Chapter 6 6

That night, I didn't sleep a single wink. How could I? And the worst, most terrifying part was that it wasn’t because I was lying awake grieving Valerie. 

For the first time in eight months, my mind wasn't trapped in the dark loop of the accident. Instead, it was completely consumed by my personal assistant.

I couldn't shake the memory of how she smelled, or the maddening, lingering phantom sensation of how good it had felt to hold her body close against mine. I tossed and turned in the sheets, my heart racing every time I pictured her thumb on my lower lip.

Finally, just as the sky outside began to bleed into a pale, early-morning gray, my eyelids grew heavy. I felt myself drifting, finally on the absolute precipice of real, actual sleep—

Bam! Bam! Bam!

A frantic, loud knock shattered the silence of my master bedroom.

"Sean! Sean! Damn it, it's almost seven AM! Wake up! We have to be on set by seven!"

The bedroom door swung open before I could even groan, and in walked Lyka. I blinked blearily, expecting to see a hungover, embarrassed woman. 

Instead, she looked exactly the same. The absolute same. She was already armored in her usual "PA nun outfit"—a perfectly pressed, strictly professional blazer and tailored slacks. 

Her dark hair was scraped back into her signature, flawless bun, and the only pop of personality was the pair of colorful, quirky heels she always wore. She looked bright, alert, and like she had all the time in the world.

She took one look at me tangled in the sheets and gasped. "What the hell? You aren't even showered yet!"

I just sat there, gawking at her like an idiot. How on earth could she look like absolutely nothing had happened last night? 

I knew she kept a closet full of spare suits at the mansion—Valerie had insisted years ago that Lyka permanently occupy the guest room whenever filming wrapped too late for her to drive back to her own apartment. 

But to see her standing there, completely unfazed by the fact that she had been draped over my lap and nearly kissed hours prior, made my brain melt.

"What do you mean, shower?" I muttered, rubbing my gritty eyes and yawning widely as I tried to pull the duvet back over my head. "I haven't even slept yet."

"Oh no, you don't." Lyka was fast. Before I could bury myself back into the pillows, she marched over, yanked the covers off my body, and grabbed my arm.

With a surprising amount of strength for someone who had just downed a massive amount of vodka, she hauled me out of bed and pushed me firmly toward the master bathroom.

"Move it, Sean! The production team is already texting me. You have ten minutes!"

"You're sadistic, you know that?" I complained loudly, stumbling into the bathroom while gripping the doorframe. 

I threw a glare over my shoulder, but beneath my grumpy outer exterior, a frantic chant was running through my mind. 

Please, God, let her have blacked out. Please let her remember absolutely nothing about last night.

I prayed with everything I had that she had no recollection of her hand on my face, her tongue on her lip, or the fact that I had been mere macro-inches away from crossing a line we could never uncross.

If she knew how close I had come to kissing her before she was so abruptly saved by her own loud snoring on my shoulder, I didn't know how either of us would survive the day.

Twenty minutes later, it was a flat-out miracle I hadn't fainted on the way to the studio lot.

I was currently slouched in the leather captain's chair of the moving RV, oversized sunglasses firmly on my face, a hot coffee resting untouched in my hand. I was trying to close my eyes, trying to desperately catch a single minute of consciousness, but my brain refused to cooperate.

Because right across from me sat Lyka.

She was in full executioner mode, frantically commanding the universe with aggressive taps on her tablet, completely oblivious to the fact that I was tracking her every move from behind my dark lenses. 

My gaze kept drifting down to her lips. I watched the rapid way she talked, the sharp, anxious way she bit her bottom lip when an email didn't load fast enough, and the way her brows furrowed, making her nose do that tiny, sharp crinkle—a detail I had passed over for half a decade but now found wildly, agonizingly adorable.

"SEAN! Are you even listening to me?"

I instantly went rigid and fake-closed my eyes, pretending to be fast asleep.

It didn't fool her for a second. Lyka leaned forward, snatched the sunglasses right off my face, and let out a heavy, defeated sigh. "Damn it. I'm talking to a dead man."

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smirking as she launched into a familiar, rhythmic lecture. 

She started complaining about me being exactly like a child, grumbling that my four-year-old son, Leo, had vastly better time-management skills than a thirty-year-old Hollywood star. I just let her voice wash over me, the familiar, grounding cadence of it acting like a strange kind of lullaby.

Finally, just as my heavy eyelids were about to win the battle and drift me into actual sleep, the heavy RV ground to a halt. The driver’s voice cracked over the intercom, announcing our arrival at the studio.

I let out a long, ragged sigh, rubbing my face with both hands.

Lyka stopped typing. She lowered her tablet, her playful annoyance completely melting away, replaced by a sudden, deeply serious tone. "Insomnia again?"

She stared at me, her green eyes searching mine with genuine, quiet concern. 

Without waiting for an answer, she reached over, took the lukewarm, untouched cup of coffee from my hand, and casually chugged it down herself to fuel her own morning.

"I'm supposed to be the one with the headache and the massive hangover today," she muttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and shaking her head at me. "But you look like you're the one who drank three whole bottles of vodka last night."

I froze, my heart leaping into my throat. I looked at her closely, trying to read any sign of hidden meaning behind her eyes. 

She remembered the vodka. But did she remember the rest? Or was she just testing me?