Page 83 of Business or Pleasure

“Good friends who didn’t stick up for you.”

The weight of his pause lets me know exactly how much it hurt. “It’s hard, in this industry. We’re pitted against each other from the very beginning—the whole audition process is a competition. Everyone always wants something they don’t have, and when they get it, they’re happy with it for maybe a second before setting their sights on something else. Something loftier. Sometimes Hollywood friends feel... there’s a lack of permanence there. You never know what they really think about you. Or maybe you wrap and never see each other again.”

That seems to be the truth about Hollywood in general, that lack of permanence. So many people are clinging to relevance, unsure when their fans will move on. The cons seem to safeguard the things we love, preserve them in amber so that we can always find those who share that love.

“You’d be honest with me if you thought I was a complete loser,” he says. “If I was a talentless idiot who’s just kidding himself that he has any kind of future in this industry.”

I’ve never seen him like this. Over the past couple months, he’s given me access to the version of himself that no one else sees, and it suddenly feels like such a privilege, I’m not sure how to handle it. His vulnerability cracks my heart wide open and lays it at his feet, bright and still beating. It makes me do things I might not otherwise do.

“Finn.” I reach for his hands, and I’m relieved when he lets me take them, when he doesn’t bat an eye at my abstract mess of nail polish. I think back to his hand beneath the table, rubbing circles along my thigh. There was a sensuality to that gesture, maybe, but more than that, touching him makes me feel calm. I can’t help wondering whether he feels it, too. “I’m on the season two finale, and if Hux and Meg don’t kiss soon, I will lose my mind. And I’ve watched your other movies, too, the more recent ones.” It’s true, even the Christmas movies. I hope he knows this is genuine, not an ego stroke. “I know they didn’t make the same kind of impact as The Nocturnals, but you’re fantastic in them. All of them. And it’s not just your performances. You’re a decent person, and you truly care about your work. It’s impossible not to admire.”

Finn looks deeply struck by this, blinking a few times before he gets his bearings. “How do you always manage to make me feel like every insignificant thing about me matters?”

“Because that’s my job.” It all matters. So much. “That’s why you hired me, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head. “Part of it, maybe. But it’s more than that.”

“You do the same.” My voice is quiet but steady. The fear is still there, but it’s smaller than it’s been in a while. “I haven’t taken my own writing seriously in a long time. But... I opened it up on the plane yesterday and fiddled around a little. I’m still not sure what I did was the right direction for it, and it wasn’t a ton, but it was something.”

“I can’t wait to read it.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He turns toward the desk, picking up a paper bag. “I have something to show you. To give you, actually,” he says. “Please don’t refuse it because of the suitcase. Because I found these in Artist Alley today and couldn’t resist.”

Giving him a lift of my eyebrows, I open up the bag, my heart leaping into my throat. “You got me socks?”

“Your feet are always cold, and you said you never have enough. And they reminded me of you.” He brushes this off, as though socks are a perfectly normal present for someone you’re educationally sleeping with. A three-pack of adorable, detective-themed socks: one patterned with tiny daggers, another with magnifying glasses, the third with a skull and crossbones.

And then I do something else I’m not expecting until that moment: I lean forward and kiss him. Not because I think we can make a lesson out of it—because I want to. He seems shocked at first, even though we’ve done this too many times to count, but a split second later, he kisses me back, hands tangling in my hair as I drop the socks to the bed.

It’s gentle for maybe half a minute. Then it turns desperate, hungry. I pour everything about tonight into that kiss, everything I’ve held back over the past few days or weeks or since we started this trip. I let it all out, and he gives it right back. I clutch him close, hands beneath his shirt, thumb grazing that mole on his back. Every detail about him has become impossibly lovely to me, and there are too many I haven’t memorized yet.

I’ll be flying home to Seattle tomorrow, but tonight, I’m not holding back. No hiding in the bathroom if I can’t control my emotions.

This is what our “few pointers” have become: a blazing, painful desire for the one person I can’t have. We built two separate sides of a relationship and drew a line between them, and I thought we used permanent ink. Now that line is blurred, thinner than it’s ever been. I want this, him, and right now that’s the only thing that matters. Maybe my heart will suffer for it later, but that’s a risk I’m going to have to take.

If this is the only way someone can want me, so be it.

He’s folded me into his lap, a hand splayed on my lower back while the other cradles my jaw. “So gorgeous,” he says, and it’s criminal, how just those few words can drag out a moan. His voice turns low. Rough. “Do you know what I’m thinking?” he asks, and I shake my head. “I’m thinking about how pink your pretty pussy is right now.” A knuckle comes up to my face, tracing my blush. “Pinker than your cheeks?”

“You’ve gotten good at this.”

This earns me a disarmingly sexy smirk. “If I fucked you with my hand,” he continues, “I wonder how wet you’d be. Would my finger just... slide right in?” He lifts a hand, his middle finger turning a slow, lazy circle in the air. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think so. Hot and slick and fucking perfect.”

A whimper escapes me.

“You like that?”

I nod.

“Should I keep going?”

No.

“Yes.”

He leans closer, mouth up against my neck. “I’d go so slow, because I want to savor you. I’d keep teasing you, exactly the way you like. I might want to spread you wide and rub your clit right away, but I’d make myself wait for it. I’d make you wait for it.”

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