Page 23 of The Dirty Version

He led Tash through a fluorescent-lit passageway, past rolling wardrobes heavy with embellishment, to a dim hall that must have run behind the stage.

He pulled her along, fingers still tangled, peeking into small side room after side room, each lined with supply-closet metal shelving. He tugged her past a row of mops and buckets, past two trolleys of lighting equipment. He continued past a bank of folding chairs.

“There have to be towels back here somewhere.” Caleb stopped at a cinder block linen closet, its door anchored open, starched catering tablecloths and banquet bunting piled in neat stacks.

Against a far wall, they found a cache of bubblegum-pink bath sheets.

“Ha!” He released Tash’s hand to pilfer from a top shelf. “We had a bathtub number at Calypso. You have no idea how long I spent on towel duty.” Caleb’s blazer stretched dry across the wide range of his back.

He turned, victorious, brandishing the bath sheet—revealing the front of his white button-down, transparent and soaked through.

It plastered to his chest, every plane of torso and ridge of stomach showing, everything he’d been hiding for no good reason.

Tash’s irritation with Astrid’s hijinks suddenly disappeared.

Tash shivered, her blouse also saturated, the once-subtle burgundy lace bra beneath it now flamboyant and pronounced.

“Cold?” Caleb stepped forward, the bare lightbulb above him casting a mood. He wrapped the towel around her shoulders. He gathered the corners, pulling her close.

Tash’s heart beat like a hammer, her shirt a topographic map. She stared at Caleb’s throat. Egyptian cotton fibers had never felt more obscene. “Towel duty? Is that what this is? Rubbing down wet girls?”

His chuckle vibrated. Caleb released her from the pink cinch, shifting to drape the towel like a veil over her head. “No. Towel duty is folding towels .” He began a scalp-scrunch, both ludicrous and exceptionally hot. “This is something else.”

It was something else, and Tash swayed with the movement, eyes closed, face half shrouded, until terry cloth became her kink.

Caleb hummed. “Interesting. The lady likes a scalp massage.”

He leaned her shoulder blades back against the soft wall of shelving. He moved the towel, collecting one side of her hair’s long, still-dripping ends. She felt him shift to grab another bath sheet from behind her, and Tash knew if she opened her eyes, he’d be right there .

She twisted slightly to give him better access. She didn’t know which elephant in the room to address first. “That must have been hard.”

He squeezed her hair gently. “The scalp massage? Or towel duty?”

Tash huffed. “The movie teaser.”

But Caleb continued to joke. “Please—you’re not the first girl to ditch me for my father.”

“I was talking about seeing your stepmom.” She blinked her eyes to half-mast.

Caleb shifted to the other side, giving the strands there the same pink-towel caress, becoming serious. “It wasn’t hard. Just concentrated, maybe. Sometimes I forget how much that club felt like home.”

Pulled heartstrings must have made Tash do it—or the way Caleb had intertwined their fingers in the theater, or the aphrodisiac of his towel-dry in this linen-closet private universe.

Emboldened, Tash reached for the letters on his collarbone.

She traced his ink scroll through the translucence of his shirt.

The world reduced to wet broadcloth and her trembling fingers.

Caleb took a step closer, perhaps so Tash could see. “We each got one when Viv sold Calypso. We didn’t know she was sick yet—only that we’d been happy, and it was ending.”

Tash held still. She held her breath. “Who’s ‘we’?”

Caleb covered her fingers with his whole palm, pushing the collar of his shirt aside.

The bare script was cool under her touch.

“Well. There’s me, right here. Then Viv”—sliding Tash’s hand over his shirt buttons, to the depression between his pectoral muscles—“Right over her heart. Which was pretty sentimental for such a hard-ass.”

Tash’s own heart was racing.

Caleb moved her fingers over his jacket to the outer curve of his bicep. “My dad got his here.”

Dazedly, Tash still managed to taunt him. “Do you have any pictures? Just so I can get a sense of scale.”

Caleb snorted quietly and ignored her, slipping her hand around to his shoulder blade. “Ilsa has one on each side, like fairy wings.” Then he adjusted, repositioning to coast Tash’s palm to the center of his lower back, bringing their bodies closer. “Last one, right here. Astrid’s mom.”

The tour he’d offered drew Tash into a rather clever bit of blocking. They hovered a half inch from each other, almost in a dance. His mouth was well within striking distance.

“That’s kind of awesome.” She meant the family tattoos, the tactile expedition, her hand pressed to his back over his chambray. “I don’t have any ink.”

He glanced down hotly. “Good to know.”

Far away—down a long, dim hallway; beyond folding chairs and rolling wardrobes and burnt-out, fluorescent light—a one-night-only LA revival roared boisterous with clapping. The show had apparently gone on without them. Caleb prowled a step closer to Tash.

He caged her firmly against the towel-shelving wall. “Do you remember, at the lagoon, when we were talking about power?” His eyes had begun to blaze. “About who has the upper hand?”

He’d mixed his words up—in real life, the lagoon was an ocean lab—but Tash nodded anyway.

“You said you needed sea monsters.” Purposefully, with one fingertip, Caleb tucked damp hair behind her ear. “And I said you have so many other weapons.”

“Did you say that?” Tash had lost coherent thought. “Are we talking about work?”

“We’re talking about how you hold all the cards, Tash.” Almost a whisper. “Burlesque. This audience is at your mercy.”

More applause boomed from the theater.

And less distantly, a slamming door.

Exploratory heel-clicks resounded on the backstage concrete.

“Caleb?” Mops and buckets scuttled in the corridor. “Caleb! Are you back here?”

He stared at Tash mutely, his expression paused. He kept his back to the doorway. He kept his eyes on Tash’s face.

“Caleb?” The heel-clicks near now. Outside, in the hall.

He took a step backward, away from Tash, dropping his hands from where she’d willingly been trapped, and turning just as Astrid stopped short in the doorway.

She’d wrapped up in her own terry cloth. She still wore her blond wig and rhinestoned stage paint. From behind the squared-off block of Caleb’s body, Tash glimpsed Astrid vacuum up the evidence—the used pink towels, Tash and Caleb’s general disarray.

“You left.” Astrid’s words came out as allegation. “During a tribute I’ve been practicing for weeks.”

Caleb sighed, exuding undisguised irritation. “Astrid, can we talk about this later?”

She blanched at his dismissal, her death stare only upping its beams. “I came to get you because Ilsa’s tired. She wants to go back to her hotel.”

“Okay.” He said it flatly.

“She wants you to take her. She’s emotional and overwhelmed.”

Tash sensed Astrid’s mounting tantrum. She had no desire to be struck by a stray bullet. She took a clammy step out of Caleb’s shelter, moving toward the door.

Astrid bristled, tucking her towel tighter under her arms—and Tash would have liked to remind her they weren’t rivals.

Although that felt false as Caleb reached for Tash’s hand.

He shot her a private headshake. “Don’t go.”

It thinned Astrid’s mouth into a hard line. “You know what? Don’t worry, Caleb—I’ll just tell Ilsa you’re working .” She waved at them sarcastically. “Because this seems super professional, and we all know how important that is to you.”

Tash had to get out of there. She pulled away from Caleb. She bolted.

She’d claimed to have written a Sisterhood; she’d claimed to put it first.

And yet, as she darted down an echoing corridor in a streak of embarrassment and wet clothing, she swore the lead actress in her book’s adaptation would quite like to push her in front of a bus.