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11.Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Bonnie

I was looking forward to harness day. With most of my career being in romantic comedies and generally lighthearted movies thus far, I’ve never had the chance to do anything remotely close to a real stunt, and Derek always talks about how much he loves doing his own stunts because it makes him feel that much more connected to his character and what’s happening in the scene. So today was going to be one of the fun days. Maybe even a boost to my career.

“Don’t worry, Bonnie!” my assistant, Trevor, shouts up to me. “We’ll get you down from there in no time!”

“Take your time!” I shout back. Not sure I necessarily mean that, though.

We’re shouting because something went wrong with the rig. I was supposed to jump from one roof to the next after an explosion, but when we did the first take, the mechanism went haywire and pulled me all the way up to the top of the crane holding me in the air, leaving me dangling forty feet above the ground. And apparently no one can figure out how to get me down .

“At least I’m not afraid of heights,” I mutter to myself. Derek saw to that, since he’s a bit of an adrenaline junky and convinced me to go skydiving and bungee jumping with him.

Okay, so maybe I’m still a little afraid of heights, and this harness is so not comfortable.

I don’t know what happened. I watched my stunt double do this half a dozen times this morning, and it worked perfectly every time. She ran across the roof, and when she got the cue for the explosion, she leapt over the gap between the buildings and glided smoothly to the other side. Every. Single. Time.

My friends are going to find this hilarious, so I’m going to do my best to never let them find out.

At least I’ve got a cool view of Laketown, which is seriously tiny. I knew the main street was small, but I figured there would be a lot of streets stretching out beyond the heart of the town. I thought it would be sort of like Lake Tahoe, but honestly I don’t even know where the lake is. I’ll figure it out eventually, I suppose, though it’s not like I’m granted a lot of free time. Maybe I can convince Hank to take me.

Ha! After last night, I’m pretty sure Hank is going to be begging for me to get him in touch with Liam’s lawyer so he can get out of the contract he signed.

“Hey, Bonnie?” Trevor waves his arm to get my attention again, but he has a megaphone now. He must have borrowed it from Beckett. “We’re going to try to toss you a walkie talkie, okay?”

My coordination skills are minimal at best, but I’ll welcome any chance at having a conversation while I wait. Especially because I’m pretty sure this means I’m going to be up here for a while.

It’s my stunt double, Anne, who comes into the alley beneath me. She seems to be judging the distance and prepping for the toss. What happens if I don’t catch it? It’ll go flying back down, and no one will want to snatch it out of the air when it’s going that fast. It’ll smash to pieces!

Which means we’ve only got one shot.

“No pressure,” I tell myself, which is the universal phrase to mean all the pressure.

“Ready?” Trevor asks on the megaphone.

I give both him and Anne a thumbs up.

Anne bends down and then swings her arms up, and the little radio shoots upwards. I’m tempted to grab it as it comes up, but my gut tells me to wait. Miraculously, it reaches the top of its parabolic peak right in front of my face, and all I have to do is reach out and wrap my fingers around it.

The little crowd on the ground cheers, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Pushing the talk button, I say, “Way to go, Anne. That was a perfect throw.”

It’s a male voice that responds. “You okay up there, Bonnie?”

My heart, which was calming down after my catch, jumps right back into overdrive. “Hank?”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to show up after the awkwardness of last night.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I tell Hank, and I really mean that.

Where is he, anyway? I’m not so high that I shouldn’t be able to see him, but none of the people down below look like they could be him.

“Look up,” Hank says.

Look up where? I look at the crane behind me, wondering if I might find a firefighter coming to rescue me.

“No,” Hank says, laughter in his voice. “Across the street, on top of the general store.”

I gasp as soon as I see him sitting on the roof, legs dangling off the edge. Even from here, I can see his adorable little smile, and I nearly drop the walkie talkie at the sight of it. No way am I going to lose this little lifeline, so I adjust my hold and make sure my grip is tight before I speak into it.

“What are you doing up there?”

