Lovegame(35)

But in the end, I decide to skip the bath—at least for now. Despite being exhausted, I’m too restless to settle. Instead, I forego the glass and grab the bottle of wine before making my way outside to the patio and then down the stairs that lead to my very tiny swath of private beach. It’s one of the main reasons I bought this house and I try to make as much use of it as I possibly can.

The Santa Anas are especially blustery tonight, the wind stirring the waves into a frenzy and whipping my hair across my face like a slap. It isn’t the first metaphorical slap I’ve had today, but I’m determined that it will be the last. Ian Sharpe and his ridiculous expectation that I’ll show up at his hotel room like some kind of trained seal, be damned. The only place I’m going tonight is to bed. Alone.

To toast that fact, I unscrew the lid and take several long swigs of wine. Then, with the bottle still clutched in my hand, I make a beeline for the water. I don’t stop until my feet have sunk into the cold, wet sand and the Pacific is tickling my toes.

I love the ocean—always have, always will. From the time I was a little girl I would beg my parents or my nannies to bring me so I could build sand castles and play tag with the waves. I was water-skiing by the time I was eight, surfing by nine, and had started scuba diving lessons not long after that. And when everything went to hell the autumn I turned ten, it was the ocean that got me through. The ocean that kept me sane.

When the Santa Anas were particularly aggressive—like tonight—I would walk out to the beach and scream and scream and scream. The violence of the winds always covered the sound, always whisked it away before anyone could hear. Then again, that would assume that someone was listening…

I think about doing the same tonight, about screaming until the tension leaks from my shoulders and the unsettled churning of my gut finally settles down. But something tells me that it won’t cure what ails me. Nothing will.

And so I turn and walk along the sand instead, gazing out at the water and thinking about anything—about everything—but Ian Sharpe and how he makes me feel.

I don’t understand this pull I have toward him, understand even less the way my body yields so easily to his every whim. His every command. My entire adult life, I’ve been the one in control—of my career, of my life, of my body. It’s how I want it, how I’ve always wanted it. Meeting Ian, f*cking Ian, doesn’t change that. Even if he makes me feel more than any man ever has.

And yet…and yet there’s a part of me that wants to go to his hotel room tonight, that wants to push at this crazy attraction between us just to see what will happen. Just to see how far he will take this thing between us. And how far I will let him…

Is it the Belladonna that makes me react to him like this? I wonder as the water swirls around my calves. Do I respond to him because of her? Do I feel connected to him because of how much I felt in the book, in the script, in the part?

I hope not. God, I really hope not. I’ll never deny that playing the Belladonna was the role of a lifetime—one that might very well get me an Oscar nod—but the day I took off those clothes, that makeup, that role for the last time, was one of the happiest days of my life.

The six months I played her really messed with my head. When I campaigned for the role, all I could think about was how much I’d loved the book. What a juicy character she would be to play. How much the part would stretch me as an actress, and help give me the credibility I need to launch my own production company.

I wasn’t wrong. The movie isn’t even out yet and already it’s done all that, and more, for my career. But that doesn’t mean I’d do it a second time, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t make a different choice if I could go back and do things all over again. Not when it took me weeks to learn to sleep again, to breathe again. To be comfortable in my own skin again. It’s a battle I’ve fought my whole life and the fact that I gave up any gains I’d made for a role cuts like broken glass.

Is it any wonder, then, that Ian is getting under my skin? This article, the photo shoot, the press tour that’s about to kick off. I’ve spent weeks—months—trying to forget what it was to be the Belladonna and now, here I am, right back in the middle of it. Tied up physically, and psychologically, with the man who uncovered her secrets. Who showed the world who and what Celeste Warren—the Belladonna—really is.

I take another sip of wine, try to block out the atrocities I committed while dressed as the Belladonna. No, not committed, I remind myself as I lift the bottle to my lips again. Pretended to commit. Acted out. Mimicked. All in the name of art, of course.

That has to make a difference, right? Pretending to be something doesn’t mean you are that thing. Because if it did…well, if it did, I’d so definitely be something—someone—other than who and what I am.

I’d be normal.

Maybe even happy.

Or possibly, conceivably, even okay.

Yes, I like the sound of that. If make-believe could come true, then I would be okay.

But it can’t. And I’m not. And I never will be, no matter how hard I try. No matter how thoroughly I pretend.

It’s a depressing thought and I counter it with another swig of wine. And then another and another, until the bottle is as empty as I am. I drop it onto the sand, drop to my knees beside it. Watch as the tide rolls in, one slow wave after another.

It doesn’t take long before the water is lapping against my knees, my thighs. Until the ocean is covering the bottle, making it shift in the sand with every new wave that comes crashing ashore. As it does, I think about nightmares and shipwrecks and love affairs gone wrong. I think about messages in bottles and what I would write, what message I would send crashing into the ocean for someone far, far away to find. What I would tell them if I didn’t have to worry about it being traced back to me. To the famous, the infamous, Veronica Romero.