Free Lucky Star: A Hollywood Love Story by Rebecca Norinne Caudill Page B

emphatically. “For Christ’s sake! You know me, you know what kind of a man I am. Do you really think I would ever hurt you on purpose?”
    “Do I really know? What kind of a man you are, I mean?” She ran her hand through her wind-swept locks and twisted them at the base of her neck to keep them from obscuring her vision. “Before that night I would have said, ‘yes, unequivocally.’ I never thought you’d use me like that. You ran out on me Cameron, without so much as an explanation.”
    “You think I used you?” I asked, my voiced laced with pain.
    “Didn’t you?” She stole a quick glance at me.
    “No.” I gritted my teeth and clenched my jaw. This was even worse than I’d feared.
    “What would you call it then?”
    “I never meant for you to feel that way.” I pinched the bridge of my nose with my good hand. “I never meant for any of this to happen.” I’d hoped to make Sarah understand, the but longer this conversation went on, the worse a hole I dug.
    She laughed then, a cynical sound, but didn’t respond otherwise. Then she glanced my way again but quickly dragged her eyes back to the road. I ran my hands angrily through my hair and dropped them in front of me. I gasped when my knee collided with my rapidly-swelling hand.
    “You’re going to need to get that looked at.”
    “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
    “Good.”
    She drove in silence for several more miles, and I wondered if she knew where she was going. Eventually, seeing the sign for the Pacific Coast Highway, she took the road north toward Malibu. When eventually she pulled off the road toward Zuma Beach, I was happy to see she’d chosen to take us somewhere we could finally hash this all out in private. Zuma had the added benefit of being neutral ground since we’d never been here together.
    Sarah killed the engine and turned in her seat to face me, her back pushed up against the door. I mimicked her position on the opposite side of the car.
    “You wanted to talk, so talk.”
    “I’ve missed you,” I all but whispered.
    “No, you don’t get to say that. You don’t get to sit there and tell me how you miss me, or how hard this has been on you when you’re the one that abandoned me in the middle of the night You didn’t even call me to find out how I was doing! You don’t get to try and make me feel sorry for you. You get to explain and that is all.” As she spoke, she sat forward in her seat, each word punctuated by a jab of her finger. They say redheads are feisty and Sarah certainly remained true to the stereotype. Against my will, a small smile tugged at my lips.
    “That’s one of the things I love—”
    She hollered at me to shut up before I could finish my sentence. “Don’t you dare use that word with me.” And then she burst into great big sobbing tears, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Sarah hated crying because she thought it made her look weak, but she was the furthest thing from that. She was strength and vulnerability rolled into one strong, formidable package. Still, her tears felled me since I’d been the one to cause them this time. Not her mom, not the insane hours she worked, not even her favorite Kleenex commercial. Me. It was all my fault.
    “Don’t cry.” I put my good hand on her thigh and she flinched. I suspected if she’d had any more room in the cabin to move away, she would have used it.
    Since there was nowhere for her leg to go, instead she flung my hand away. “You don’t get to touch me anymore.”
    “Don’t say that,” I implored.
    “As if I’d let you touch me again …” She sucked in a lungful of air. “Not after the last time.”
    “Touching your leg in comfort is not the same thing and you know it.”
    “There you go again, not even able to say it. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Say it Cameron, ‘When we fucked.’”
    I grimaced. “It shouldn’t have happened like that.”
    “Like what? Me drunk and begging you to fuck me?” Her voice had risen to