Costars (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) Read online

  For all intents and purposes, Danna is just another sibling trying to tell me how to run my career.

  Okay, she’s also my agent and thus actually has the right and responsibility to do that, but still, it gets frustrating.

  “I’m going to go grab the mail,” she says. “You stay in here and think of ways to hide the fact that you’ve got a big vagina or turn it into a promotional thing.”

  She leaves the room, and I’m just irritated.

  I got Nick the autographs, but the confusion and hesitantly uttered thank you hardly brightened my mood at all.

  I can see the end coming, but I don’t know when or how it’s going to happen.

  There was never any misconception on my part that I’d end up one of those lifelong actors who’s doing their thing on the screen until they’re dead. No, unless I die in the next few years, I’m going to live a good portion of the rest of my life as an ex-celebrity.

  I just don’t have the drive anymore for things to end any other way.

  Even knowing that, though, doesn’t make that downward tilt any easier to accept.

  “Damian?” Danna calls as she opens the front door.

  “What?” I call back.

  “You need to see this and I need to call the police,” she says.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask and make my way into the other room to meet her.

  She’s standing in the doorway, holding a letter, her eyes moving back and forth as she reads over it.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s not good,” she says.

  “Let me see it,” I tell her and she hands it over to me.

  She’s pulling her phone out of her pocket and walking into the other room as I read over the first words of the letter.

  “Dami,” the letter starts, “I know that you’ve never seen me, but I’ve been watching you for so long now. I know you in ways that I don’t even know myself. So much of my life, I’ve wanted to write this letter, to tell you how much I love you now and how much I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you on Kids’ Quests. You’ve turned into quite a handsome man and a remarkable actor. I think it’s time that you know who I am, because one day, I know that you’re going to be asking me to be your wife.

  Yours always and forever,

  Rita”

  “What?” I ask. “It’s a love letter. I get those all the time.”

  “You used to get them all the time,” Danna says, “but this isn’t a love letter. This is the first stage of a manifesto.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. “She came off pretty strong, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Yeah, this is a little more than coming on a bit strong,” Danna says. “You didn’t see the package outside.”

  “There’s a package?” I ask.

  “That’s the only thing I know to call it,” Danna says and then presses the phone harder against her ear. “Yeah, I’m at 28153 South Willow Banks with Damian Jones and he just received a threat.”

  “Oh, it’s not a threat,” I tell her.

  She mouths the words, “Look outside,” and then turns and walks deeper into the house.

  The letter was a bit creepy, but not everyone knows how to best put their thoughts and feelings down on paper. Rita, whoever she is, probably just got so nervous writing me that she forgot to leave out the crazy in the letter.

  It happens all the time.

  I’d rather have it be an adoring fan who just isn’t that great with words than a psycho for obvious reasons, but I’m not going to deny the ego boost I’m really hoping to hold onto here.

  I’ve got a lot of justifications running through my head until I walk out the front door and see what Danna was talking about.

  Sitting just outside my front door is a black garbage bag full of something I can’t see, though the top is open. Around the bottom of the bag is a dark red liquid that I’m really hoping isn’t what it so very clearly is.

  I take a few steps toward the bag and almost choke from the stench.

  Whatever’s in the bag, it’s dead.

  That’s not the most comforting thought as I move forward and nudge one side of the bag over to expose the contents inside.

  * * *

  “No,” I tell the officer, “I don’t know anyone named Rita. When are you going to be able to tell me what’s in the bag?”

  “We’ve got to run some tests,” the officer says dismissively. “Have you recently made enemies with anyone?”

  “No more than usual,” I tell him.

  “What does that mean?” he asks.

  “Just bad reviews in the press,” I tell him. “Nothing I’d really worry about.”

  “Were any of them threatening, violent?” the officer asks.

  “Nothing like that,” I tell him.

  There was one op-ed that called for my crucifixion because, in my last movie, my character wore a hat with a star on it the writer of the piece apparently mistook for a symbol of Baphomet and she thought that I was trying to send a secret message that children should start worshipping Satan.

  One of the many gripes I have with the whole “hidden messages” conspiracy nonsense is where exactly do these people think kids learn these secret codes it would take to interpret the messages they’re accusing me of hiding in my performances?

  If I’m wearing a star on my hat, hell, it could be a hat sporting the goat’s head in the middle of the inverted pentagram with the Hebrew letters for Leviathan around the edges and I’m willing to bet you a million dollars that not one single kid would see that and think it’s time to take up Satanism.

  How many kids did they really think were playing Judas Priest albums backward to look for secret commands, and even if they put the words “do it” backward in a song, just how the fuck would kids know what it was they were supposed to do?

  Idiots!

  Sorry. It’s a pet peeve of mine.

  Anyway, I’m not worried that the woman that wrote the article is plotting to kill me or even go any farther than she did in the article.

  “All right,” the officer questioning me says, “well, I’ll give you over to Detective Tompkins here. He’s got a few more questions for you.”