He shrugs. “When I got to set a few minutes ago, they told me what happened, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t alone up there. June provided the walkie talkies.”

“That’s surprising.”

“Why?”

“I’m pretty sure June doesn’t like me.”

“She’s just protective.” Hank looks down at the sidewalk below him, where June is in conversation with Jonah, of all people. Jonah looks happy, but June keeps looking up at Hank.

I have no reason to be jealous of whatever relationship she has with Hank, but I am. June may not be dating Hank, but she’s close enough to him that she wants to protect him. That probably means she knows a lot of his secrets. The things I want to know.

I hug the walkie talkie a bit closer as I swing my legs to keep my circulation flowing. “I was going to blow you away with my awesomeness today,” I tell him. “That clearly didn’t happen.”

“I don’t know. You still seem pretty awesome. You’d never catch me in a harness like that.”

“Are you afraid of heights?” I would hope not, given the way he’s sitting on the edge of a building right now. It’s not a tall building, but he’s still twenty feet up.

Hank chuckles. Not into the walkie talkie, but I almost think I can hear it from here. He lifts the radio, looking more at ease than I’ve ever seen him. “I didn’t like heights until I did the Mürren via ferrata in Switzerland and found myself walking on the side of a cliff wall.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that!” I’m pretty sure Derek has been there. He’s been everywhere, though, so it’s not surprising. “I didn’t really peg you as the adventurous type,” I tell Hank.

Grinning, he shakes his head. “I’m not anymore. But I used to be.”

“What changed?”

“A lot of things.”

I shouldn’t be disappointed that his answer is so vague, but I am. For a second there, I thought maybe he would finally open up again, but I guess I shouldn’t push him right now. Especially because he’s the only thing between me and freaking out about being stuck up here. He makes for a good distraction, and I’m not going to risk losing that by making him uncomfortable.

We both push the talk button at the same time. I laugh and try to tell him to go first, but I’m pretty sure he tries to tell me the same thing at the same time and we both laugh again.

I tuck my radio against my chest to show him that I’m happy to listen.

He smiles and slowly lifts the walkie talkie to his mouth. “I used to go on adventures with my wife before she was murdered four years ago.”

I drop my walkie talkie.

It sails in a smooth line to the ground and shatters when it hits the pavement. And when I meet Hank’s gaze and see the truth of his words in his sad expression, I’m pretty sure my heart shatters too.

It takes twenty more minutes to get the crane working again, and another twenty to get me down to the ground because no one is willing to take a chance with my safety. I’m not mad about that. What I am mad about is my stupid hand letting go of the only means I had to talk to Hank, because heaven knows the man wasn’t about to grab a megaphone and explain himself in front of the entire film crew .

Nope. We both just sat there, staring at each other for almost half an hour without any words between us. Plenty of thoughts, though. Oh boy, do I have thoughts.

As soon as my feet are on the ground and I’m free of the harness, I hunt for Hank. He disappeared from the roof about ten minutes ago, while I was focused on the people getting me down, and if he left after a bombshell like that, so help me…

“Bonnie!” Trevor hurries up to me and throws his arms around my shoulders. He’s not generally an affectionate guy, but I’m guessing he saw his career flash before his eyes and was frightened by the prospect of having to find someone else to work for.

“Where’s Hank?” I ask him.

He frowns. “Hank?”

“You know, my boyfriend .” I practically push Trevor aside so I can start searching the crowd of people who all want to tell me how glad they are that I made it down to the ground. Technically, Trevor hasn’t met Hank yet, which is a bit of an oversight on my part, but everything about this relationship has been a bit of a mess from the start so that’s a minor detail.

“Bonnie!” Hank’s voice, while not as frantic as Trevor’s, cuts through the crowd easily.

Relief hits me so hard that I almost start crying. What in the world? Ignoring my strangely emotional reaction to learning he didn’t leave me, I hurry toward Hank’s voice and find him doing the same from the other side of the street, turning this into a rather epic sort of reunion that would make for a darling scene in a romantic movie.

