Page 19 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Hopper

T he meeting, which is to prepare for shooting next week, goes long enough that we go through two pots of coffee and all the snacks.

I’m pretty sure Chris burned through the bowl of mandarin oranges almost entirely on her own.

Three hours in, and we’re all cranky, me most of all because being back at this hotel is messing me up.

I’ve been here enough times that I no longer have flashbacks of that terrible fucking night when I visit.

But with Chris knowing what I did, I’m reminded of what an asshole I really am.

Things take a particularly bad turn when Charlene, my costar, breaks down in tears, thanks to the assistant director, Chad.

I never really took notice of him before, but he’s spent the whole meeting watching Chris a little too close for my liking, his eyes tracking the way she licks her lips each time she pops an orange section into her mouth.

I’m about to yell at him to avert his fucking gaze when he abruptly leans over while someone else is speaking and asks Charlene if she’s gained a few pounds.

Charlene’s been vocal for years about her history with eating disorders.

That’s the last straw.

“Get out!” I shout at him.

Everyone startles, but Chad looks truly shocked by my outburst. “What did I do?”

“Get the fuck out!” I yell at him.

“But—”

“Just go,” Toni, the director, says, sighing wearily and rubbing her temples. She heard him too, and she sees Charlene’s face, so she knows I didn’t just yell at him out of nowhere.

“I thought you told everyone the stipulations,” I say to Toni once he’s gone.

If I’m working on a project, there is a clear understanding that women are not talked to like that, no matter what their history.

I blew up about it back on the set of one of the Laser movies, when I found out the piece-of-shit director had insisted every woman in the cast go on a strict starvation diet he made up for the duration of filming.

For fucking real. I’m not supposed to ingest anything not personally selected by Aziz, but it’s always my choice.

I quit the franchise after that and was labeled “temperamental.” I wanted to go public about what he did, but Mabel said I was already in enough shit and urged me to let it go.

I can see Mabel on my screen now, her expression a warning to keep my shit together.

“Why isn’t Chris managing this?” Mabel asks in the chat.

But Mabel’s not the most technologically skilled, because she sends that to everyone, rather than a private message to me.

“Because,” Chris unmutes to say out loud, “I agree with him.”

I’d laugh at that, but the look Mabel gives me has a warning in it.

Me losing my shit on that guy? It’s exactly the kind of thing my dad would love to hear about, mostly because he seems like the kind of asshole who’d talk.

I pinch the bridge of my nose, the familiar churn of rage and guilt and a little good old-fashioned shame around my dad warring for space in my guts.

The meeting’s pretty much over at that point, which is good because it devolves after that, conversations popping up all around the table.

I check in on Charlene, but she smiles. “So long as he’s gone, I’ll be fine.”

“He’s gone,” I assure her, eyeing Toni, who’s grimacing, since this throws a wrench in production. She’ll survive. With all the delays we’ve dealt with on this project, we’ll only be able to salvage a few weeks of filming before the holidays anyway. And that’s if we can get started right away.

When Toni leaves, everyone else does too, and suddenly it’s only me and Chris in the room. I asked her to put the spa on standby when the meeting hit hour three, so we’ve still got half an hour to kill before the time they promised they could have the place cleared out.

I get up and stretch.

“Is this always how these meetings go?” Chris asks, shaking out her fingers. She’s been taking meticulous notes on her laptop.

“Sometimes. There was something off about this project, though, and I think we figured out what it is.”

“What an asshole.”

“More than me?”

“You’re not—” She bites her tongue.

“Not what?” I ask.

“Nothing. I take it you didn’t want what that ‘get the fuck out’ part on the record.”

“You take me correctly,” I say.

Chris snorts. “Okay, horny nerd.”

I freeze, confused as hell. Did she see me watching her earlier? But I’m not really a nerd. “Wait, you take me correctly ?”

Chris blinks. Then she turns crimson. My new favorite shade. “Oh my God. I said that out loud. I’m tired. Erase that from your memory!”

“I will not,” I say, unable to keep the shit-eating grin off my face. “That line didn’t even make sense. But you made a frat-boy joke out of it.”

“Okay! Spa’s probably ready now.” She stands, shoving her laptop into her bag and strutting out of the room.

