches, they kept looking at each other with so much tenderness.”
I laughed, thinking of their current argument over my father’s ratty old recliner, and now the buckets being tossed down on the bushes.
“There’s more than meets the eyes,” I said. “I know I’m lucky, though. They’ve been more than understanding. They saved my life.”
“How?”
My throat closed up, and then I was crying, barely able to catch my breath.
Sometimes, it just hit me like that.
I moved my jaw, thinking about telling him, but then I remembered the paperwork I’d signed that day. I’d signed his NDA, but he hadn’t signed mine. So he didn’t need to know. Nobody did.
“It’s been a long day,” he said gently, pulling me into a damp hug and wrapping his big towel around both of us.
“A very long day.” I smiled, the waterworks finished.
“Sleep with me,” he said. “Join me in the darkness, walk through my dreams, and hold my hand in the morning light.”
I nodded, because what can you say after something as beautiful as that?
We spent a few minutes brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, just like a regular couple, then I climbed into my bed next to a very sleepy-faced, droopy-eyelid-having Dalton Deangelo.
Join me in the darkness, walk through my dreams, and hold my hand in the morning light.
CHAPTER 24
I was groggy in the morning when Dalton woke me.
“Five more minutes,” I moaned, snaking my arm around him. He was fully clothed, which I did not like, but at least he was in my bed.
He kissed my cheek.
“Just a few more days, and we’ll wrap this movie. Then I’ll be able to sleep in, too.”
I opened my eyes, suddenly awake.
“A few more days?” We hadn’t talked about how much longer the movie shoot would be, but I’d hoped for more time than that before I lost him to LA.
“Yeah. Do you want me to send Vern back here to give you a ride to work this morning?”
I rolled over and squinted at my clock. I didn’t have to be at Peachtree Books for another two hours.
“No, thanks. I always walk.”
“Every day?”
“I have a couple of umbrellas for the winter.”