Page 4 of Holy Sinner

Rafe looks up from the phone to me. “You were a cute kid. Why does this photo have you looking like that?” Someone behind us honks and I don’t miss the dark look that passes over his face when he looks in his side mirror to see who it is.

“I, uh, I just didn’t expect to see a photo from then. That’s all,” I lie again and reach forward to touch his shoulder. “We’re going to be late and I have that meeting.”

If it wasn’t because of my meeting, Rafe wouldn’t drive forward. I know that. I do have a meeting, however, and he knows that, so he sighs and rolls through the lot gates.

“Not a fan of them digging up these photos from your past but stuff like this happens all the time,” Grant tells me with a reassuring smile. He’s got my phone again and he hands it back. “Someone from high school probably got offered some quick cash. That’s all.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.” I give him a tight smile and exit out of the blog. I don’t want to see that photo or think about that night. I shove my phone into my purse and try to look as natural as possible. I must do a good enough job, because Rafe and Grant don’t push the photo anymore. When we park everything seems normal enough that it isn’t so hard to pretend that I’m fine and by the time we walk through the doors where they’ll head off to hair and makeup, I feel better than okay.

Nothing can touch me. Not even the ghosts of my past. Not when I have two monsters willing to protect me.

Chapter Three

GRANT

The photo this morning unsettled Kit, there’s no doubt about it. “We need to get better security on her.”

“What the fuck do you think I’ve been doing? Whoever has those photos knows her,” Rafe snaps. He’s walking beside me and anyone looking our way would see two men who are friends, after all we’re dating the same woman, why wouldn’t we be friendly? They don’t know that I wanted to take his windpipe out this morning over the way he chews.

Kit holds us together. She’s the glue and the softness that somehow makes the fucked up and broken parts of us function enough to pass for normal in polite society.

“She doesn’t know anyone else but Alana,” Rafe points out.

“She’s got those other two.”

He means Kit’s friends from college. “Ivy and Hope,” I remind him but the only thing he does is grunt. Fuck his brooding silent shit.

“It could be them,” he says after a minute. “Why wouldn’t they be handing over photos for money? Maybe they’re jealous.”

He’s got a point. I’m not going to tell him that though and this time it’s me that grunts back and we walk on in silence to hair and makeup. When we turn up, the place is in full swing. Jasmine is getting her hair done and I take the seat next to her without looking her way. She glances at me and I know she’s waiting for me to say something to her, the same way she does every morning.

“Good morning, Jasmine. Everything alright?” I ask, because that’s exactly what people expect from America’s Sweetheart. They think they know me, that I’m the guy that gives two fucks about what a shallow, greedy girl like Jasmine cares about or wants. Even though I know everyone on set has signed an NDA, I’m not stupid. As soon as their legal obligations are over, I know they’re going to run to the first gossip rag that will pay them. Some of them are going to be smart enough to hold out for something close to Page Six, others are going to take the first couple of hundred dollars to come their way and go to a site like the one with Kit’s prom photo.

“I’m doing great. How about you?” Jasmine smiles brightly and gives me a look in the mirror that shows me she’s game to play friends today. Thank fuck. We have a sex scene scheduled and even thinking of touching her makes me want to vomit.

“I’m good. Kit’s happy, so everything is perfect.”

Jasmine’s smile goes a little more brittle in the mirror and she nods. “Sure, sure. I understand.”

“Do you?” Rafe asks from the seat he took on the other side of the starlet and as much as I want to tell him to shut his fucking mouth, I’m with him. Kit doesn’t let us interfere with movie shit, which means we can’t put Jasmine six feet under the way we want to. Kit would lose her shit if we did something like that.

“You can’t just kill the lead actress because you don’t like how she talks to me.”

She’s wrong. We can and we could, but we don’t. What Kit wants matters more than what we want.

It always will.

Jasmine shifts in her seat and the stylist doing her hair ducks her head when I look her way along with Rafe. “I, uh, I mean, well yeah. She’s your…you know.”

You know.

That’s what she’s calling the love of our fucking lives. The woman meant for us and us alone. The one so perfectly goddamned made that she makes us want to be normal.

Our ‘you know’. Jesus fucking Christ. If I wasn’t trying to do what Kit wants, Jasmine would be in pieces by now.

“She’s everything,” I say smoothly and smile at Jasmine in the mirror. I tilt my head back to look at the stylist and wink. Fuck her NDA. When she’s able to finally talk about me, the only thing she’ll be able to say is that I was an attentive and romantic boyfriend to Kit. I know the rumors bother her—that Rafe and I have Kit in an arrangement that’s just sex. Some kind of “fucked up Hollywood sex cult,” someone with too high a follower count to believe shit like that said. It bothered Kit, though.

She’s too sensitive for this shit. Which brings me back to the important matter at hand.

---