He Married His Saboteur Then Exposed Him novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Worst Day
Lucas sits in a hospital corridor with Mateo's surgical estimate in his hand when his agency calls to drop him. Kevin walks down the corridor in a navy suit and offers to pay for everything.
The estimate had a total at the bottom and the total had a comma in it.
Three hundred and forty thousand dollars.
Lucas read it four times. The number didn't get smaller.
Mateo was asleep two doors down with a monitor clipped to his finger.
Nineteen years old. A heart that had been running wrong since the day he was born.
The cardiologist had said the word surgery like it was a haircut.
Then he'd said the word soon.
Lucas had been sitting on this bench since seven that morning.
He'd had two cups of hospital coffee and both of them had been terrible.
His phone buzzed against his thigh.
He answered it in the corridor because the corridor was empty.
"This is Lucas."
"It's Sherry at the agency."
Sherry had gotten him his first audition. She'd called him kid for six years.
She wasn't calling him kid now.
"We're letting you go."
Lucas looked at the vending machine at the end of the hall. It hummed.
"Say that again."
"We're dropping you as a client. Effective today. It's already done."
The fluorescent light above him ticked, once, twice.
"Sherry, I've got a callback Tuesday. The Western. They asked for me by name."
"They asked for you three weeks ago."
"And now?"
"Now they won't return my calls."
He heard her shift papers. He heard somebody else in the room with her, breathing.
"There's a video of me with a man," Lucas said. "That's the whole thing. That's all it is."
"That's not the whole thing, and you know it."
"It's the whole thing."
"It's six weeks old and it's everywhere and the town has decided."
He put his hand flat on the wall. The paint was cold.
"Four months of work. That audition took me four months."
"Lucas."
"Four months, Sherry."
"I've got another call."
She hung up.
Lucas stood in the corridor with the phone against his ear until it started to beep.
Then he sat down on the bench by the vending machine.
Mateo's door was open a hand's width. He could hear the monitor.
He put the estimate on his knee and smoothed it flat.
Three hundred and forty thousand dollars.
He had eleven thousand in the bank and a truck that needed a transmission.
He had a lease in Silver Lake and no work and no agent.
He was thirty-one years old and his whole career fit in a drawer.
He'd done the math eleven times since Tuesday.
It came out the same every time.
The elevator opened at the far end of the corridor.
Lucas didn't look up. He was doing the math again, the way you press a bruise.
Footsteps. Good shoes. Slow.
The footsteps stopped in front of him.
Lucas looked at the shoes first. Black, polished, expensive.
Then the trousers. Then the navy suit with no tie.
Kevin Maverick stood in the corridor of a cardiac ward holding a paper cup of coffee.
He was six three and he filled the hallway the way a door fills a frame.
"Lucas."
Lucas stood up because sitting felt worse.
"What are you doing here."
"I heard about your brother."
"Who told you."
"Doesn't matter."
Kevin looked past him at the open door. The monitor beeped.
"Mitral valve," Kevin said. "And the other one. They're doing both at once."
Lucas's hand closed on the estimate.
"How do you know that."
"I made some calls."
"You made some calls."
"I make calls, Lucas. It's what I do."
Kevin sat down on the bench. He didn't ask. He just sat.
Lucas stayed standing.
"You released a video of me," Lucas said. "You put a camera across the street from my own apartment."
"I didn't put a camera anywhere."
"Somebody did."
"Somebody did."
"And it ran for six weeks and now I don't have an agent."
Kevin drank his coffee. His hands were steady.
"I heard."
"You heard."
"I hear everything."
Lucas looked down the corridor. A nurse went by with a tray and didn't look at either of them.
A man in a hospital gown shuffled past with his IV pole and stared at Kevin's suit.
Nobody in this building knew who Kevin Maverick was.
Lucas knew exactly who Kevin Maverick was.
Maverick Productions had been the biggest studio in town for three generations.
Kevin's grandfather had built it. Kevin's father ran it.
Kevin was the one they were handing it to.
Kevin had also been the reason Lucas lost the Western in the first place.
Not the video. Before the video.
A year ago Lucas had tested for a lead and the director had loved him.
Then the offer had gone quiet and the director had stopped taking his calls.
Lucas had found out in the fall. Somebody at the studio had told somebody who told him.
Kevin Maverick had made one phone call.
"Why are you here," Lucas said.
"To help."
"You've been blocking me for a year."
"I've been keeping you."
"Those are the same thing from where I'm standing."
Kevin set the cup on the floor beside the bench, careful, like it mattered.
"Let me pay for it."
The corridor went very quiet. The monitor beeped. The vending machine hummed.
"Say that again."
"All of it. The surgery, the surgeon, the room, the recovery. Whatever it costs."
Lucas laughed once. It came out wrong.
"You don't do anything for free."
"No."
"So what do you want."
Kevin stood up. He was taller than Lucas by two inches and he used all of them.
He looked at the estimate in Lucas's hand.
Then he looked at Lucas.
"Marry me and stop acting for three years."
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