Hands to Myself ➰ M.D| ✓

The 'F' Word

She studied the hardened, glaring lines around his eyes. He was killing it today. She didn't often watch them film the scenes. Usually, she was too busy doing stitching seams and hemming skirts for the actors in the next shots or running around doing touch-ups to pay much attention to the actual acting that was going on around her. But today, Matthew had asked, practically begged, that she come watch them shoot. He was especially excited because he got to do a fierce stunt with Dom and some 'demons'.

"I get to kick ass today! I'm throwing a demon over a wall, then shooting another from thirty feet away," he told her, practically bouncing on his heels as Camille sowed up the seam on his jacket, trying not to stick him with the needle.

"You get excited over the oddest things," she said, "And keep still! I'm about to draw blood," she told him.

Despite that fact, she was watched the monitor displaying a close up of Matthew's face as it twisted with emotion. His crinkled lines screwed up tight around his dark brown eyes. His pink lips pressed into a harsh line. He donned a stare that would make the devil himself freeze with fear. The dimples that she very much loved poking at when she got him in the studio were pulled tight with overwrought emotions. He looked like hell warmed over, partially thanks to his blood-stained clothes and distraught expression, but mostly due to his acting. A human personification of shredded nerve endings.

She couldn't watch anymore. He looked like he was in so much pain. She knew he was only acting, but her body was reacting as though it were the real deal. Her eyes burned. Her lungs burned. Her skin burned. It was an obscenely pleasant 70 degree day in Toronto and yet she felt like someone had dropped a bucket of ice water over her head.

"God, he's so good," Maddie said, appearing at Camille's side. No one knew better than Maddie that watching the monitors wasn't usually Camille's on-set pass time. She eyed her friend curiously. "So... you're out of the costume room and not filling your scrapbook?"

Cam felt the implied "what the hell?" in that statement made into a question. "He asked me to come watch today," she said. Her voice shook when she spoke. He'd gotten to her and she was ashamed of that. It was just acting.

"Sweetheart, are you okay?" Maddie said, instantly worried. She had a built in radar for when something was wrong with Camille and, for that, Camille was extremely grateful. She didn't have to pretend that she was okay when she wasn't.

"I don't know what's wrong with me. But I can't watch this," Camille said. She took one more look at Matthew on the screen. Her heart jackknifed into the pit of her stomach. She couldn't stay. She started walking back toward the safety of the costume room with Maddie at her side.

"What's going on with you two lately?" Maddie asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you're together all the time lately. Way more than usual."

She was right. Things were different. They had been since the morning that he and Dominic walked in on her taking pictures of a bouquet that Pierson had sent her. Since then, he'd been on a mission to find out everything he could about her. He swore that he would pester her all of her secrets out of her until knew every little detail, right down to the first shade of nail polish she ever wore. She wasn't making it easy on him. She told him one fact per day, no more, no less.

Maybe she didn't want the subject to be left alone.

So, one day at a time, she revealed one fact about herself that she'd never bothered to share before. She was originally born in Bali in Indonesia, but her family moved to Sydney when she was four. She moved to the states at twenty-one. She went to college for communications for two years before leaving for design school. She was the youngest in her family. She'd worked on several movies as a costume designer, one of her most memorable was being a seamstress on the set of Les Miserables. But afterwards, she decided to stick to the small screen instead, for reasons yet to be revealed.