Finding Love's Wings Read online

  "I...I...think we can all four have a great time together. Mick and Beau are some of the best partiers and funniest people I know. I think you'll really like them. And I can almost guarantee that your anonymity will remain intact because they're the type of people that won’t care." Though the idea does occur to me that Beau might spill the fact that I've had this obsession with Tristan for the last few years. She's not well-known for having a brain-to-mouth filter.

  He pauses, then says, "All right, I trust you."

  I release a breath that had gotten caught in the back of my throat at his admission of trust. "Thank you!" is all I can manage to say.

  "So," he says gently. "You love the color purple, piercings, music, and tattoos." I raise an eyebrow at him, wondering where he is going with this. He continues, "What inspired your tattoos?"

  I'm instantly praying that my face doesn't portray the shock I feel at his question. To be honest, no one has ever asked. Only admired my work. Beau knows, of course. She was with me when I got all of them.

  I take a moment to take a sip of wine. "Well, the corset started off as the piercings. I saw one in a tattoo magazine somewhere and I thought it was really cool. Had I known then how much pain I was going to have to go through, I might have thought twice. Fortunately, X, my tattoo artist and piercer, has a very cool contraption that actually completed six of the piercings at a time. So I only had to go through it four times." I watched him wince. "I decided to tattoo it later after X brought up the idea of how cool it would look to fill it in like an actual corset."

  Taking another sip of my wine, I move on to the next piece. "Next came the shoulders. Beau actually drew up the design. I wanted to portray good and evil, and she knows my affection for tribal. I'm constantly battling with good verses evil, or bad. Growing up the way I did, I had religion forced on me at the boarding school I attended. I constantly challenged the teachers and priests with their religious logic, pointing out the holes in what they preached. But despite my 'anti-religious' arguments at school, I do still believe in God, or a higher power. So Ariel and Lucy were born and inked." I stop talking, not entirely sure that I can explain the wings.

  "And..." His voice is soft, welcoming. "The wings?" he asks.

  "Yeah, those."

  Pausing for more than a few moments prompts Tristan to say, "It's okay, Cami." He takes my hand across the table. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." Taking in my expression, he quickly adds, "I know how hard it can be to discuss something so personal."

  Instant respect and gratitude warms my heart at his words. He gently begins stroking the back of my hand.

  "It's not so much that I don't want to tell you, Tristan. It's more that..." I feel my throat tighten. "The wings were my first, at barely nineteen. I wanted to fly away, away from life, away from Bobbie, away from my past, and having the wings on my back gave me the freedom I needed." I feel my eyes prick with tears. "I finally felt free of the burden of never really knowing my mother. And of hating my father for the fact that he was never there for me when I needed him. When I was growing up."

  I have to stop talking. Bowing my head, I start to chew on my tongue ring again. It's been nearly six years since I've thought about my wings. "I love them, of course. They've become a part of who I am. And every time things get rough, they remind me that I have the power to fly away," I whisper, and Tristan's grip on my hand tightens.

  "Thank you for sharing that, Cami. You and your wings are beautiful." Lifting my hand again, he kisses each of my knuckles, slowly, respectfully.

  "What about you, Tristan? What about your dragon?"

  He instantly stops stroking my hand. Afraid that I've offended him, I peer at him through my lashes.

  "Cami...I..." Using his free hand he takes a very large, draining gulp of his wine. He swallows, then wipes his lips with his napkin. His eyes lower to mine, covered in pleading need. "Cami, I..." He stutters again. "I appreciate your sharing your story. And while I want to share mine with you, I'm not ready."

  Lifting our intertwined hands, I repeat his previous gesture: I bring his hand to my lips and slowly, I kiss each knuckle, communicating my acceptance of his request to wait to tell me his tale.

  After we finish our wonderful meal, Tristan and I take to the beach for a walk along the dark blue waves. In one hand I carry my shoes. My other hand is in Tristan's. He hasn't let go since I told him about my tattoos.

  Holding Tristan's hand while walking down the beach feels like nothing I've ever felt before. It is warm and tender, and there is this constant current that keeps passing through our hands straight into my soul. It sparks at my heart and the center of my core, right between my legs. God, I want this man so bad.

  "So tell me," I say, as much to take my mind off ripping his clothes off as because I'm curious. "How did you get into acting?"

  He ponders his response for a moment.

  Taking a deep breath, he begins his story. "I never wanted to be a Hollywood actor. I enjoyed the idea of plays in high school and college. I had performed in several throughout my academic career. My mom passed away during my freshman year in college. She had been my support system, paying for tuition, room, board, and books. When she passed away she left me with enough money to finish out my degree in the necessities, such as tuition, room, and board, but very little in the way of living expenses. She had saved my tuition money, but the money she gave me for living expenses had come from working, so I lost that when she passed. I managed to survive a little, but it got to the point that I needed to take out student loans and grants in order to support myself further. During my senior year, I was broke, horribly broke.

  "When I came across an ad seeking extras for a movie that was filming near campus, needing the extra money, I decided to go for the audition. The gig was going to pay enough to get me through the next month until my last round of assistance came through and I graduated. What I was going to do after graduation, I had no clue. But at the time it was going to be enough.

