Chapter 9: Wrap

We wrapped the series at eleven the next night, on a stretch of salt flat with the lights off and every crew member crying.

I said thank you forty times.

The old assistant gave a speech from a cooler lid, and my roommate looked at her clipboard once and set it on the ground.

Beck packed the camera himself.

I stood at the edge of the lights, watching his hands, until he looked up.

"Truck's behind the dune," he said.

"I'll follow you."

"Lenox," he said.

"I did warn you."

He shut the case and picked up the strap and didn't say another word the whole drive.

His house in Silver Lake was a one-story bungalow at the end of a stair street.

There was a lemon tree in the yard and a kitchen that smelled of toast.

He turned the lights on in the hall, not the living room.

I stopped in the doorway, because suddenly I couldn't move.

I wanted this so badly that my knees felt unreliable.

"Two rules," Beck said, behind me.

I turned.

He stood with his back against the door and his hands flat on it.

"One. We don't talk about the water. Not tonight, not on a set, not in a bed. I'm not ready."

"Okay," I said.

"Two is yours. You say it."

I thought about it.

"No work in bed," I said. "No notes, no color talk, no 'what did you think of the second act.'"

"You're going to break that in four minutes."

"Hold the frame, Mallory."

He laughed, a short rough laugh that surprised both of us, and crossed the hall in two steps.

His hands were on my face before the laugh was finished.

His mouth was careful for about as long as it took me to put my hands under his shirt.

Then it wasn't.

I felt his back go tight under my palms and heard him make a low sound.

"Lenox," he said against my mouth.

"Don't stop."

"I'm not stopping."

He lifted me against the wall.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Saved My Sister and Let Me Drown, So I Took Hollywood from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.