  I answer everything the man asks, but there’s nothing I can really give him to point him in the right direction.

  You know, as I think about it, being stalked, especially by someone who’s this willing to get right in there close—I mean, she got past my gate with a bag full of what looked like chopped up meat, after all—is kind of its own form of adulation.

  “Sir?” the detective asks.

  “Yeah,” I answer, shaking myself out of my thoughts.

  “Was it you that found the bag or did someone else find it?” the detective asks.

  “My sister,” I tell him, “Danna. She’s the one that found it.”

  “All right,” he says. “We’ll give you a call when we find out more. Until then,” he reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a business card, “give me a call if you can think of anything else that might be relevant or if you receive anything else from this individual.”

  I take the card and say, “Thank you. By the way,” I add. “Nobody calls me Dami. I mean absolutely nobody I know has ever called me that.”

  “We’ll keep you posted,” the detective nods and walks away.

  Danna’s on the other side of the driveway, talking to another cop when the detective walks up to her, and I’m starting to think I’ve jumped ship and lost my mind: I actually find it kind of flattering that I have a stalker.

  I’ve really got to start dating again.

  Chapter Five

  The Guru

  Emma

  I can’t believe I’m doing this. I really can’t.

  “Damian?” I ask, tapping my costar on the shoulder.

  “Yeah?” he answers, turning around. He turns back to the pair of his groupies that apparently work on the sound staff, saying, “I’ll talk to you later,
” and he turns back toward me.

  “You remember how you said that you’ve been in the business long enough to know how to deal with certain things?” I ask.

  “You did do porn!” he exclaims. “I knew it! Pouty lips like that, there’s no way some skeevy producer doesn’t pick you out for a role in his buddy’s next project.”

  “No, I’m not—Damian, I didn’t do porn,” I tell him after managing to get him to stop bouncing with excitement.

  He stops bouncing.

  “Oh,” he says. “Well, that’s a shame. I was really looking forward to a viewing party. Oh well,” he says and claps his hands, “how else can I be of service to you today?”

  “Well, it’s not porn…exactly,” I start.

  A smile creeps back up Damian’s face.

  “It’s nothing too bad, really,” I tell him. “I had a boyfriend a year or so ago who took some naked pictures of me and now he’s trying to blackmail me with them and he’s given me seventy-two hours, twenty-six of which have passed, to decide whether I’m going to pay him $5,000 a month for the next seventeen years or if I’m going to end up on the front page of every tabloid for the first time in my career, only it’s not going to be some kind of bad gossip or award win that’s going to put me there on the covers. No, it’s going to be those stupid pictures that my stupid ex took almost two years ago, and I’m going to be a fucking laughing stock for the rest of my life.”

  I realize that I’m breathing a little heavy, so I do my best to relax.

  “That’s quite the story,” he says. “You know the guy’s got the pictures?”

  “Of course he has them,” I answer. “He’s the one that took them. It was his camera.”

  “Yeah, but have you seen the pictures?” he asks.

  “Well,” I think back, “no. Come to think of it, I never saw those pictures. You think he’s just trying to lie his way into seven figures?”

  “I don’t know,” Damian says. “What I do know is that I wouldn’t even consider paying that kind of cash unless I knew for a fact he had the pictures and copies.”

  “He said that he’s already attached the photos to two emails, one to the LA Times and one to E! He told me that if he doesn’t put in a password every so often, they’ll send on their own. Is that even possible?” I ask.

  “Actually, it is,” Damian says. “It’s pretty easy to set up, too, but that’s neither here nor there. I’d say the first thing you need to do is contact him and have him give you proof the pictures exist and that he has them.”

  “What happens after that?” I ask.

  He’s being quite helpful right now. It’s kind of making me nervous.

  “That depends on him, really,” Damian says. “If it turns out he doesn’t have the pictures, you call him an asshole and hang up on him.”

  “If it turns out that he does have the pictures?” I ask.

  “Well, that depends on you, really,” Damian says. “Just how racy are the photos?”

  “I’m naked in them,” I tell him, “but it’s not like I’m doing stuff with anyone.”

  “Are you masturbating in the photos?” he asks.

  “I really don’t think that’s any of your business,” I snap.

  “The reason I’m asking is that some pictures of you naked might actually help your career, but pictures of you naked and masturbating are going to alienate a whole lot of people,” he says.

  “What difference does it make?” I ask.

  “For some people, it’s the difference between heaven and hell. Can you imagine?” he asks. “Anyway, so are you flicking the bean or not?”

  “Not,” I tell him. “I’m just naked in the water.”

  “Can you even see anything?” Damian asks.

  “Well, again, I haven’t actually seen any of the pictures, but I don’t think much is left to the imagination,” I tell him. “It was low tide.”

  “Okay,” he says. “So, you’ve got an ex who’s blackmailing you with some old nudie pics you had him take back when the two of you were a thing. You haven’t seen the pictures, you don’t know if they actually exist, but even if they do get out, there’s no sexual contact going on, only nudity. Fuck it,” he says, “I’d save my money and wait for the book offers to start rolling in.”

