Never Just Friends (Spotlight New Adult Book 2) (13 page)

“And you know I have even less.” But that was the point, wasn’t it? He only had her. There was only one bridge into his spot of land and it was her, and he had decided to risk it. Burn that bridge and he’d be an island, or set adrift.

Why didn’t she know that.

“I don’t know when I’ll be ready,” she whispered. “I don’t know if you’ll be around by the time I am.”

“I won’t put any pressure on you with promises,” he said. “When you know, you know. Let’s look back at this time as a good thing, that we eventually move on from.”

It was a horrible suggestion, but he had to offer it. He could have waited. But if he told her that, he knew she’d eventually take him up on it, regardless, if only to relieve him of his waiting. He didn’t want that. He wanted her, of course, but not that way.

Though he was meant to stay an extra week in New York after they got back, Jake cut his trip short. Lindsay wished he wouldn’t, but then what? Would they talk about it some more? Would they keep sleeping with each other? Would he pull anything new that would make her more sure that he wasn’t just using her to recover from a breakdown?

No, the ball was in her court, and she had no strength or skill to play the game.

Marnie, more than anyone really, was distraught over the whole thing.

“Was it me?” she demanded, more than once. “Was it my research? Because it was hard to find, you know, and I could have easily skipped it. If I didn’t know the right words to search. Sometimes my own efficiency is a curse.”

“It’s not you,” Lindsay had to say.

Victor got in touch at some point, by phone, if only to tell her that he didn’t blame her for anything.

“So what’s the deal with Zoe now?” Lindsay asked.

“We’re talking a lot of things through. I’m obviously paying for this. How did Jake handle it?”

“We’re not together right now, but it’s nothing Zoe did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Win her back. Learn to grovel.”

Lindsay decided that she wasn’t going to beat herself up over her involvement with Victor. Damn right she wasn’t to blame; let Zoe learn to accept that she had fallen for someone who continued to see someone else at the same time. She was not going to apologize for something she was in the dark about.

Why weren’t she and Jake in a relationship then? Because she didn’t believe him. Right. Jake knew the whole time and didn’t hate her. That kind of acceptance was better for a relationship, should someone even attempt to be in one.

Good thing the week after the annual conference was its own level of hell, with meeting minutes and back-to-office reports and reimbursement spreadsheets piled on top of one another. When Lindsay resurfaced from it all, it was eight days since Jake had taken off, and she hadn’t really heard from him except for a text that he’d gotten to Vancouver safe and sound.

Eight days later and she was facing an empty schedule, and the horrible prospect of thinking about what just happened, for an entire weekend.

And then Cordelia called.

“I have a huge favor to ask,” she said. “Fly in tomorrow morning?”

“What?”

“You doing anything? Rusty has a work trip to Vegas and I want to go, but we don’t want to leave the kids with anyone...”

“You can’t hire a babysitter?”

“It’s four days. I really would rather that you watch them. And when did Rusty and I ever get four days alone, ever?”

Never, Lindsay acknowledged.

“It’s about time you visited anyway. The kids miss you.”

“All right,” she said, without putting up much of a fight. Zane and Brian were wonderful, and they were the right kind of distraction at a time like this.

***

Whenever she flew back to stay at her sister’s, the first day was always Zane and Brian Day. She did whatever they wanted her to do, which usually involved driving. So Lindsay’s Saturday was completely occupied with getting herself reacquainted with driving, and the Bay Area, and the excited voices of her niece and nephew. They bought pizza, Skyped quickly with Cordelia and Rusty once they checked into their hotel, and then totally did not sleep at the appointed bedtime.

At eleven, after giving up her turn several times on a game that required them to dance, she surrendered, told Zane and Brian that she was still on Eastern time and was dead tired.

“Give her the thing,” Zane said.

Brian ran to the shelf underneath the TV and handed her a package. “Mom says we should make sure you watch this tomorrow, on Lindsay Day.”

Lindsay Day was day two of her visit, when they would graciously not ask her to drive them places. She unwrapped the package and found herself holding two boxed sets.

“It’s Jake’s show,” Zane said.

“You have to watch it,” Brian said. “But we’re not allowed to. But we have to make sure you do.”

“We’re serious,” Zane added. “Mom will call us tomorrow and ask us if you’ve watched it. You have to watch it.”

“Guys,” Lindsay said. “I don’t really want to watch Jake’s show.”

“He’s getting good reviews for it,” Zane said, pointing to the blurbs on the box. “Why won’t you watch it? I’m going to watch it the day I turn sixteen. Everyone says it’s really good.”

“Mom promised me something if we get you to watch it,” Brian piped in. “Please do it for me.”

***

Lindsay was so sleepy that when she woke up on Sunday, she thought the conversation with the kids about
Rage Eternal
was something out of a dream. And then she saw the show discs on the bed next to her, no doubt their idea of a helpful reminder, and she shrugged.

It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, and they were still asleep. She wondered how late they had stayed up, because she had zonked out without even checking.

Fine. She would do it for them.

The player was in the living room. She settled into the couch, the same one Jake crashed on whenever he stayed over, and started on disc one of season one of
Rage Eternal
.

***

It was the kind of show that hit the ground running. It opened with a prolonged action scene, a chase down the streets of New York, on a dark night. There was something supernatural about it right away, based on how the mysterious man being pursued was running, jumping, maneuvering through the urban obstacles of the city. And then also the speed of his pursuer, the agility, the hand-to-hand combat that was too good when they finally caught up with each other. The pursuer was Danny Wilde, that much she knew, and Jake’s character Charlie only showed up near the end of this opener. Mysterious Guy had slipped out of Danny/John’s grasp, and Jake/Charlie was conveniently waiting at the very end of the alley to give the final blow that brought the guy to the ground.

