Page 124 of A Lucky Shot

“No shit, she’s not talking to you,” Stephen said, yanking his luggage from the carousel. “I wouldn’t if I were her, either.”

Josh swiped through the messages coming in after turning off airplane mode. Ping after ping, but nothing from her. Why would that change now? She hadn’t texted him in weeks.He swallowed the hollowness that had taken up residence in his chest and ordered a taxi.

With how everything had been going, he wouldn’t be surprised if the cab was rear-ended on the way to Melanie’s office. That asshole Murphy needed to change his law.

A trailer of props scheduled to return to Vancouver was stuck due to union negotiations. A master hard drive with ten minutes of final footage was gone. Just, gone. Two grips had come down with food poisoning after an incorrectly labelled tray of sandwiches was left out for three days. At least they were merely projectile vomiting and not anaphylactic. The crew had given him a berth wide enough to maneuver a tanker, partially due to the fact that Josh’s preferred communication style had reverted to reaching triple decibels.

None of that mattered.

Cass had been the last to enter a room and the first to leave, head tucked, her lyrical laughter gone silent. He gave her as much space as he could, only asking her questions about the film, and only when he couldn’t ask through someone else. She replied, but nothing more than the barest possible answer with her eyeline somewhere over his shoulder. Once, a fleeting second, she met his eyes, and the hurt painted across her features in bold strokes carved his soul out.

“Cass,” he had pleaded when he finally broke. “It’s been days. Please talk to me.”

She’d kept her eyes on the samples she carefully returned to their racks. “What has changed?” Her voice was a whisper. From a desire to be discreet, or that he’d caused her to lose her voice, he didn’t want to know the answer. He gripped the sleeves of his jacket to keep himself from reaching for her and watched her fade from the room.

Every night he had sat in his rental, watching the calendar flick over to the day he’d leave. Watching his phone for a call or text from Cass that never came.

Now, this.

The retired rail executive’s sprawling corner office Melanie took over the week after she became Mrs. Westwood held the original mid-century modern decor intact. It also held Josh’s favourite view in the entire world. Overlooking Stanley Park, with the viridian tips of the Lion’s Gate Bridge just visible over the towering cedars, and the North Shore Mountains disappearing into the low overcast.

He didn’t see any of it, storming the perimeter of the office and ignoring Brynne and Dawson’s faces on screens.

“How did cameras keep getting on my set?”

A slew of new pap photos flickered across the office’s largest monitor: Cass and Dawson everywhere. Cass and Dawson huddling at craft services, grinning over sandwiches. Cass and Dawson laughing outside his trailer, her hands all over his chest, as usual. Cass and Dawson walking across the set, his hand on the small of her back.

Why the fuck were they by his trailer? Was it just a fitting correction? Josh had barely stomached watching Cass with her hands on Dawson to adjust his costume. Why did Dawson have his hand on her? She hadn’t said if anything had happened between them. She’d said she didn’t think of Dawson that way, in so many words. Or maybe she hadn’t told him everything …

No. It was him who didn’t tell her everything. She’d been honest with him from the start, opening her heart to him from day one. All the while he’d kept himself from her.

He’d fucked up. Now he was paying for it.

Melanie lounged behind her burnished teak desk with her heels kicked up on the unused writing blotter. “Stop being such a diva,” she said blithely, stirring her drink in lazy circles. “You can lock it down as tight as you want, but it always gets out.”

He hoped her paper straw dissolved in whatever fancy coffee she’d ordered.

“So, we’re not going to control leaks?” Brynne asked.

Melanie peered at her calendar. “No, but we can control the story with any new photos that get out.”

Who gave a shit if they controlled leaks now? There was nothing to control. Filming was done. No more chances for opportunistic paps to sneak on set. He was home. Back to his empty condo and list of fuck buddies he had no interest in seeing and an estranged wife he couldn’t convince to end their marriage.

“Might not even be an issue. Reshoots will only take a week, max.”

Wait. Josh stopped pacing. “What the fuck is wrong with my movie that it needs reshoots?”

“We lost a master file with fifteen minutes of footage. We can’t just ask the audience to imagine what that might look like.”

Ten minutes of footage, he thought. Saying that out loud wouldn’t win him any points at the moment. He clamped his lips shut.

“Plus, test audience responded well to your adaptations, but the female demographic is clamouring for a shirtless scene.” Melanie turned to Dawson, whose face sunk. “You can thank every superhero movie ever for setting that standard.”

“Didn’t know I was signing up for a superhero movie,” he mumbled, but put down the doughnut he was eating with a resigned sigh. Brynne looked a combination of sympathetic and gleeful.

Josh swivelled his head from Melanie to Dawson. “We know this is bullshit, right?”

“Yep. You can dry your tears with all the money we’ll make from this when it’s out.”

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