Free Wild Honey by Suzanne Forster

her drawn features. “Fine, I’ll read the part of Jesse.”
    Moments later, immersing herself in the emotional scene, Sasha walked through the door of the set and stared at the bed, vividly imagining Jesse’s semi-conscious body sprawled there. Trembling, she approached him, and suddenly it was all terrifyingly real. He was in front of her, bleeding, dying, the hunted, haunted man she’d nearly betrayed. She could hear his ragged breathing, see the fevered flush of his dusky skin. Jesse was dying. He needed her. She was torn with guilt and desperation at the utter hopelessness of it all, rocked with love and longing for him.
    “Jesse?” A naked quiver of pain shook her voice.
    She stood at the bed and dropped to her knees, reaching out for him, laying her head on the blanket and sobbing. “Jesse,” she pleaded, “don’t die.”
    She could almost hear him rouse, feel his body heat as he rolled to his side and grasped her arm. Shuddering violently, she registered the insistent strength of his fingers and gradually realized that it was Marc Renaud who held her, that he was crouched next to her, repeating Jesse’s words. “Look at me,” he whispered, a brutal tone to his voice, “ look at me, Lisa. ”
    A shock wave of physical longing paralyzed her. She couldn’t. It didn’t matter that the script called for her to look up at Jesse, to mouth his name. Her heart was thudding in her chest, a heavy, hurtful beat. She couldn’t look at the man who was rising above her, drawing her up with him.
    “Lisa—”
    She ripped away from him, pushed to her feet, and stumbled to the far wall of the set.
    “What is it? Lisa—what’s wrong?”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, her back to him. She wasn’t sure if those were the right words, if she was still acting, if any of it was in the script.
    “Sorry? Why? What did you do?” He hesitated, swore under his breath and slowly exhaled Jesse’s disbelief. “Not the police? You didn’t—”
    Whirling around, tears streaming, she was Lisa again. “Yes—”
    In her mind he was there, across the room from her...Jesse, trying to stand, staggering and sinking back to the bed. Jesse as he clutched the flesh wound at his temple, and blood coated his fingers with crimson. Pain ripped through Sasha’s heart. “I didn’t tell them where you were, Jesse. I didn’t, I swear. I hung up.”
    She walked to him slowly, crying, wanting to run from him, to escape this man who was tearing her life apart, who was destroying her body and soul. What if he had committed the crime he was accused of? What if he’d killed a woman and her child in cold blood?
    She hesitated, gasping as he snagged her by the wrist and pulled her to him. With a choked sob she dropped to her knees in front of him, staring up at him...mesmerized by the turbulence in his features. Her heart twisted inside her. He looked so lonely, so desperate. And then suddenly it wasn’t Jesse’s turmoil she was witnessing, it was Marc Renaud’s. He was holding her wrist tightly, almost fiercely, and his hand was shaking. In his crystalline blue eyes she saw pain compressed to the hard brilliance of a diamond, a tiny white spot of sadness and rage that she didn’t understand and couldn’t reach....
    What has he done? The question flared into her mind, seared her consciousness like a comet.
    “Marc?” she asked, searching his face. She needed to hear his voice, to touch him. She needed to reassure herself that he hadn’t metamorphosed into someone else, someone she didn’t know at all. “Marc, what is it? Tell me what’s wrong. I don’t know what to do....”
    He exhaled, eased his grip on her wrist, and stared down at her. The emotion was his, but the words he spoke were Jesse’s. “Lisa, I need you. Help me—”
    His voice caught at the end, broke off as though something vital inside him had snapped.
    Tears filled Sasha’s eyes again, and the pain inside her mounted. She didn’t understand it, the welling