Gravity Happens (Forcing Gravity) (49 page)

When I pulled back, neither of us moved. We stayed inches from each other, our bodies connected, our gaze never breaking.

“What were you saying?” I asked, because I wasn’t sure where his train of thought had been going before, and now I’d forgotten completely.

“Logan, I want you to stay with me for the summer.”

“You do?”

I couldn’t help the shocked expression on my face. Was I hearing him correctly?

But I had only stayed in L.A. after classes ended because of the wedding. I wasn’t staying for the summer. I was headed back to Florida. My flight was on Monday. In all of the craziness that had happened that night and in reuniting with Jase, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that I was leaving so soon.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking. We’re young, it’s too soon, we just got back together, but what’s between us is so real, and I don’t want to be separated from you at all. I want to go to sleep next to you and have you wake up every day next to me. I
know you had plans to live at your mom’s house this summer, but I want you to stay here, with me. And then, if everything works out, maybe you can just move in – permanently.”

Oh, wow.

“Jase, I’m not staying with my mom. I’m going home to Florida this summer,” I blurted out, completely blowing past the fact that he wanted me to move in with him. That was a completely different conversation – one that excited and sort of terrified me.

“What?
Why?” he asked, the panic he was feeling evident in his eyes.

I let out a breath. “
Because, I miss my dad. I want to see him. There wasn’t anything keeping me here.”

He let his gaze fall,
and then his eyes shot back up. “There is now. I’m here. Logan, you can’t go.”

“I can’t back out now. My dad will kill me. He’ll already be pissed that we’re back together, which I can explain to him, but it’ll take him a while to trust you again. I can’t very well tell him that I’m moving in with you for the summer.”

“You can’t leave me,” he insisted. “I won’t let you.”

He was being irrational, but I could understand why. We were both so vulnerable that it might take some time to wrap our heads around the fact that we were back together and it was for real.

“Jase, I love you, and I’m not leaving
you.
I’m just leaving L.A. temporarily. I’ll be back at the end of August.”

Maybe I could come back early. My dad would probably be okay with that.

He shook his head. “That’s too long.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be gone for all of June and most of July. You’ll be in
South Carolina, filming.”

He shook his head.
“No, Luiz ran into some issues with permits and land use or something, so they pushed filming back. I’ll be gone for almost all of August and most of September.”

“Seriously? That
sucks, Jase.”

He’d be leaving just when I was getting back, and then I wouldn’t see him for two months.

“I know. Dammit.”

Then he was suddenly up and out of bed, rifling through the pockets of his jeans. I saw him grab his cell phone and start to dial a number.

“Who are you calling?” I asked, but he waved me off. It was after one in the morning.

I suddenly feared he was calling Luiz to pull out of the movie which was so incredibly stupid. He couldn’t do that because of me.

“Hey man,” he said after a few seconds. “Did I wake you? . . .  Oh, sorry. . . . I didn’t realize it was so late. Listen, I need a favor. . . . No, tomorrow’s fine. . . . . I need you to find me a house in Ft. Lauderdale for the summer.”

My eyebrows rose as I heard those words and realized what he was doing. I felt like I should protest, but I really didn’t want to. I wanted him close by, and the fact that he was willing to uproot his life to move to Florida for two months floored me.

“Yeah, we’re back together,” he confirmed, a wide smile lighting up his face, and I heard Gary shriek with excitement on the other end of the line. Then he was asking questions, and I couldn’t hear him clearly.

“
Just for June and July,” Jase told him. “The size of the place doesn’t matter, but privacy does, of course, and I want to be as close to Logan’s dad’s house as possible. And make sure there’s a guest house since I’m going to need to bring Charlie with me, and I’m sure he’ll want to fly Sloane down, so I want them to be able to be alone.”

I was in awe of how thoughtful he was being. He was a good friend.

“No, I don’t need you to come. I’ll just have you manage things from here. Is that cool? . . . Okay, thanks man. Sorry again to disturb you. . . . Okay, have a good night.”

He dropped his phone after he disconnected from Gary and turned to look at me. “Should I have asked if that was okay?” Then he shook his head. “No, I’m not letting you answer that, because even if you don’t want me there, I’m going to be there. I
’m not letting you out of my sight.”

When he saw I was smiling, he settled back do
wn next to me in bed and smoothed my hair back from my face.

“It is okay, right?”

I let my grin expand. “Of course it’s all right. It’s perfect. Jase, I don’t want to be separated from you either. I would miss you like crazy. Thank you for doing that.”

He let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, good.” Then he let his forehead fall against my shoulder. “I think I’m probably going to be a little insecure for a while. I just don’t want to lose you, Logan. What happened
to us wrecked me so hard, and I’m so afraid of it happening again.”

“It won’t, Jase,” I assured him.

He looked back up at me. “I thought about pulling out of the series,” he said then, and I knew he was referring to
Sons of Sovereignty.
“But I can’t do that. A lot of people have a lot riding on these movies, and I’m not going to be the asshole Hollywood actor who lets his personal life bleed over into his work life. It wasn’t the movie that did this. It was Chloe, and I can keep things with her under control if need be, but I’m not sure I’ll need to after what Nora told me about your confrontation with her. I have a feeling she’s going to lay low for a while.”

I wasn’t so sure
I agreed, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“I think i
t’s honorable of you to think of the movie first, but I’m still not a fan of you shooting with her.”

He nodded. “I know. I’m not either. I have th
ree more movies with her over the next year and a half, but all of my scenes with her are short scenes. I’ll mostly shoot with the other guys in the band, and most of those scenes we’ll shoot locally. I probably won’t need to go on location. We’ll do a lot of soundstage stuff, and you’re coming with me each time I have to be around her, just so you know.”