I slow down when we reach each other. Hank does not. He crashes into me, arms wrapping around me in a tight embrace that feels a hundred times more secure than the harness I just escaped.

“You’re okay,” he breathes. One of his hands moves to the back of my head, holding me close. “I got worried for a second there at the end. ”

I’m not really sure how to react right now. For one thing, he’s holding me in a way he hasn’t held me before, and I have never been this comfortable in a man’s arms before. Let me repeat that: NEVER. Derek might be built like a superhero, but I was never desperate to stay in his hold for the rest of my life. Not like this.

For another, I’m still reeling over Hank’s little—nay, enormous—revelation while I was in the harness, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to demand that he explain himself.

“You know,” I say because I don’t know what else to say, “it’s too bad there probably aren’t any paparazzi here right now to chronicle this moment.”

Hank’s arms tighten around me, the rest of his body going tense. “Well…”

I tilt my head back to look at him. “What?”

“I may have asked June to film this for us.”

Oh. Okay, so none of this is real. He’s just really good at hugging. And I shouldn’t be this good at being disappointed.

I shift my gaze away from him before he notices that disappointment, watching the way Jonah is still focused on June despite her phone pointed in our direction. He seems to find something about her interesting, though she isn’t matching his energy. At all.

Hank tucks some hair behind my ear, pulling my attention back to him as his eyes travel my face. “I’m sorry,” he says, his words soft and low. “About last night. I told you I could make this all work, and I clearly failed. But I want to do better.”

As his thumb brushes my cheek, a blush blooms to life across my face. “You’re already doing better,” I breathe, hating that I’m this affected right now. I’ve always been so good at distancing myself from the emotions of a relationship, and yet I can’t seem to tamp down my interest with Hank. If he was anyone else, this would be easy, but there’s something about this man that keeps pulling me in .

Hank smiles, and one of his arms snakes around my waist to pull me flush against him once more. “And I’m sorry for what I said when you were stuck up there. I shouldn’t have dropped that on you like that, but I thought it would be easier to get it out if I didn’t overthink it.”

“I get that. I really do. But if you think this is the end of that conversation, then you—”

He presses his thumb to my lips, shutting me up easily. “It’s not. If we’re going to spend all this time together over the next few weeks, I want you to understand why I am the way I am. But not here.” His eyes dart to the side, where half a dozen crewmembers are unabashedly watching us.

I have to grab his hand to free my mouth, and I don’t especially mind the chance to hold his fingers. Despite our audience, I’m perfectly happy where I am right now, and he doesn’t seem too bothered either. Maybe we should give them all a show and see what sort of chemistry we’re working with. Unless I’m mistaken, Hank seems okay with the idea of testing out a kiss as his eyes trace the features of my face.

“Miss Aiken! We need you in the med tent.” Gayle the nurse appears at our side, her eyes darting between us with interest. “We need to make sure you didn’t get any injuries while you were up there.”

I don’t bother holding back my groan. “I’m fine.”

“Liability,” Boyd the nurse replies, showing up on our other side, as if he thinks I need to be cornered before I’ll comply. “We are legally obligated to give you a full check before we can let you get back to, uh, work.” His eyes rove from Hank’s head to his toes, like he’s sizing my boyfriend up to see if he fits the requirements for dating me. Then he grunts and holds out his arm to me. “Shall we?”

I glance at Gayle, who looks ready to strongarm me rather than taking Boyd’s gentle approach.

I groan. “Fine. Hank, I’ll see you later?” I really should have gotten his phone number at some point so we can coordinate our appearances more easily; I’ll have to ask Trevor to grab it from him, since I can’t ask my boyfriend himself. That would be a great way for people to start questioning our relationship.

Hank reluctantly releases me and nods. “I’m glad you’re safe, Bon,” he says, and there’s genuine concern in his eyes.

I might like that a little too much.

Deciding to be daring, I lean in and brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth. I don’t linger, as much as I want to, but tuck my arm through Boyd’s, and I feel Hank’s eyes on me until I disappear into the med tent.

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