Page 10 of Beyond the Bright Lights

“What the fuck do you care?”

“I do care.”

“Yeah, well, if you care then maybe don’t do this movie.”

“Is that what you want?”

She pauses to think about my question. Her shoulders drop, and she tosses the ax she’s holding on the ground then walks to the patio to a picnic table. It has similar carvings on top, like the ones on the counter inside the bar. Lana swings a leg over the bench and drops down with a grunt.

Bruno returns with two glasses of water and the kind gesture nearly has Lana in tears. Or perhaps she’s reached her emotional limit with everything that’s happened since I walked through the door.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and Bruno disappears again.

Lana takes an appreciative sip, then rubs her palms over her face, her hair, her face again before balling her hands into fists and setting them on the table.

“I didn’t want any of this,” she says after a while. “Rebecca, Tyler’s sister, started writing that book five years after his death. I wasn’t going to read it, but I did. I had to. Then I grieved all over again. Now I'm going to have to go through it for a third time with this movie.”

Her voice breaks, and I instinctively reach for her hand. She pulls it away fast.

“Did you not know it was going to be a movie?”

She sighs. “I did. Of course, I did. The script was written years ago, and the process to get it made took too long. I needed to move on, so I told Rebecca that I was done and no longer wanted to be part of the movie. She was disappointed, but she eventually stopped calling, stopped texting. I was finally getting on with my life. I was forgetting.”

She turns her head to wipe tears off her cheek as if she’s embarrassed to cry in front of me. Why? Does she believe crying will make her appear weak? From what I’ve learned in the short time I’ve known this woman, she’s incredibly strong. Still, I have a feeling she’s showing me a side of herself few others get to see.

Lana turns back to me. The pain in her eyes . . . God, I just want to hold her right now.

“Rebecca emailed me a few months ago saying the movie would be filming soon, but I thought it would be on some sound stage in L.A. She never told me it would be filmed here in the town I call home.”

“Would it have made a difference knowing?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” She lets out a shaky breath and breaks our locked gazes to close her eyes and palm her forehead. “Maybe I could have mentally prepared myself. Or tried to.”

I start tracing the carved names on the picnic table, expecting her to keep talking, but she doesn’t. Silence stretches between us before I glance up. She’s studying me—my face.

“You don’t even look like him.”

I raise a brow. “Did you want an actor who looks like him?”

She opens her mouth then immediately clamps it shut. She doesn’t have an answer for me.

Because she doesn’t want any of this.

“Tell me about him.”

She huffs out a laugh. “Didn’t you read the script?”

“I did, but I want to hear about him from you.”

Lana stands as if my words flipped a switch from sorrow to anger. “I’m not doing this. Not with you.”

Wait.

An idea pops into my head, and she’s not going to like it one bit.

“Why not do this with me?”

She twists her face in confusion. “What?”

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