Page 28 of Lucky Star

He clasped my hand and squeezed reassuringly. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.” I heard what else he was saying with that gentle rebuke: I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been snooping.

“Yeah, me either,” I answered with a bitter laugh. “How am I ever going to look those guys in the face again?”

“You’re going to pretend you never saw this,” he said, holding up the cracked device. He glanced away, his gaze landing on the back door as his mouth flattened into a grim line. “I’ll talk with them about it later today.”

“It’s not like you can change their minds,” I pointed out. “They already think we’re a bad idea. That I’m a bad idea.” I tried to ward off the tears that threatened to tumble down my cheeks, but it was no use. “I was worried about this, you know? We haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet, but your life has changed in a massive way. You’re not just some actor anymore. You’re “Cameron Scott, Movie Star—” I used my fingers to make air quotes “—and whether you like it or not, I’m not good for that image.”

He twisted away from me, but before he could mask it, I saw the pain my pronouncement created reflected in his eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“You know it’s true. I love you so much, and I know that you love me, but what’s the world going to say when they find out about us? It’s not going to be kind.”

All at once, he tugged me into a tight embrace, and I sucked the natural, woodsy scent of his cologne deep into my lungs.

“I don’t care what the world says. I choose you.”

Despite his assurance, I knew those texts were just the tip of the iceberg. If people I considered my friends, could be that hateful, what would strangers say when they were hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet?

I hated what I’d just seen on his phone, but maybe it wasn’t all bad? Maybe it could be the catalyst for the conversation we’d been studiously avoiding.

The moment Cameron was cast as Xander St. John, everything had changed—whether he wanted to admit it or not. His life was not his own anymore, and that meant our lives and our future together would be dictated by forces beyond either of our control.

“Come on. Let’s go back to bed.”

“We need to talk about this, Cameron. All of it.”

“I know,” he sighed, weariness visible in every line of his body. “Obviously, I’ve been avoiding it.” He took a step back and shoved his hands through his hair before linking his fingers behind his head. But rather than speaking, he turned and paced the room, his long legs eating up the deep red rug at his feet.

“How come every time I bring it up, you change the subject.”

“I talked to …” He stopped pacing, and instinctually I knew the next words out of his mouth were going to hurt. A lot.

He’d spent all day on Friday with his agent and lawyers signing paperwork and discussing his career. Now that he was on the brink of becoming one of the world’s hottest stars, they would have weighed in on how his private life impacted his public persona. I’d been in this business long enough to know they would have already put a plan in place.

“Tell me.”

“There’s no easy way to say it.” The fact that Cameron wouldn’t meet my eyes told me this wasn’t just going to hurt. It was going to obliterate me.

“I’ve been told—in no uncertain terms—that it’s a very bad idea for me to have a girlfriend right now. That if I was seeing anyone, I needed to break it off.”

Generally speaking, not the worst advice an actor had ever been given (I knew an actress who’d been told to hide her children!), but still bullshit all the same.

And yet, no less than what I had expected, deep down inside.

If the success of Twilight was the yardstick for a film’s success, Gramalkin Studios needed people to see The Ties That Bind two, three, and even a fourth time in the theater, and then rush out and buy the DVD the day it came out. For that to happen, they needed a heartthrob that was capable of creating a frenzy. They needed the press to write out him, gossipmongers to blog and tweet about the cast. Basically, they needed to create mass hysteria. And someone like Cameron, an actor without an established fan base, needed to play into that pandemonium. I hated it, but a lot of the fans wanted to be able to picture themselves as the object of Xander’s love, and by proxy, the actor playing him.

“You proposed, knowing full well what they’d all say?”

He swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”

I didn’t know if it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard, or the stupidest. But it made me love him all the more. “Well, I guess they’ll just have to deal with it then.”

“They don’t know. All I told Julie was that my love life was complicated at the moment.”

“Wait, so you didn’t tell them about me?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

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