“And…action.”
“For luck,” I said, lifting the dice in my hand to Blair’s lips.
She rolled her eyes at me but leaned in, her breasts pushing up against my chest. But instead of blowing on them, she kissed my hand.”
“The moment you need luck, it disappears. So I’ll just bet on you,” she replied.
“Only with you is that a safe bet.” I never looked away from her and threw the dice down the table without bothering to watch.
“Twelve craps twelve come away triple!” the stickman exclaimed, the group around us shouting out in amazement at the pair of double sixes.
“What did I say?” Blair grinned as the stickman pushed the chips to us.
But before I could get a word in, the staff nearest the doors screamed, “RUN!”
But it was too late. I felt it, like a sonic wave of fire. The explosion threw me off my feet and backward.
My chest burned.
Blood—mine? I wasn’t sure—was on my face, mixed in with the ash.
I tried to stand, but my body screamed in agony.
Each time I tried to open my eyes, the world spun, and all I could see were blurs of red, orange, and black.
My eardrums were ringing—no, scratching—in my ears, and in between the pain was screaming ... screaming from all over.
“Help!”
“Someone please!”
“My leg!”
“Help!”
“AHH!!!”
“Oh God! Oh God!”
Rolling onto my side, I once again tried to open my eyes, again rubbing my ears. As I did, my body ground onto broke glass, tiles, and casino chips. When I finally could see, it felt as if I were staring into hell. The bodies of the guests were piled on each other in a bloody, ash-covered mess. The fire spread over the top of them, over everything in sight. As I pushed myself off the ground, my heart stopped when I realized no one was beside me.
“BLAIR!” I screamed, ignoring the pain and rising to my feet to look around the rubble. “BLAIR!”
My screams blended with the screams of everyone else. Everything was spinning. Wiping my nose with my hand, I noticed the blood.
“BLAIR!” I called again, turning to search through the rubble. Then I spotted a black heel—Blair’s heel.
My hands shook as I reached for it.
“This can’t be real. This can’t be real,” I whispered.
“Blair?” I started to clear the parts of the broken table with a bare hand, quickly. Throwing rubble to the left and the right of me, I crawled on my hands and knees as I searched, hoped, and prayed.
There was large gash across her head, blood coating the side of her face.
“Blair, can you hear me?” I checked for a pulse. It was faint, but it felt like it was slowing down. Taking off my jacket and using it as a towel, I held it to her head. “Blair, can you hear me? I need you to open your eyes, okay? Baby, open your eyes for me, okay? You’re fine. I’m here. You’re fine.”
I coughed as my lungs filled with ash and glanced around for anyone, anything that could help.
“Da—Damon?” she groaned, trying to lift her head, lifting her hands to where mine were trying to stop the bleeding.
“Thank God,” I whispered, kissing her forehead. However, her breathing quickened, her chest rising and falling. “Breathe, Blair, breathe.”
“Damon—”
She was in shock, and so was I, I but I needed her to focus. “Blair, I swear if you bleed out here and abandon me, I will never forgive you. And I will curse you at your funeral.”
She somehow managed to smile, reaching up to hold her head. “Don’t make jokes like that. They aren’t funny,” she said.
“I know,” I said as I brushed dust from her eyes.
“Damon.”
“What?”
She didn’t answer, her eyes wandering down to her stomach, my eyes following, and there we saw the piece of wood impaling her, the blood soaking through her black dress.
“If I die—”
“We are not having this conversation today,” I told her. “Let’s postpone it for another eighty or so years.” I pulled the wood and she bit her lip to stop from screaming when I tried to move her.
“It hurts!” she yelled.
“I know. I know. Baby, but we got to get out of here. I’d rather neither of us be cooked alive.”
“Ugh.” I coughed again, turning my head to the side.
“You need to get out,” she whispered, brushing the blood from my nose again.
I shook her hands away. “I will leave when you leave,” I told her.
“I can’t—”
“Blair! When I say I’m not leaving you, I am not fucking leaving you, do you understand me? Just keep thinking of tomorrow. We are getting a tomorrow.” Even my voice wavered at that. “The paramedics will be here any second.”
As if they heard, I turned and saw firefighters, the beeping from their jackets growing louder as they drew closer.
“What did I tell you?” My body felt so heavy.
“Damon!”
The last sight I saw was of her blue eyes wide, panicked and scared, tears falling from one eye over her nose and onto the ground.
“Damn, you’re beautiful.”
“And…Cut! Perfect! Amelia, Noah, we’ll be heading back to the hotel to wrap up one more bedroom scene.”
The moment he said it, I opened my eyes again, coughing as I sat up, as did she.
“If we are ever in an explosion, ‘damn, you’re beautiful’ is the perfect line,” she joked, but I didn’t even want to think of it.
In my mind, just like Damon and Blair, we always had a tomorrow.
Amelia
“Act—ion!”
“I didn’t want to get out of bed. All of my muscles burned, and I swear to God, Damon, if I have to spend another day smiling and laughing with the rest of those goddamn elitist bitches, I will lose my fucking mind,” I muttered, burying my face into the red pillow on the amazingly soft king-sized bed.
“It’s noon, Blair. You can’t stay in bed all day.” I felt his hands softly brush against my bare back.
“Oh no, you don’t—”
Ignoring me, he brushed my hair to the side and kissed down the back of my neck. With one hand, he pulled the sheet covering my naked body away.
“Jesus Christ, Damon, do you have an off button?” I whispered, wiggling underneath his lips. I was still recovering from our last session together. The man could bounce back in ten minutes flat, and I was going to die from too much sex. They were going to have to put “Here lies Blair Hawthorne, Happily Fucked to Death,” on my tombstone.
He stopped, only for a moment, flipping me onto my back. Gazing up at him, he smirked, leering at my body. I knew that look. His eyes glazed over with lust, and my nipples reacted without him even saying a word.
“Damon…”
“I want nothing more than to fuck you until your eyes roll back, but … we have a lunch with a group of elitist bitches to get to. We need their help if we want to get in to see the private Botticelli art collection.”
I sat up in front of him and grabbed his chin so that he could look me in the eye and not at my breasts.
“I’m not going,” I said.
Again, he ignored me.
“Pick a dress, and be downstairs in an hour,” he demanded, getting off the bed.
Grabbing the red sheet off our bed, I stood up, wrapping it around myself. He raised his eyebrow, a small smirk on his lips.
“I don’t know why you bother,” he teased.
“It’s cold, and I’m not walking around naked for you because you piss me off. Nor am I going to your fucking charity lunch,” I said.
He stepped forward, and I took one step back. It wasn’t long before the backs of my legs hit the bed frame. Brushing his hand softly down my cheek, he stared into me, not at me. It was like he was seeing everything, and once again, I felt as though I couldn’t walk.