He smiled smugly at the exhausted, panting John, his own hair barely tousled by the encounter.

And Lindsay shook her head. God, he was charming.

***

Jessica first appeared as Eve in episode four. Her presence almost unsettled her, Lindsay, as a viewer. She was already starting to enjoy John and Charlie’s easy rapport. John and Charlie were partners in a private detective agency, at least that was what it looked like to everyone else. The show was leisurely in pace, and spent a lot of time on John and Charlie banter. Lindsay remembered the question from the film school panel (“Are they lovers?”) and understood why fans would consider it. Definitely these two went way back. They solved a bunch of cases, took on mundane ones, but it looked like this agency was a front for an ongoing investigation that was supernatural in nature. To the rest of upstate New York, on this show, there was a serial killer hiding bodies along the lonely stretches of beach near the coast. To John and Charlie, it was an old enemy that had resurfaced.

They’d had Jake shirtless in a bunch of episodes (in the shower, out for a run) but episode five was his love scene. Also episodes six and seven. And they were hot ones. Lindsay didn’t realize that she’d know that much about Jessica Fontana’s body, what her skin looked like when she was cold. She didn’t like seeing Jake’s tongue, his actual tongue, flick over Jessica’s skin, and while she was sure they weren’t actually doing it on screen, well, now she had an idea what it actually must have been like.

But it wasn’t what she and Jake were like together.

She preferred
their
sex, oddly, to the Hollywood version.

That she was able to sit through all of this was a wonder to her. But she was enjoying the show, by now, and whatever. The love scenes were part of it.

By episode eight, Eve was revealed to have betrayed them. Episode nine was when John actually killed her. The scene was satisfying and brutal, and this show wasn’t shy about brutal killing or nudity, no wonder the kids weren’t allowed to watch it. The season finale, episode ten, rolled around, and the serial killer mystery was solved, and by then Charlie knew that Eve his love had turned traitor, but didn’t know John had killed her.

Zane and Brian, hilariously, brought her food and drinks so she wouldn’t have to leave the couch. They also happily reported to Cordelia her progress.

It was almost five in the afternoon when she started season two.

“Can I take a break?” she cheekily asked Zane.

Her niece was all too eager to be considered an authority figure. “For a few minutes. And then I’ll bring you dinner while you watch.”

She was enjoying the show anyway, she had to admit, and it wasn’t a chore to start “play all” on the new disc.

Season two’s premiere started with a title card informing her that it was the year 1899. She knew about this, kind of, but was still a pleasant surprise after a binge watch. Season one had hinted that John and Charlie had been around for a while (there were running jokes about “the grandma incident,” “the harbor splash,” “that time on the Brooklyn Bridge” that were always referenced but never explained), and only now was the show beginning to reveal what that meant. And then it was season two, set entirely in 1899, with “John” and “Charles,” still themselves, but officers in the New York City Police Department. The season-long case, it established early on, was John and Charles searching for the man/monster they believed to have killed the people attributed to “Jack the Ripper” over a decade earlier.

Jessica’s appearance was limited to two episodes, significant because the first season established that John had some sort of power related to seeing the past, and Charles’s was seeing a limited future. Jessica as Eve could see simultaneous presents, and when they “met” in episode seven, Lindsay hated her less. The three tried for an episode to work together, somehow making their abilities form a complete set, but Eve and John didn’t get along. She also didn’t want to do what they were doing, apparently responding to a call to rid the world of some nasty elements.

In episode nine, Charles was abducted by “The Ripper”, and god, it was almost midnight, and her eyes were hurting from all the television, but she couldn’t help but watch more. She was hooked. She wanted to know how they’d save him. (Because season one happened, and it was a hundred years in the future of season two, so obviously he was saved right?)

Episode ten, season two, was the last episode. God, the tension. John didn’t know that Charles was being held in an attic down the block from where they lived (a time with no phones – how easy it was to lose people!), and any special abilities he had sadly did not prove useful. (Maybe if he hadn’t shooed Eve away, and it wasn’t like he could call her back...) This all led to a tense moment where the cops were chasing The Ripper, whose final plan for Charles involved hanging him from a noose in that horrible attic, and have him die there while leading the cops miles in another direction.

But John tracked back, at the last minute. Tracked back to The Ripper’s last location, and let the others have the potential glory of catching him.

It was difficult for Lindsay to watch. Jake didn’t look much like Jake, when he was playing Charles in 1899—the hair was different, he was always grimy for some reason—but seeing him tied up, helpless, it was still him, and it was still hard.

The episode cut from him in that attic, to John frantically looking for him, one building down the block at a time, one room after another.

He didn’t have his hands tied but he couldn’t struggle for very long. Charles held on to the noose as long as he could, but, in a moment that made even Lindsay’s heart stop, he let go.

He let go, and as the show often did, the camera lingered, on the morbid swing of his body.

His fist hung limply to his side. Thumb tucked in.

Lindsay sat up, scrambled for the remote, and skipped back a few frames.

Yeah, she saw it again.

“It looks so much worse on screen,” said Jake, for real, from behind her. He was there, in her sister’s living room, in her house, in Fremont.

“Oh my god,” she said, shocked in more ways than one. “This is your accident.”