Page 8 of For the Cameras

Everything in me was itching to blurt out what I knew about Adam.

But for once, I needed to keep my mouth shut. I could act like I had a filter. I didn’t always need to be wild and free, following my rawest instincts, being way too honest, and flirting with everyone I felt attracted to.

Even when I happened to be standing across from the person I’d privately gotten off to more than anyone else this year.

“Relax. I’ve got you,” I told him. “And I’m going to make you look fucking amazing on camera.”

4

ADAM

Whoever had decided to let more than twenty people into my small house at once had been absolutely out of their mind.

The only problem was that that person had beenme.

“Um, can I get just one second?” I asked the director, running my fingers inside the neck of my shirt. It was late afternoon, and my skin was hot all over from the bright lights they used to film, and I’d just screwed up my words at least five times in a row on camera.

The line they wanted me to say was simple: “...And this is the bedroom, where all the magic happens.” But every time I tried to say it—while looking into the camera, with everyone watching me—it was like I had marbles in my mouth and a lit fuse in my stomach.

I wasn’t used to this much attention anywhere other than behind a computer screen. Every time I tried to say a line, my eyes flitted off toward something else in the room. This time, I’d made the mistake of looking over behind one of the cameras and making eye contact with Chase. He smiled at me, and the moment I saw it, I lost the ability to speak and flubbed the line completely.

Chase had been so nice to me this morning, complimenting me and making me feel like I belonged.

I never felt like I belonged anywhere. Yet somehow, he’d been able to make that happen.

But that didn’t mean I wascomfortablearound this many people.

I knew I should stop looking at Chase, but the blue and blond of his hair kept catching my eye. The way he let his gaze linger on me made my chest feel hot and my brain completely unable to form words.

I couldn’t tell if he intimidated me or excited me. Probably a bit of both, as confusing as that was—and it was hard enough for me to tell the difference between being excited and being nervous.

“Cut!”Flynn, the head director, shouted, a sound that was quickly becoming familiar. He slipped off his headphones and nodded at me, with some perceptible annoyance in his gaze.

“Sorry,” I said in a knee-jerk reaction.

“Go ahead and take another five minutes to yourself, Adam,” he said. “Come on back in soon for the wrap-up, though. We’re almost done for the afternoon.”

I nodded, sucking in air through my nose and turning away from the cameras. I pushed open the double doors to the outdoor balcony, and I could hear Flynn mumbling into his headset, something aboutbreaking yet again.

It was the second time in an hour that I’d needed a break, and all we’d been doing was filming easy shots with easy lines.

But I’d felt like I was all out of social-energy spoons from the moment everyone had walked in early this morning.

There was nothing quite like being the center of attention as a painfully socially awkward introvert, especially when I was the one who had signed up for it. The Fixer Brothers guys were amazing, but all of them were used to this much action. And theTV crew seemed like amazing people, too—Carla was a badass woman with endless attention to detail, and Chase…

Well, Chase seemed confident, charming, a natural talker, and… everything that Iwasn’t.

I shut the double doors to the balcony behind me, closing my eyes as the summer breeze hit my skin.

“There we go,” I whispered softly into the air, feeling my pulse slow down instantly.

Thiswas bliss. Shutting the noise of the TV crew and construction workers inside and hearing the wind in the pine trees. The smell of someone firing up a grill nearby floated through the late afternoon, and on one end of the wrap-around balcony, I could see a sun-dappled view of Denver below in between the trees.

This balcony on the second floor was my favorite part of the house. I’d gotten a place in the mountains for this reason: peace and quiet, up above the bustle of the city. When I’d searched for a company who could do renovations without messing up the old-school charm of the place, Fixer Brothers Construction was the clear winner for companies in this area.

When they’d asked if I was comfortable being featured on their home renovation TV show, I hadn’t given it much thought. How bad could it be, letting them film some before-and-after shots in my house?

Turned out that it involved a whole lot more than that. And it also turned out that I was way more comfortable whenIwasthe only one in charge of a camera.