Page 88 of Your Pace or Mine
“Are you okay?” Darius asked as a sharp pain shot up Jamie’s knee again, and he slowed his pace. “You can still stop if you need to. You still need to be able to dance after this, Jamie.”
Jamie huffed out a sardonic laugh. “Why? My career’s dead. I can injure myself as much as I please.”
Darius looked like he didn’t quite know how to respond, so Jamie took in a laboured breath and started to talk. He told Darius how it had all started for him. He needed him to understand Jamiewasthe bad guy, that this whole mess really was his fault. He explained how he’d landed his first job after sleeping with a prominent producer after his drama school showcase. It hadn’t been deliberate then, but when he’d been called in for a major production none of his friends could even get a look-in for, he had started to understand how things really worked. Then he told Darius about his last audition. The end of his career— the moment he knew he was done with the whole industry.
He ran as he spoke, words falling out of him like some sort of bizarre therapy session, allowing the expulsion of all his emotional pain to take over from the pain in his body, until he felt completely wrung out.
“Can I ask why that last audition was different?”
Jamie shifted. “It was.” He paused to find the words. “The other day, I was telling Cress that I’d do anything for a job. But then he was in front of me, making it really clear what was expected, and I thought of you… I don’t mean just in the sense that like, you’re the only man I want to be with... which, annoyingly, you still are.”
Darius smiled.
Jamie gathered himself. “Don’t get too cocky, haven’t decided if I’ve forgiven you yet. It’s that, everything you’re going through with the Olympics and Anders, you have so much integrity about it. I just thought, god, Darius would never sink this low, and it felt so vile. Like I couldn’t stand to be connected to an industry that treats people like that, that lets people like him get away with being so…”
“So you decided to quit?” Darius asked. “Just like that?”
There was no judgment in his voice, no indication of what he thought Jamie should or shouldn’t do.
Jamie drew a sharp breath. “Well, Jonathan dropped me for not bending over on request, so the quitting wasn’t entirely my choice. My career is dead. The arsehole suggested I try cruise ships.”
Darius wrinkled his nose. Nice to see the upper-class judgment wasn’t completely gone. It almost made it mean more that Darius still had that streak, but didn’t seem to be judging Jamie in that moment.
“I’ve got a reputation now,” Jamie said. “A very public one, and in Jonathan’s view, if I won’t act on it, then I’m worthless.”
“Jonathan is a terrible agent. And honestly, I’m glad you’re quitting. You deserve better.”
Jamie stumbled at Darius’s proclamation.
“Anywhere that lets people like that prick Stephen succeed is a bad place to be. I heard him at the bar, talking about what he had planned for his next tour with you, how he’d give it a test run at your audition. It was awful, he was moaning to his mate about how he’d timed it wrong the first time and how he’d been assured you would be more discreet now that you had a lucrative relationship on the line.”
“Darius.” Jamie stopped dead. “Is that why you left?”
“Not right away,” he replied. “I was coming back to the table, to talk to you, tell you he was spreading rumours.”
“But I was speaking to his fiancée,” Jamie replied with a sigh. As much as he hated that Darius had left him there, he knew how that had sounded.
“Yes, but...” Darius started to reply.
Jamie let out a sigh, starting to jog again. “I should have been honest with you from the start about why I needed a date so badly that night. It was never a publicity thing.”
An intake of breath came from beside him, but Jamie pressed on. “You know I said I stopped sleeping around and all that, well before I met you.”
Darius nodded.
“It wasn’t like a moral thing. I still don’t really believe there was anything wrong with what I did, and I know you’ll judge me for that, but—“
“I won’t,” Darius interrupted. “I told you, it reflects poorly on them, not you.”
Jamie glared at him. “I stopped because I was convinced I was in love.”
Darius’s footsteps slowed to a walk.
“Keep up, I need to tell you this,” Jamie snarked.
With a mumbled sorry, Darius was beside him again. They ran slowly, barely faster than a walk, but Jamie needed to get this out, to lay everything on the line.
“It had started like any other hook up, I mean, mutually beneficial, I got an audition that I fucking nailed, and landed on tour with the director that—“