  "So I went to the audition, performed my lines, and was asked the questions I now know to be standard about my acting career. Which of course was limited to small-time stage acting. The people I auditioned for were not impressed because I had no on-camera experience, not even a commercial. And Cami, if you want the truth of it, stage acting and camera acting are no different, except that while performing they can yell cut and make you do it over and over and over again." His eyes rolled around in his head as he said this. I laughed at his expression of mock horror. He laughed with me.

  "I walked away from the audition feeling rejected. I didn't see what the big deal was; it was only a part for an extra. Around 8:30 that evening I received a phone call direct from one of the movie's producers, requesting that I come back the next morning. I had class, but given that this was important, and I never skipped class, I figured what the hell.

  "He was a fast talker but finally cut to the point and told me that he was going to be emailing me some lines from the movie and that he wanted me to practice them and have them ready the next day.

  "When I received the email I was confused because the attachment had the lines of the main character, Dakota, and I knew enough about casting that if they were casting extras, the mains were already cast. When I finally just got over it, hoping for an explanation the next day, I started to practice the monologue. It was the part in the movie where Dakota begins to realize that he is falling in love with Alyssa." He pauses, wanting to see my reaction. Is he trying to confirm that I've never seen the movies?

  "I don't know about that part in the movie, but I know about it from the first book,” I say. “It was a pretty powerful part, and to me it seems the perfect section for you to portray Dakota in an audition."

  He nods. "Well the catch to this is that I had never read the books, and most of all, I had little context to go on when reading the lines. By the time I went to bed around three in the morning, I had the lines memorized and I was ready, but overwhelmingly nervous. I laid t
here in bed, awake, trying desperately to figure out how best to move, how best to bring my whole body into the dialogue. Had I known then what the scene really entailed, I could have done it better, but apparently what I did was good enough.

  "Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep, and I awoke around seven, well before the ten o'clock audition. I sat down and did a little bit of Internet research about the movie. I discovered that the guy originally cast was having a hard time with the producers and crew, so he was fighting his way out of his contract. I also gathered from the various blogs that he was not going to be missed by the Love is Burning fans. Which of course had me that much more nervous.

  "It was very evident to me that there was quite the following for the books and that the fans were eager to see it on the big screen. I should have known then that this was something I should have stayed away from." He laughs.

  "Obviously the audition went well," he continues. "I was forced to hire Bold on at the last minute because the day after my audition they called and told me they were going to offer me the part of Dakota. I was forced into an appointment the next morning at eleven to go over the contract. I desperately wanted the job and I knew that if I couldn't meet their demands, I was going to be replaced."

  "Is that how you met Bobbie?" I asked. There's a little stab at my heart when I bring my father into the conversation.

  "When I called Bold, I told them who I was." He laughs. "Which meant jack shit until I told the person on the phone that I was being offered the part of Dakota for the upcoming Burning movies, and then I was transferred directly to Bobbie. Bobbie wanted to speak with me personally, so I agreed to meet him at a café near campus."

  "That sounds exactly like something Bobbie would do." I grimace. I can't help feeling hurt knowing that Bobbie would drop everything for the next big thing but couldn't be bothered for most of his life to pay attention to his own kids. I'm somewhat jealous of Tristan's relationship with my father, I realize. I wish Bobbie had shown even half as much interest in me.

  PART FIFTEEN

  Tristan must be able to sense my distress because he says, "I never would've imagined that the professional Bobbie and the home life Bobbie were so different. To be honest, Cami – and for this I'm sorry – I didn't even know that he had a daughter. But then again, Bobbie never talked about himself. It was always more important to talk about business."

  "That's not a shock to me, Tristan, believe me. I wish it was at least a little. He was always the type of person that couldn't let his personal life clash with business. After I graduated from high school, I had to make an appointment – with his secretary, mind you, and under a different name – in order to tell him that I was leaving for college." In the glow of the moonlight I can see Tristan's face darken. "Mick was the one exception to that rule."

  When he calms and the color in his cheeks returns to normal, he asks, "What do you mean?" His voice is tense.

  "Mick is the only person I ever had regular contact with who was an employee of my father's. He was the one that took care of my money, invested it, and then taught me the ways of money through a very generous trust fund my father had given me, part of which came to me upon high school graduation, then another part on college graduation, and then—" I come to a sudden halt as realization dawns.

  After a beat, Tristan says, "Whoa, Cami, where'd you go on me?" Concern etched his features.

  "I just remembered the last part of my trust fund."

  "Oh, and that is what exactly?"

  I start walking again. "My twenty-fifth birthday brings me the last of my trust money from my father. Provided the trust is still active." Not that another ten million dollars was going to be noticed within my accounts.

  Slowly walking down the beach, feeling the wet sand between my toes, thankful that I'd remembered to remove my thigh highs when I went to the bathroom, I'm really starting to think about Bobbie. "Assuming that the trust is still active and that Mick didn't manage to get the balance of the trust after Bobbie's passing, given that I'd already graduated college, my twenty-fifth birthday brings the final installment.