I’m suddenly in a much better mood. I catch up to her in a few quick strides, but now she’s practically speed-walking. I don’t stop until I’m jogging backward in front of her. “That was funny, Chris. I never knew you were funny.”

I wouldn’t be giving her such a hard time about this, but I can see she’s trying hard not to laugh.

“That’s just because you’ve been the punchline so far. ”

“Ow!” I say, but I’m laughing. She’s walking at a clip, but I’m fit as fuck right now, thanks to Aziz, so I keep up just fine down the long hallway. “Tell me another one.”

“Would you go to your ass waxing at the spa already and leave me alone?” she demands, but I can see the twist in her lips too. She’s really fighting it now.

I grow mock serious. “I told them not to share the details of my appointment.”

Her eyes dart to mine. “You do not get your ass waxed.”

“Why are you so interested?”

“Oh my God !”

Now I laugh, and fuck, it feels good.

“This is inappropriate, Hopper,” she laughs.

“Do you want me to stop?” I’m serious this time. She’s right. This is not professional.

“No,” she says, and there’s a little flash in her eyes. “It’s cute when you think you have the upper hand.”

That look she’s giving me—that glint in her eye—sends something spiking through me. An image pops up, then, of me having the upper hand in a different way. Like a pinning her to the bed way, those stockings wrapped around my thighs…

“Keep going,” Chris purrs, and I swear to God if I weren’t jogging, I’d probably hear the flood of blood to my lower half.

“Like literally keep going,” she says. “There’s definitely nothing behind you.”

I frown, but not before I slam ass-first directly into some kind of buffet thing.

“Oh shit!” My legs get tangled as I try to keep a vase from falling over.

What the hell is it with me and vases? I manage to keep it upright, but not without falling ass over teakettle myself.

I land on my back, the vase held over me like an offering.

I rock a little, having taken the fall easily thanks to all the fight training I’ve had to do over the course of my career.

Chris looks me over, her hand over her mouth. “Oh no!” It’s a very unserious oh no . “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I manage.

“Are you sure? That was quite the spill!” Then she grins and keeps walking.

I twist around on the floor to look at her as she walks away. “Are you leaving a wounded soldier behind?”

Chris looks over her shoulder at me. “Yup.” Her hips swing as she walks away from me.

My mind drifts back to another woman who looked just like that as she drove away on a dirt bike, staring back at me. A woman who, moments later, lay in a crumpled heap in the dirt.

Just send the biggest bouquet you have. I don’t fucking care how much it is. Room 614…General Hospital…

I open my eyes to the flowers in the vase in my hand.

I’m calling about Room 614.

Sir, do you have a name?

I don’t have the name. I can’t have it. Knowing it will destroy me, that’s what Mabel said.

Fucking chicken.

Room 614. Tell me she’s okay. Just tell me she’s goddamned okay!

Then I’m looking at my bloodied fists; at three holes in the wall.

At the TV, hung incorrectly and loosened from its frame.

I watch it smash to the ground all over again.

Feel myself slump to the ground. Mabel calling me, telling me the girl is okay.

“She’s in bad shape, but she’s alive. You just stay away and I’ll take care of this.

Do not mention it ever again, do you hear me? ”

The flashback was that day, but it was also a day years earlier. Mabel saying almost exactly those same words.

I get to my feet, my ears ringing.

“Hop?”

I hear her voice as if from a million miles away. Absently, I think about how Chris has never called me that before. Only Hopper or Donnach . I set the vase back on the table and keep walking.

“Hey,” Chris says. But I can’t answer her. I see a limp body on the grass, the ridiculous red outfit I thought was so sexy now looking like blood. She was so small in my arms, so different from the firecracker on the track I came back to see over and over again.

And that other night? It haunts me too.

Why, Hopper? Why?

Chris says something else I don’t hear, and that makes me feel even worse.

So does the way her face falls. She thinks we were getting somewhere.

But there’s nowhere to get with me. She needs to know that.

She needs to know who I really am, for her own good.

It’ll be easier that way, before someone else gets hurt.

“I said hey !” Chris practically yells when I reach the doors to the spa. She’s loud enough—the hurt sharp enough—that her voice penetrates my haze. “Did you hit your head or something?”