Page 30 of Star Struck

‘Yeah. Sorry, forgot that I was talking to the Fallen Skies Brain of Britain.’ He flipped the door open and unfolded himself into the air, then bent to look at me through the window. ‘Want to take bets on how many times I get asked where I get my ideas from?’ He leaned a little closer. ‘Want to take bets on how many people ask me what Gethryn’s really like?’ A stretch of his lanky body as though his back was hurting him. ‘Want to take bets on what I say?’

The silence went on for a few seconds longer than was comfortable. I didn’t want to get out of the car with him standing there. The hugeness of the world, the indefinite boundaries, the uncontainedness of it, all were suddenly nothing compared to the scary closeness of the man leaning against the car. I found my fingers were moving without my permission, picking and twisting around each other, snakelike. Scar to scar.

Without another word Jack walked off, heading not towards the motel but out into the grilling heat. His head was bent and his shoulders forward, hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans, drawing attention to the perfect nature of his backside. I didn’t know whether he knew I was looking or not.

I let out a breath, then another. There was relief in feeling the air flood out of me, taking a little more tension with it every time. Sweat was rolling between my shoulder blades and pooling in the small of my back; I felt itchy and hot. And annoyed with Jack, and the annoyance managed to push me out of the car when the heat couldn’t; into the motel and up to the room with the lure of a cool shower.

Chapter Fourteen

Jack ignored the sun burning a tattoo on the top of his head through his hair. Ignored the heat eating up through the soles of his tatty trainers, ignored everything physical. Walked and let his mind run free, let the ideas and scenarios play themselves out on the screen behind his eyes. Not for the first time he found himself thinking about home, not the apartment in LA but real home. The farm on the moors, the acres of rain, the sound of water racing. His head spun with the urge to go back. Go home. Is it really that simple? Just . . . leave here and go back? Leave all this fame and fortune shit way behind and go back to the quiet life? And why do I even want to? But he knew why. It was all because of Skye. Skye who reminded him that life could be simple and calm, that it didn’t have to contain these high-octane, high maintenance lifestyles. A scarred girl with a gentle smile, who hated the manic and the overblown — everything that his life had become.

But Skye wanted Gethryn. She believed she knew him, understood him, although all she really knew were the words that Jack had given him. Which meant all she really wanted was the body. Which, Jack had to admit, was pretty spectacular. He’d seen Geth striding about in the buff more times than he cared to remember and he knew it was the kind of muscular, toned thing that the girls went for. A butt like two footballs and a six-pack you could have got a tune out of if you’d hit it with a stick.

Not like me. For the first time in a very long while Jack wished he’d inherited his da’s ability to talk to women, not just his spare frame and a way with words. Really talk, about the things that meant something, the things that hurt and the things that healed. The ability to have a relationship that didn’t just skate along the icy surface, but smashed it and explored the depths beneath. Or even to have that twinkle that had so enthralled his mum, kept her giggly and girlish until the day she died. He’d got none of it. And now, for the first time, it mattered.

He’ll ruin her. He’ll take that lovely naivety and strip it back until she’s chilly and hard. He’ll play on her insecurities, make her feel worthless and unlovable, he’ll take her to bed and . . . Jack stopped suddenly. Am I jealous? Is that it? He played the thought of Skye touching Gethryn, stopped and rewound it, let it play out again, but every time it got as far as her taking her clothes off Gethryn would disappear and be replaced by a shadowy figure and the POV would switch until he was watching her strip through his own eyes. So. It’s not that I want to save her. I want her to want me.

He pushed his hands into his pockets to distract himself from the loop, which now had Skye tugging off the last of her clothes with an inviting smile, and shook his head. Knowing now that it wasn’t saving Skye that was really on his mind, that keeping her from Geth wasn’t about preventing a tragedy. This was all about saving himself. Jack Whitaker, the heartless, the emotionally invincible, was actually beginning to feel something. And it hurt.

Chapter Fifteen

Doused and damp, I lay on the bed, thinking about Jack.

