Better Than Me

Chapter 37

A/N: ONE PART LEFT and I finally get to mark this baby completed! Epilogue should be up soon!

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Chapter 37

"You're fired."

"Chris." Frank looked at me like he really hadn't seen this coming. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, I've never been more serious about anything in my life. What the hell were you thinking?"

"What was I thinking? I was thinking all of the bad press you've been getting was taking a toll on your reputation and something needed to be done. And what did you do? You piled more of the blame onto yourself and told everyone you were a terrible, terrible person for whatever the hell happened with you and Sophia back in high school."

"I was a terrible, terrible person back in high school. And after high school, for that matter. I deserved the backlash – and I didn't need a damn death hoax to move forward from it."

Frank, in an off-handed way of trying to help me return to the good graces of the public I'd disappointed recently, had started the rumor that my flight was lost and I was dead. Not only had he needlessly upset the people who knew me, but he'd also worried the families of all of the other people who were flying out that day and were unaccounted for because of the power outage. It was the final straw after a string of bad judgment calls and showed his judgment wasn't going to get any better. If that was the sort of help he had to offer, I didn't want it.

"Chris –"

"Save it, old man." I shook my head. "We're done. I gotta get going. We're shooting our last scene today, and moving forward, Katherine Davis will be helping me book gigs. You have the next 30 seconds to get off this set before I call security."

I left him standing damn near open-mouthed in my trailer. My mom, Sophia, Blake, and countless others had been worried sick because of him, and he was officially out of "get out of jail free" cards.

I made my way over to the bedroom set we were using for our last scene for the project. Nora had at the last minute decided she wanted a sex scene between my character and Sophia's after all. It wasn't in the original script, and it wasn't even in the book, but she felt it would add something to the story. I didn't really think it was necessary, but what did I know?

Plus, neither of our contracts said anything about half-naked sex scenes being off-limits, so there really wasn't much we could've done to say no. I wasn't going to protest, because it meant hanging out in a bed with Sophia while we were both half-naked. I mean, sure, it was kind of awkward with other people in the room and with all of those lights surrounding us, but I wasn't going to oppose the idea outright just because of that. We were actors. It was just another scene.

Sophia was less open to the idea – and she became less and less open with each take. When I first got there, she was standing off to the side looking less-than enthused, and to be honest, it just made the situation kind of entertaining. Her face didn't change until it had to because the camera was rolling, and by the last take, she was searching the floor for her robe, ready to bolt out of those doors and never look back.

"Please tell me that was the last take," she said, still searching for the robe. Except she wouldn't find it because I stole it.

I stood up and looked around the set. It was closed off to give us privacy, at least, but I was no stranger to having a camera around while I was in my boxer briefs. I'd had to do it for several movies before this, and I'd even done a Calvin Klein shoot once. "I don't think so. They look like they're getting ready for another one."