Page 116 of The Sun & Her Burn

Loyal and brave and loving, our Linnea.

I wasn’t sure when I started to think of her asours. It could have been that night at the club when Adam and I watched her blossom under our orders and shared pleasure.

But in my heart, I thought it could have been even earlier than that. The seed planted when I first conceived of Linnea dating Adam to help him out with his scandal, a bridge between our gap that had turned us into a unit of three that felt much more stable than the one before even though I had no idea of our future.

“I wroteThe Dream & The Dreamerbecause I could not stand to have the story inside me for one more moment,” I explained, leaning against the couch as I settled with her draped over my lap. When Adam came back with the tablet, he didn’t hesitate to sit beside me, our shoulders touching, Linnea’s legs in his own lap. I thought, if she hadn’t needed the physical comfort so much, he might have hesitated. But Adam was nothing if not a provider who thrilled when someone depended on him. It was powerful enough to make him forget his own hesitations.

“I have not written more than ten words in ten years, Linnea. That I could not stem the tide of this story speaks to the strengthof what inspired it. Seeing you again, resuming our friendship in real life.” I paused and looked at Adam, who was watching me with a predatory regard that made my gut burn. “Seeing Adam again. I don’t know if I was cognizant enough to realize it while I was writing it, but the moment I was finished, I knew there was no other option for this film than to have you both play the leads.”

“Email me,” Adam said almost as soon as I had finished speaking.

His eagerness was a balm for my nerves, and I laughed softly as I dug my phone out of my pocket from beneath Linnea’s lovely ass and emailed the script—filled with my life’s blood—to one of the only people whose opinions I cared about.

Adam’s fingers tapped impatiently on the side of the tablet as he waited for his email to load, and the moment the note landed in his inbox with a little jingle, he was clicking it open.

“Come here, Sunbeam,” he murmured, and Linnea slid across my lap into his own seamlessly. He adjusted so that she sat in the bowl of his lap, her back propped against his chest, his arm around her, allowing him to hold the tablet propped against her raised knees so that they could both read the script.

Before I could protest, Adam said, “Hush, Sebastian. This is a moment we will only get once. I still remember the first time I readBlood Oath,and it is a sacred memory.”

I tried to sit still while they began to read the treatment, which was a summary of the film, before they delved into the spec script, but anxious excitement prickled under my skin, as if fire ants had infected me.

Finally, Linnea reached over with a little smile curling her mouth and grabbed my hand firmly in hers.

That helped.

I pressed play on the film to distract myself, surprised that it worked even though watching the Italian-set love story always transported me back to my homeland.

It was with a start that I realized, sometime later, Linnea was crying.

I paused the movie and turned my whole body to face the duo who had been quietly absorbed in my screenplay. Linnea smiled at me as tears streamed down her cheeks, a wet little laugh escaping like steam from a kettle, an obvious release.

When I quirked an eyebrow at her, she only laughed louder and shook her head.

“I think,” Adam said drolly, “what Linnea means to say is my God, Sebastian.”

“Dio mio,” I repeated in Italian. “This is good or bad?”

“Brilliant,” Adam said with a shrug, but his stoicism broke around that wide, genuine smile that had always been able to bring me to my knees. “Bloody fucking brilliant. This makesBlood Oathlook somehow like child’s play, which we both know it very much isnot. This…”

“This hurt.” Linnea picked up the thread of thought and started to speak with her hands as if she needed props to explain herself. “This hurts and it heals and it explains how fucked up and crazy and intoxicating love can be. It’s perfect.”

I had to close my eyes for a second, or else I might have embarrassed myself by bursting into tears like a small child. My skin felt too tight, my bones too frail under the weight of the joy expanding through me.

“Veramente?” I asked. “Honestly, you feel this way?”

“Honest to Christ,” Adam swore. “Studio heads will fall over themselves to option this, Seb. You must know that.”

“Andrea seemed to think so,” I admitted. “But you know thevecchiois biased.”

“I’m biased,” Adam acknowledged. “I have also worked in this industry for almost two decades. I know what works, I know what sells, and I know art when it is put before me. This”—

he lifted the tablet and wriggled it—“this is marvellous, Sebastian. If you had not told me you had a part for me in it, I would beg you on my knees.”

“I wouldn’t hate to see that,” I teased, and had the great pleasure of watching his green eyes darken like shadows on the forest floor.

“Neither would I, come to think of it,” Linnea bantered back, smiling at me. “But who did you have in mind for Adam?”

“Emerson,” I said at the same time he did.