Well, less thinking and more wondering. Why was he so . . . so . . . cut off? I’d always expected the crew of Fallen Skies to be a rollicking bunch, full of in-jokes and private feuds, a tight-knit group who worked hard together for months on end. And, the others were. Felix had told me they crowded into the bar at night with the punters, joking and punching shoulders and telling elaborate stories about set-ups and on-screen mistakes.

But not Jack. I’d hardly seen him speak to a soul, apart from Gethryn and Lissa. Except for this Q and A panel he didn’t seem to mix with the others, neither actors nor crew; he just sat in his room and typed on his laptop rather than carouse and party the night away. All the magazine articles I’d read about Fallen Skies had the show-runner down as a loner; lured away from writing his best-selling sci-fi series of novels by the network’s head honcho to work on the now-defunct Two Turns North, then going on to mastermind his own show. So why did he come across as someone who kept himself a deliberate outsider? Why not enjoy his position, even exploit it a little? Why did he behave as though he was somehow ashamed of being successful? And why, in the name of all that was fashionable, did he go practically everywhere barefoot and put anything which even slightly resembled a cigarette into his mouth?

But he’s more than just a little bit cute, too, eh Skye? All those moody looks, those eyes like something out of a Poe novel . . . come on, admit it to yourself, you quite fancy that serious thing he’s got going on, don’t you?

Michael had been reckless, apparently. Hell bent on success, on living life fast and long. Never sleeping while there was mischief to be made. That was my type of man, the fun-grabbing madcap sort, not the shy, retiring type. Previous boyfriends had all verged on the illegally wild side, or at least the ones I could remember had. Maybe my tastes had changed? Or maybe I had . . . I rubbed the rough edges of my fingertips over my scar again and shook my head, troubled by the feeling that my life had become one huge stammer, disconnected ends that never met, a dotted line. Those gaps, they contained all the things that made me me, and I couldn’t get them to join up, as hard as I tried.

I finally twisted my thoughts away from the shadowy writer and back towards where I wanted them. Gethryn. That head-singing moment of absolute bliss when Gethryn had talked to me last night. That almost-promise of further talking. I rolled gleefully on the bed — it wasn’t my imagination, Jack had seen it too — Gethryn wanted me.

There was a knock at the door. I opened it. Felix stood there radiating a negatively attractive aura. He was horribly pale, his pupils were oscillating crazily and he seemed to have acquired a facial tic which caused his upper lip to wrinkle every few seconds. He had sand in his hair which fell like solid dandruff every time he moved, and either his eyes were extremely bloodshot or he’d been possessed by the devil.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Just don’t.’

Then he staggered into the bathroom and, without closing the door or taking off any clothes, turned on the shower and stood under it, eyes so wide open that his lids seemed to have been pulled up like blinds.

‘Fe?’

‘Is there any Valium left?’ he slurred through rigid lips. ‘And, please God, let the answer be yes.’

I fumbled two tablets from the little brown bottle and took them into the bathroom where he swallowed them, tipping his head back to let the water from the shower carry them down his throat. ‘Oh God. Oh God. I am wrecked.’

‘But you’ve been drinking . . .’

One solitary, counter-rotating eye glared at me. ‘Lover, you are looking at the walking image of habituation here. I’d have to swallow the entire bottle before I felt even a little bit peaky.’ He slowly closed his eyes, letting the water pound down on the top of his head, slicking his hair flat until he looked like a Brylcreem advert. ‘Oh, my Lord. How did Jack stand it? He must be made of fucking iron.’ One eye opened again. ‘And if you have any information on that, lover, then give it up. Don’t think I didn’t notice the two of you dogging it behind us.’

‘We were worried.’

‘Quite right, too. She is crazy. Christ, she’s got some serious issues and she is not afraid to take them out on innocent bystanders.’ He winced. ‘I really need to sleep. Seriously.’

‘Oh, Fe. I thought you’d come with me to the Q and A session.’

‘Sorry, darling.’ Felix flopped out of the shower and started pulling off his soaking clothes. ‘All I’m fit for now is to sleep it off. Q and A is at seven, that’s . . .’ he waved his watch in front of his eyes but was obviously focus-impaired at the moment, ‘hours away. I’ll try and fit it in before I get busy. Okay, lover?’ Stark naked he stood in front of me, swaying.

‘You’re a mess.’

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