  "It's taken me a year to realize that he really is gone, never to return, and the last couple of weeks have made me realize that I will never be graced with fatherly knowledge. For years I'd held out hope that he would come around, that he’d be my dad, that he would be there for me when I needed him, and that's gone."

  Tristan grabs my elbow, stopping my steps, and pulls me back to him. He takes in the tears that have started to fall down my cheeks and pulls in a sharp breath.

  "Sweet Cami, don't cry."

  "I can't help it. I tried for years to hate him, but I never could. Some of the little things he did made me realize that somewhere, deep down, he really did care. Despite the argument we got into the night I found out about my trust, I was torn inside. I said so many nasty things to him, and yet, a couple mornings later, he was there to see me leave for Phoenix. It wasn't until he started to email me while I was at college that I understood that he was starting to come around. He invited me to premieres, including your first, in fact."

  He pulls back slightly to look at me. Puzzled. "I couldn't make it,” I explain. “It was during finals week, and the timing was horrible." Taking a deep breath, I continue, "Despite the emails, the attempts to see me, to get me to L.A., he didn't show up at my graduation, and he died a couple weeks later." My tears are hot against my cheeks, and they are soaking into Tristan's shirt. Fighting to regain control of myself, I feel that I need to let Tristan ask the questions rather than just tell him everything. His arms are tight against me, and I look up at him. His beautiful face is taught with anger.

  "Tristan?" Slowly he looks at me. The adoration and admiration in his face are clear. Something shifts in him as he looks at me. Something that I can't explain or even understand.

  "Why—" I start, whispering. "—are you so angry?" I finally manage to get out.

  "Cami, I'm angry because of your father. Whether you were you or someone else, it doesn't matter. No child deserves the neglect and anguish you suffer from now. You father should have been there for you, and he wasn't and that angers me. My mother was never rich. She worked hard and fought harder to give me everything I needed in life, no matter what the cost. I know, even though she is gone, that she loved me then and still loves me now." He pauses and I can hear him swallow, hard. His heart rate increases its rhythm against my ear. "No child should ever feel that kind of neglect, and I'm sorry that you have to endure it from now until forever."

  He pulls away, lifting my chin so that I'm looking straight up at him, and he kisses me. Softly, gently. A feeling of warm comfort washes over me. The kiss is sensual and far from sexual. Kissing him back, I realize that I’ve forgotten our conversation of the last few minutes. All I can think about is Tristan and his kiss.

  After what feels like an a very long time, he slowly pulls back. Taking a few deep breaths, Tristan asks, "So when do you turn twenty-five?"

  "Next Saturday.” I say, matter of fact.

  “Well then," he says. "I think a true celebration is in order next Saturday." He is smiling now. "I'm sure your friends Mick and Beau would love to help me set up a twenty-fifth birthday celebration for you."

  I let out a very strained giggle. "You have no idea."

  We walk on in silence for a while, my thoughts drifting from Bobbie to Evelyn. My mother's passing had meant little to me at the time. I didn't know, let alone fully understand, the gravity of her loss until Bobbie had passed and I was twenty-three years old without any parents. Okay, my parents didn't really qualify as parents most of the time. But the bottom line was that even if I wanted them, they were gone.

  I notice that Tristan starts falling behind me, and I slow my pace so he can catch up. I look at him as he studies my face for a moment.

  "A penny for your thoughts?" he says. He's smiling, but his eyes still show their concern at my tears.

  "I have paid a therapist thousands for my thoughts, and
you offer up a penny." I giggle and blush. His smile grows bigger, but the concern is still there. "But thank you for that. And to be honest, I was actually thinking about Evelyn."

  "Who is Evelyn?" he asks, cocking his head at me. We come back together and stop. He sits down in the sand, stretching out his legs. Patting his leg he says, "Have a seat." Looking at him dubiously, I turn and lower myself onto his lap. He leans back slightly and I turn to my right so that I can face him.

  "Evelyn is my mother." He looks at me, a puzzled expression on his face. "She passed away when I was sixteen." He shakes his head. "Don't fret, Tristan. I wasn't close to either of my parents. Evelyn passed away from a cancer that neither Mark nor I were aware of until after her passing.” He's stopped smiling. He appears as though he to wants to say something, but can't quite find the words.

  "Cami...I...I am very sorry."

  "Please, Tristan, it's all right." I can feel my eyes starting to become thick with tears again. I try to blink them back. But the tears aren’t for Bobbie or Evelyn or even myself. They are for the look in Tristan's eyes. "Tristan, what are you thinking about? You look like you're upset."

  He doesn’t answer me, simply reaches up to cup my cheek in his palm. He gently strokes the stray tear from my eye. "Please don't cry, Cami. I'm sorry that I asked. I didn't expect it to be this—"

  "Stop. I’m fine." It’s more of a plea than an order. "It is the look in your eyes that is bringing on my tears. Please, talk to me?"

  "I am not sure where to start. I never knew my father. He was gone long before I was born. My mother raised me by herself. She took pride in caring for herself and me. She loved me exactly like a mother should love a child, and it pains me to see the pain in your eyes at the loss of a mother and father who did not care for you the way that they should have." He's speaking so quietly that it's nearly a whisper.