Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82678 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82678 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 413(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Neither of us said a single word during the entire ride back to his place. Night Swimming by R.E.M. was playing low on the radio, and I somehow knew that song would forever have a negative connotation in my mind.
Landon rolled down the window and reached for his cigarettes in the center compartment. He quickly lit one up, sucking the smoke in deeply and blowing it out. He never smoked in the car; he only ever did it outside and away from me. I didn’t even question why he was smoking in that moment because my instinct told me he needed it more than anything.
His utter silence left me with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, because even though he wasn’t saying anything, I could feel that he was gearing up for something big. I could somehow recognize that he was in the middle of an internal conversation. A million thoughts were going through my mind as well.
When he finally parked in front of his place, he turned the car off and took my hand, caressing it with his thumb before lifting it to his mouth for a kiss. Letting out a deep breath, he finally exited the car.
My heart was pounding as I followed him into the house.
He stopped in the middle of his living room with his back facing me. I came up behind him and looped my arms through his, resting my cheek on his back. Placing one of my hands on his heart, I could feel his nerves beating through it.
We stayed like that for a while until he suddenly turned around and took me by the hand to join him on the couch.
He just started talking.
“I was really messed up for the first few years after I moved out here. I managed to rent a bedroom in this place off Sunset and started waiting tables, but I was basically living aimlessly for several months. It took me a while to build up the courage to start really looking for Beverly. And you already know how that story ended.”
“Yeah…”
“Anyway, when I finally met her sister—my aunt, Miranda—she gave me a lot of information about my mother. She told me there was this movie director named Bud Holliday. Apparently, before he became successful, he and my mother dated, and he was the one who got her hooked on heroin. He ditched her when she started to really lose her way. He’d been sort of acting like her manager before that. He really did nothing for her, except ruin her life. Anyway, years later, he ended up actually directing some films and became a pretty big deal.”
“What does this have to do with that woman in the restaurant?”
He closed his eyes momentarily. “I need to tell this story from the beginning, okay? Bear with me.”
“Alright.”
“Around the time I turned twenty-two, I had gotten a job working as a waiter for a company that catered to the rich and famous. One of my assignments was to work a private party in Beverly Hills. It was at Bud Holliday’s house.”
I gasped. “Oh, my God.”
Landon suddenly got up and headed toward the kitchen.
“Where are you going?”
“Getting you a drink. You’re gonna need it. Getting myself one, too.”
He returned with two cold bottles of Miller Lite and handed me one.
“Thank you.” I chugged some of it down, coughing from the rush of cold liquid barreling down my throat.
Landon took a long sip and placed the bottle on the coffee table before continuing his story. “So, obviously, as you can imagine, I was kind of freaking out that I was going to be in the house of the man who I basically considered the catalyst for my birth mother’s drug problem. I was filled with anger. I didn’t know whether I wanted to physically harm him, give him food poisoning, or what. I just knew that I couldn’t waste the opportunity to fuck him up in some way. It felt like fate brought me to that house.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, the chance to get back at him—so I thought—was sort of placed in my lap...and I didn’t even need to use my fist.”
“How?”
Landon took another long swig of his beer. “After the event winded down, I ended up hitting it off with this woman in the kitchen. She was about ten years older than me and made no secret of the fact that she wanted me.”
“What was her name?”
“Jamie-Lynne Holliday.”
“Holliday…his daughter?”
He shook his head slowly. “His wife.”
My jaw dropped. “Oh…”
“I had no clue at first that she was married to Bud. She was a lot younger than him. Of course, once I found out, it was all the more incentive to go along with her advances.”
“You slept with her?”
“I ended up having an ongoing affair with her, yeah.”
“Is this what you’ve been hiding from me—what you were ashamed to tell me?”