“Okay, I’m down with that,” I said, enjoying his tactical approach to
his plight. “But are any of the scenes you have to do with her sex scenes?”

I tried to remember his character’s role from the other books, but I couldn’t remember
any details.

He looked like he was thinking, as well. “I think there’s a blowjob scene on the bus in the next movie, but that’s nothing. I don’t even get fully undressed for that, and I think that’s it. I haven’t seen the screenplays for the other two, but my character has such a minor role in both that I wouldn’t imagine
there’s anything major from a sexual standpoint.”

“Serena gets pregnant in the fourth book,” I reminded him.

He shrugged. “Yeah, but that’s a side story, so they won’t show the sex that leads to it. They’ll use the pregnancy as a storyline for my character since he sort of freaks out about the whole thing while they’re on tour, right?

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“And I don’t think Serena was actually in the fourth book much. I mean Griffin talks to her on the phone and goes back to see her, but those will be minor scenes.”

“You can always talk to Sloane about your concerns,” I suggested. “She’s involved in the screenplay, so I know she can use her weight to influence to your favor.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I could do that.” Then he looked down at me again, his gaze so intense. “Logan, I don’t want you to worry about us, okay? You are all I need and all I want, and I’m not going to let anyone come between us again. If you can’t be with me, Charlie or Sloane will. I was stupid the last time. I was trying to be a good friend and let them have some time alone, so I told them to go upstairs and told them I’d be fine. Charlie didn’t want to leave the wrap party, but Sloane and I convinced him. And that was when Chloe slipped something into my beer.”

“I still can’t believe she did that.”

He shook his head. “I kept trying to figure out how I’d gotten so drunk so fast. I remembered being at the party, then I remembered feeling wasted, and I couldn’t remember drinking more than three beers. Everyone was laughing and cheering me on for finally letting loose, because I never got really drunk the whole time we were filming, outside of the night Chloe snapped that picture of us. I kept telling them that I wasn’t drunk, but they just laughed harder, and then they let Chloe lead me out of the bar. When we got upstairs, I remember falling down on the bed and telling her to leave me alone. She kissed me, and I tried to push her away, but my arms wouldn’t work. Then I can’t remember anything after that.”

I leaned up and kissed him, because the agitated look on his face bothered me, and I wanted to remove the memories of what Chloe had tried to do to him. She was sick and twisted, and she just needed to be a part of our past. That was it.

“I’m sorry I was so careless,” he said when I pulled away.

I shook my head. “Shh. Don’
t say that. It’s not your fault.”

I pulled him down for another kiss and moved so I could wrap one leg over his hip. I felt him visibly react to the closeness of our still naked bodies, and he broke the kiss.

“Again?” he asked, as he moved me so I was straddling his waist, hovering just above where I knew he wanted me.

I leaned down to kiss him, pressing myself down onto his hardness. “Again, and again, and again.”

“I love you,” he said, and I knew I’d never tire of hearing those words uttered from his lips.

Epilogue

Logan

My gaze darted away from th
e small screen to Luiz’s face so I could see what he thought of the scene taking place in front of us. The director, Peter Weinberg, who was sitting on Luiz’s other side, had called cut four times already, but in the short time I’d been on set and had been observing his and Luiz’s techniques and seeing things through their eyes, I thought we might be good to go with this take.

Luiz had a small smile on his face that I’d learned was
an indication that things were going well, and Peter was leaned forward so far in his seat that I knew he was captivated by the scene. So as long as Jase and the two actors he was with didn’t flub any lines, I had a feeling Peter would yell ‘Cut! Print’ as soon as the scene ended.

I turned back to the actual scene in front of me to see Jase wearing
head-to-toe camouflage, flanked by two actors I’d gotten to know well – Curtis Livingston and Trevor Smith. The three of them were the primary actors in the movie,
Charlie Rising.
Jase spoke a line to Trevor who nodded in agreement and responded. My stomach fluttered with excitement.

I loved seeing Jase work, and seeing him take on the role of a Vietnam soldier shed new light on his acting abilities. His character had moments where he went through a wide range of emotions in one day, depend
ing on what happened. Luiz was doing an incredible job from what I could tell of bringing the gritty aspects of war to life, and Jase’s character lived them all on the forefront. I’d seen him react to the loss of his fellow soldiers, the impact of a war-torn village with very few survivors, and I’d seen him write passionate letters to his wife back home who was expecting a child. It was an incredibly moving film, and I was only seeing it in bits and pieces.

I couldn’t wait to see what Luiz would do once filming wrapped and they went into the studio to cut and edit and finish the movie. He
’d told me I could continue to be a part of the process if I wanted, and it was something I was considering.

I’d been in
South Carolina for three weeks, and despite the oppressive heat and humidity that I should have been used to, I was loving every minute of the experience. I’d be disappointed to go home in a few days since classes were starting, and I needed to be back in L.A. And I’d be leaving Jase behind for three more weeks.

We’d spent the majority of the summer
together in Ft. Lauderdale, and I was so used to seeing him daily that being separated was going to be foreign. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And when I went back to L.A., I was moving into his house – or our house as he insisted I call it once he’d convinced me to move in with him. I’d hesitated for a while, but then I realized that I was just being stupid. I kept thinking that we were too young and we needed to wait, but then I realized that sometimes when you truly love someone, you have to take a leap of faith. Jase and I had been to hell and back, we’d been slammed to the ground by gravity, and we’d survived, and because of all we’d gone through, living together honestly didn’t seem like that big of a deal.