Page 29 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Hopper

I bang on the hotel room door, the sound thudding through the lush velvet-carpeted hallway. Part of me is glad I won’t have to do this down in the hotel lobby. I’m fucking wrecked, in more ways than one.

It’s been twelve hours since the stiff, silent ride back to my place; since Chris peeled out of my driveway in the Maserati. Thirteen hours since I felt her against me—her lips, her hair, her beautiful self—thinking I was on the top of the fucking world.

I made the mistake, when she kissed me, of releasing the door on everything I’d been holding in.

I let my mind go wild. And wild it fucking went.

As I held her, I pictured us driving back up the highway to Redbeard Cove on that bike.

I pictured carrying her up to the porch of a wood-clad house by the ocean.

Then I pictured this kind of unbelievable future: Me standing at an altar behind a country church.

Chris coming down the aisle with flowers in her hair.

Chris laughing as I lift a little girl who looks just like her mom, twirling her in the air .

I saw even the heavy parts in this micro-dream: Chris yelling at me because I fucked something up. Me at her feet, telling her I love her and I’m sorry. Chris, silver-haired and beautiful, driving me to a doctor’s appointment because I’ve got a pain somewhere dangerous.

Yeah, I went that fucking far. Because she’s the first woman I’ve ever had these kinds of feelings for.

When Chris kissed me, that dream exploded into technicolor.

Lightning flashed through me, from the place where our lips met to the tips of my fucking toes.

When I coaxed her lips open so my tongue could meet hers, the surge of want was staggering.

Then my hand on her stomach. The corded flesh there too old to be part of the accident she described.

Words coming back to me.

Don’t let them lift up my shirt!

I bang on the door again. “Wake up!”

“Hey!” A man pops his head out of a door down the hall. He looks like an asshole. He’s got slicked-back hair, and his expensive looking shirt is open, tie loose. There’s lipstick on his neck. “Do you fuckin’ mind?” he demands.

“Do you?” I roar.

The man’s eyes widen, and not just in fear at my yelling.

“Jesus, you’re Hopper D?—”

“Do not finish that sentence, asshole. Or I’m calling your wife. I’m sure she’ll love to hear about that urgent nine a.m. appointment you had to rush off to.”

His eyes turn to dinner plates before he slams the door shut. That’s the thing about assholes: they don’t question whether I could do shit like that. At least this isn’t likely to make it into the tabloids.

I bang on the door again. It’s been five minutes. She’s not here. It’s fine. I’ll wait. I slump down onto the floor, knees up, my eyes burning from exhaustion but my heart still racing.

I scroll through the texts I sent Chris in the airport, after calling Tru and begging her for the name and number of the charter we use for flights. Insisting she go back to sleep and that I was fine.

HOPPER: I’m sorry. It’s not about you. You’re beautiful. All of you.

HOPPER: Please pick up the phone

HOPPER: I’m so fucking sorry, Chris.

There are more. Lots more. All one-sided.

The elevator dings down the hall, and I shove my phone into my pocket. Mabel appears, her jaw dropping open when she sees me.

“Hopper,” she says as she recovers, clipping over to me in her heels. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Did he contact you?”

Anger simmers in my chest as I stand. I realize in that moment I’m fully prepared to fire my longtime manager if I need to. My second mom.

Yes, I’m that fucking ruthless, as it turns out. At least when it comes to Chris.

That last sentence should have me going cold, because I know who she’s talking about. My father. It means he’s probably going to pop up again soon, if he hasn’t already. And I can tell by the guilty look on her face that she’s been keeping things from me. Lots of things.

But nothing is going to get in the way of her telling me what I need to know.

“I know about Chris,” I say. “And you’re going to tell me everything.”

Mabel closes her eyes. I know I’m right. But this is the irrefutable proof.

Chris is the girl from the track. The one I supposedly broke.

“Come in,” Mabel says, looking suddenly ten years older. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Inside, she kicks off her heels. “I was at a meeting with Goldberg. He wants to talk to you about?—”

“Stop,” I say. I don’t remove my shoes because I’m not coming in. I don’t move beyond the entryway. “You knew it was her. You knew and you didn’t tell me. I need to know why.”

Mabel, to her credit, doesn’t flinch. She walks over to the desk and leans on it. “Does she know it’s you?”

I don’t expect the question. “No,” I grit out. But?—

“Good.”

“But she will,” I continue, “when I tell her.”

Mabel’s lips go flat. There was a time, after Mom died, when I cried in Mabel’s arms. Like a fucking baby. I don’t see even a hint of that motherliness now. Not through my anger.

“Listen to me very carefully, Hopper. I see the way you look at her. I see the way she looks at you. If there had been a way for me to stop this before she was hired, I would have. But Tru found her organically. Of all the fucking people in the world, she found the one person you couldn’t be seen with. ”

Mabel never swears.

