I rested my hand on his knee. “Then you’d have to dig him up and kill him again.”
His gaze was furious, but at my words, his hands flattened out and he dropped his chin to his chest, which expanded and fell on a long exhale.
“I’m okay, Damon,” I murmured.
Chocolate eyes sparking fire, but he didn’t say what he had every right to. Which was that, clearly, I wasn’t okay because of the way I’d acted earlier that day. Instead, he just stared at me, fury in his expression, body stiff and unmoving.
Except for his chest.
That kept lifting and falling in rapid succession, his staccato breaths the only noise in the room.
Then his hand dropped onto mine, loosely gripping my fingers where they still rested on his knee. “I’m sorry you went through whatever it was that was bad enough to mark you so thoroughly. I’m sorry that I pushed this morning. I’m—”
I squeezed his leg lightly. “Me, too,” I said. “But I promised myself a long time ago I would stop apologizing for what he did.”
“I—”
“And if it’s cool with you, I’d like to put the past where it belongs and focus on the good things I have going on in my life,” I said. “The first of which is having a friend like you who cares.” I waited until he glanced up at me and smiled. “The second being”—I slipped my hand free and tapped the script on the table—“having the ability to actually complain about rewrites because I’m working in my dream job and doing films rather than cat food commercials.”
Damon’s jaw clenched despite my levity though he nodded, albeit tightly. “I’m glad you have that, too.”
“I’m also lucky to have someone read those rewritten lines with me.” I picked up the script, handed it to him. “Hint, hint.”
His lips curved just the slightest bit, and he reached over and took it from me. “Okay, sweetheart.” His smile expanded. “Or should I say okay, demander?”
“I prefer the first,” I teased. “But I stand by the second.”
He grinned. I giggled.
And then we both set down our beers and got to work running the lines.
Damon was patient, feeding them to me when I faltered with the new material, but not just giving them all to me freely. He made me work; testing my memory and helping them stick in my brain.
That wasn’t even mentioning the vast amount of accents he could do. He colored more emotions into the script than I’d been able to do in my mind, and that was saying something. I really liked the story and had brought it to life in my brain, complete with mental images and voices.
“How are you so good at this?” I accused about halfway through. “I’m starting to think you moved to L.A. so you could pursue acting yourself.”
He laughed. “Not at all,” he said, turning the page and pausing. “My sister was the theater geek, that’s it. End of story.” His eyes darted away from mine. And was that a blush? “Okay, now Madeline says—”
I pinned him with a stare. “Why am I not thinking that’s the end of the story, based on your avoidance?”
“She says, ‘And I don’t know why—’”
“Damon.”
“‘You’re looking at me that way.’ And Todd replies—”
“Damon.”
He froze, shoulders rising, eyes still on the script, but . . . yes, that definitely was a hint of blush on his cheeks?
Oh my God.
I yanked the script out of his hands.
“Spill it, buster.”
He snagged it back. “‘You can’t expect me to—’”
“Damon Alexander Garcia, don’t you dare try and hold out on me.”
“I’m not holding—”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yes, you are.”
“I’m—”
“Remember that time I told you you’d drank too much tequila and were going to have a massive hangover the next day?”
A grunt.
“Or when you’d eaten that chocolate cake too fast?”
If there was such a thing as flipping a script page aggressively, then Damon did it. “As I was saying—”
“Or when you were taking on too much and needed a vacation?”
“Pot meet kettle,” he muttered.
“Hence, the reason we took that long weekend to Miami, remember?”
He reached for his beer, guzzled down a mouthful, eyes carefully avoiding mine. “Yeah, so what?”
“So, I know you, Damon. I know when you’ve eaten too much, or drank too much, or worked too much.”
“That may be true but—”
“I also know when you’re lying about something,” I went on. “You know I do. It’s the same reason I knew you were near burnout and going to be sick to your stomach. It’s why I know that hint of blush on your cheeks means that you’re holding out on me.”
He sighed, dropped the script to his lap. “Eden.”
I sighed, dropped my hands to my lap. “Damon.”
We faced off for several long moments.
But I wasn’t caving. He wasn’t telling me everything. I knew that, without a doubt, and based on his reluctance to dish, I also knew that what he was holding back was going to be good.
Really good.
He sighed again and flopped back against the cushions. “First, I don’t know how you know or why I let you convince me to tell you these things.”
I grinned and clapped my hands together. “OMG. Is this going to be as good as your sisters shaving your eyebrows right before you went on a date with the girl you’d been crushing on for months?”
“First,” he muttered. “That was abuse. Second—” He snorted. “It was pretty funny.”
I giggled. “Yes, and well-deserved if I’m remembering what you told me you did correctly.”
“You mean me swapping their shampoo with hair bleach?”
I nodded fervently. “That was probably the most devious of all the sibling torture I’ve heard you guys committed.”
“I was only trying to one-up them after they’d superglued my butt to the toilet seat.”
“I—” I broke off on a chuckle and shook my head. “You lot were relentless.”
“My poor mother,” he said in agreement. “Though, did I ever tell you