  “Book off—” I start.

  “People are into weird shit,” Damian says. “A lot of people are going to say that being betrayed like this humanizes you and a lot of other people are going to say that it humanizes you too much, that your mystique is gone and they’ll call for you to drop out of the spotlight. There are going to be parents groups and church groups that condemn you for acting in a manner that’s immoral and sets a bad example. While women are generally going to be understanding and sympathetic, there are going to be a lot of them that start calling you a skank.”

  “What about men?” I ask. “We’ve covered just about every other demographic. How would they react to those pictures?”

  Damian smiles and says, “How do you think?”

  Well, this is just great.

  “Overall, this really isn’t going to hurt you that much. You’re going to have a lot of people in the media turn on you, but even more will hop on your bandwagon, either because they want to fuck you or because they want to make some cash off the fact that you got fucked,” Damian says. “Overall, though,” he repeats, “this really isn’t going to hurt you that much.”

  “So you’re saying I should just tell him to go screw himself and let what happens happen?” I ask.

  “I’d start by finding out whether those pictures are real or not,” he says. “Pay attention. So that’s the worst case scenario of you not paying him off. If you do decide to pay him off,” Damian continues, “you run the risk that he ups the price on you or that the million only gets you some, not all of the pictures or that he otherwise tries to screw you. Best case scenario, he keeps his mouth shut, keeps the pictures in his drawer, and you end up paying him a shitload of money. Yeah,” he says, “I’d say you’re pretty well fucked.”

  “I think the real worst case scenario would be the pictures get released and nobody cares,” I mutter.

  “There’s always that,” he says. “I really don’t think you’ve got to worry about something like that happening, though.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask.

  “So,” he says, “we’ve got a few minutes before we’re halfway through waiting for the next scene to get set up. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself?”

  “What? Why?” I ask.

  “Call it a favor for a favor,” he says. “So, what happened with the guy who’s blackmailing you? I can’t imagine he was that good of a boyfriend if he’s the kind of person that’s willing to do this to you.”

  “He wasn’t,” I answer. “He wasn’t a very good person in general, actually.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Damian says. “Isn’t that a weird kind of response to the situation? What else is there to say, though? After a while in the dating world, everyone dates a few people that should earn them a sorry, I guess. Were the two of you serious?”

  “I was,” I answer. “I think. I don’t know that I was really all that serious about making it work with him. It was more that I was terrified of not being able to make a relationship work at all. I was just out of high school, and I was really insecure because I hadn’t really dated all that much, and why the hell am I telling you this?” I ask.

  “I’m in the room,” he says.

  Something in the way he says it convinces me to keep going, so I talk for a while about the nightmare that dating Ben really was and Damian just keeps nodding as I go.

  “I don’t know, I guess if nothing else, he taught me that true love is a myth,” I conclude.

  “Why do you say that?” Damian asks.

  “We all just put whatever we want to see on whomever we’re with,” I tell him. “Most of the time I was with Ben, I didn’t see him as a neglectful, emotionally abusive dick. I saw
him as the man that I loved, a man who was so patient with me that even when I was making all of these mistakes in my life, he would still take the time to tell me where I should go from there. It’s a rosy version of the truth, no doubt, but for a while, it was my only truth.”

  “I guess you could say that we have a tendency to put our hopes on those we’re with,” Damian says, “but I don’t think that rules out love.”

  “What’s love, though, if you’re never sure if your feelings for someone you’re with are there because of who it is they actually are or because they just happen to be fitting your narrative closely enough that you can scrawl out some of the details that you’d rather ignore?” I ask.

  “I would imagine being conscious helps,” Damian laughs. “All it takes to see whether or not you really like a person is to spend some time with them. Either you’ll find yourself making excuses for their behavior or you’ll find yourself actually enjoying it. It’s really not that hard.”

  “If it’s so easy,” I tell him, “wouldn’t that mean that I should have developed a solid idea about whether or not I like you by now, too? We’ve spent some time together alone.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Damian responds. “Dinner, maybe, I guess, but I really doubt you were sitting there with that question on your mind.”

  “Jones!” someone behind me calls out and I turn around.

  Trey, one of the set’s security guys is waving Damian over to him.

  “Well, uh,” Damian says, “I’ve got to go—I’ll talk to you later.”

  “All right,” I tell him. “Thanks for the advice, I guess.”

  He didn’t really help me figure anything out, but he did seem to put some effort into trying.

  “How much longer do you have to decide?” he asks.

  “A little less than two days,” I tell him.

  “Okay,” Damian says. “Let’s talk about this more before you make any definite choices here. Until then, see if you can work out a way to see if he has those pictures for yourself. There’s no sense dragging this whole thing on if he doesn’t actually have the goods.”

  “Thanks,” I tell him again. “I really do appreciate it.”