She meets my eyes. “What do you think would have happened if anyone in the ambulance service knew that you were there when she crashed? Anyone at the hospital?”

“You told me she broke all her fucking bones!”

“It was the only way to keep you away! Do you think I like seeing you the way you looked then? I know you, Hopper. I know you would have kept vigil by her bedside if I’d told you anything else.

But it didn’t matter that she wasn’t as badly hurt as I made out.

No matter what, this is crack for your father.

The perfect thing he can leverage to destroy your already fragile reputation.

One I’ve been trying to build up for years . ”

It’s only then I see she’s shaking, and for a moment, I soften. I press my fingers to my eyes. “We could have explained what happened.”

“What, that you had nothing to do with the accident?”

I bite my cheek so hard I taste blood. Because no matter how we swing it—she was injured a little or a lot—she fell because of me.

Because I was there, taunting her with my presence like I’d done the summer before, when I blew up a whole movie contract because I loved the time I spent at that dirt track more than any fucking thing in the world .

“Your father is a smart man, Hopper. He hasn’t just quietly disappeared.”

“Really? Because that’s what I’ve been paying him to do.”

“And that’s essential. But think about how much more he could get from a bullshit tell-all where he paints himself the victim. Where he shows the world that you’re a careless, entitled ass.”

“What if I don’t care about my reputation? What if I give it all up now?”

“Right. Okay. See that through. Because if I know you, I know you’ve already let this go too far.

So you walk off into the sunset with Chris.

You toss away your father’s leverage—your career.

Your father doesn’t walk away from that.

He tells the whole story however he wants to.

The one where you caused an accident and you felt so guilty that you hired the girl as your assistant.

Then you seduced her. Then she made you quit the business.

So you quit the movies that little kids in hospitals beg to watch over and over again. ”

I clench and unclench my jaw. I can see exactly where this is going, and some childish part of me wants to walk out so I don’t have to hear her say it.

“He paints you as taking advantage of an innocent woman to cover up what you did, or he paints her as the Jezebel who stole you from the world. Take your pick. Either way, he wins.”

My chest feels like a rock, because Mabel’s right, of course. Half her job is handling my father, because she knew him. She knows him. And she promised my mom it was the one thing she’d always do. She’d look out for me by keeping him far, far away.

“Hopper,” she says, her voice softer now.

“Now you know as well as I do what a tightrope we’re walking on here with Chris.

And part of that is my fault. I thought the clause in your contract would be enough.

You’ve never been tempted by a person on your staff in the past. You’ve been an honorable man, Hopper, and I need the world to see that.

But you need to cut off whatever it is that’s happening between you two. For her sake.”

That stone in my chest weighs a thousand pounds.

It snuffs out the last embers of the anger I came charging in here with.

Because it’s not just that she’s right about Chris being impacted by this.

She is; it kills me to admit that. But there’s more.

My dad has information I’ve been paying him every fucking month to keep quiet.

My darkest truth only a look from her conveys is the real problem.

Between that and Chris? I should know better. I never should have let my feelings for Chris grow. I should have stuck to my rules. But I had no idea just how hard it would be not to fall for her.

“So what now?” I ask after a grim silence falls between us. “Are you trying to tell me I should fire her? Because there’s no fucking way I’m doing that.”

“God no. Think of what a disaster that would be,” Mabel says.

“No, keep her on. She’s only going to be with you for another two months, right?

Keep it professional. Do not cross a single line.

Just put on that bad boy persona, and whatever you do, don’t tell her about your father.

It’ll spook her. Remember, your father has the resources to have people watch you.

He’s done it before, and there’s zero reason to trust he’s not doing it right now.

No matter how quickly I find them, he gets them back in.

So keep things airtight. For everyone’s sake. ”

“How the hell am I supposed to do that when I feel like I’m going to explode?”

“Hopper. You film this movie,” Mabel says gently. “You’re on set next week. Just stay there. It’ll be long days. You’ll be busy. Just forget you found this out. I’m sorry you did. You do all that, and your father has nothing to grab on to. Okay? Leave the rest to us.”

She’s walked up to me now, placed her hands on my shoulders. “You can do this, Hop. I know you can. It’ll be hard, but you’ve had your heart broken before.”

“Not like this,” I say bitterly. Not of my own doing.

She kisses me on the cheek. “Oh, sweetie.”

But I pull away from her. I walk out without saying goodbye. Because I have to get back to Redbeard Cove. And somehow, for her own good and still as my assistant, I have to keep Chris as far away from me as possible.

I kick the door of the adulterer as I pass and nearly break my toe.

It does nothing for my grim state of mind.