“Deal,” I said. “Hope you’re cozy over there.”
“I am so cozy, you don’t even know,” he murmured, and I could picture him tucking himself up into his plush blankets.
“Liam burrito?” I asked.
I heard a low chuckle. “Liam burrito.”
My heart warmed with affection. “Good,” I said.
“G’night, Red,” he said, and I could hear the sleep in his voice already.
“Good night, you,” I said.
We hung up and I looked down at my phone, realizing that I’d been talking with him for over half an hour. I couldn’t remember a single time I’d spent that long on a phone call with someone and didn’t wish I could hang up the entire time. Even my own mother didn’t like phone calls longer than about twenty minutes.
But the call with him had passed so easily I hadn’t even realized it.
I curled back up in my sheets, trying to get another hour or two of shut-eye before Anna and Elsa started begging me to go outside.
As I drifted off, all I could think about was why Liam would say he was hiding out in Amberfield. There was a huge, gnawing part of me that needed to be sure he was okay, even if I was no longer the person who always rescued him.
I wished he was in my bed right next to me, actually. It was something I’d never have, but just for tonight, I let myself pretend. I clutched a pillow close, not resisting my own fantasy, holding it as tight as I wanted to hold him.
6
Liam
I rammed the small shovel into the ground, pulling up the dirt below and chucking it into the growing pile beside me. I squinted in the bright sunlight and wiped my forehead with the back of my arm, pulling in a deep breath.
Gardening was a better workout than doing hours and hours of porn had ever been. I was channeling white-hot anger into something productive. Something that would someday become something beautiful.
I clenched my teeth as I pushed the shovel back into the dirt again, shoving it down with all my force.
I’d been going at the garden like this all morning.
I’d woken up to multiple messages from Katie saying that Colin was a “fucking dickhead.” I’d known immediately that he must have done something stupid.
When I pulled up his Twitter account, I saw it immediately.
Colin had posted several photos of me to his public page. Pictures of me in various states of nudity. He’d made sure to include the hashtag #LiamHardy as well as #HardForLiam, which was what various members of my fanbase liked to use when they linked to my clips.
My chest had curled with bitter rage and disappointment when I saw the photos. Disappointment in Colin, and in myself, that I’d ever allowed him to photograph me at all.
It was technically nothing new. There were already countless videos and photos of me online with cocks in my holes, me covered in cum, me on my knees as other guys fucked me as hard as they could.
But these particular photos had been taken during private moments at my house with Colin. It was different to wake up and find them online, even if the nudity wasn’t the thing that pissed me off.
I knew why he did it. He wanted a reaction out of me.
And I was not going to give him one.
But my past was tailing me at every moment, whether it was Colin or the flickering neon sign of a liquor store that I passed by in town every day, beckoning me to go inside and grab a drink.
I was fighting like hell to start with a clean slate here in Amberfield.
So I turned to my garden. The young flowers had gotten completely fucked up in the tornado last week, and it was finally time to remedy it. I kept working, getting sweaty and sore.
I was packing soil around a new rosebush when I heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up on the driveway behind me.
I turned and saw Red getting out of his truck, looking fucking delectable.
“This doesn’t look like a typical porn studio, director,” Red said, nodding at me as he walked over.
He was carrying a cream colored cowboy hat in one hand, and his boots crunched on the gravel. One corner of his mouth lifted up in a half-smile, crinkling the skin around his eye.
Today, Red and I were scheduled to shoot his new solo porn video. I’d told him to bring his most “sexy cowboy” outfit.
And damn, he’d knocked it out of the fucking park. He was wearing his usual brown leather cowboy boots, jeans, and a baby-blue collared shirt that hugged his muscles far too well. I’d seen my fair share of muscular men, but none of them could rock a simple shirt like Red could.
My entire garden looked better with him in it. Suddenly the reds and pinks of the flowers popped. A few butterflies flitted around him, like even they knew he was irresistible. It was as if the entire feeling of the morning had shifted as soon as he’d arrived.