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.This final night together they expected to be called back out into the rain for an exercise inland nav that doubled as an odd scavenger hunt.The area of operation was probably going to belarge and by the end of the drill, they were going to look like zombies fresh from the grave whatwith all the mud and staggering. Ricky, Bill hissed Richtfeld s nickname at him in the dim lantern light. I got twentybucks that says I get mud in places tonight that not even the sun shines.Zane nodded and wrapped his wool blanket tighter around him.It was a mistake to dig intothe warmth because he d be that much colder outside. I thought it wasn t supposed to be thiscold in September and October over here.This always wet routine makes it worse.I m a prunefrom head to toe, he drawled. It ll be nice to get back to real plumbing, and some fucking hot water in the showers, Billgrumbled, punching his pillow. My balls have crawled so far inside me, my kidneys are playingtennis with  em.The whole group of guys laughed at that one and then went immediately silent when theyheard the shrill whistle outside the tent.The Call of The Wild.Zane thrust his feet into his bootsand grimaced at the damp surrounding his toes.It was a little bit much on the commitment side,even for him, to leave two weeks of training with trench foot.He d like to avoid that one.The other guys all shrugged into their gear and together they hoofed it to a small clearingwhere one of the retired military specialists the production company hired was waiting with awhistle still hanging off of his lip. Let s go, ladies.Last exercise.Line  em up.Why do they always call us ladies, he thought.Zane and Bill settled into place next to each other, rifles over their shoulders, packs ontheir backs, and rain coursing in rivulets down their faces.They were both blinking non-stop tokeep the water out of their eyes.Thoughts of Mark halfway across the world muscled their wayto the forefront of Zane s mind and he would ve given half his miserable little kingdom to beable to call him that second. One more night of this shit and I get to call him, he mumbled to himself.Bill leaned close and spoke in his normal voice,  He ll be waiting, man.No worries.***Four thirty in the morning on Saturday and Mark didn t have to be up at all.But he was.He was sprawled out on the couch with his feet propped on the coffee table just waiting andwaiting.Zane said he d call the first chance he could once this bogus training session was overand that was supposed to be this morning.There was a seven hour difference between his living room and where Zane was inEngland, so it was eleven thirty in the morning there.Any time now, right? Any time&The past three weeks had been surprisingly harsh.A low point in a lot of ways.At times,he wanted to bust up laughing at how totally absurd his situation was, but overall, he was fairlyappalled at the amount of attention focused on him.He knew it wouldn t last forever because hewasn t a name in the business, but until the tabloids got more news on him dating Zane, theyweren t going to back down.The fact that Zane was known to be in England and that the two ofthem were apart was also causing a stir.Was Mark Newland simply another short-term fling for Hollywood s hottest?Fuck them.Mark tried really hard to ignore the jabs the way Zane encouraged him to do.He didn tGoogle himself except that one time, and it didn t count because he was actually GooglingZane.He ended up with all the latest gossip on the two of them.A lot of it was wrong.Really,really wrong.But every now and then, whoever gave the outlets the information, was right on,which in turn had Mark wondering who he could trust.The internet was a bottomless pit, a trap that he avoided completely now.If it wasn t thegossip, it was all the old interviews of Zane that he could catch on YouTube.Mark would sitdown and watch him talk about his movies, production stories, and his past.He even caught theentire episode of Zane on Inside The Actors Studio and was unable to budge for a single minuteof it.He loved seeing Zane and learning so much about him, but it was a form of technologicaltorture.In one of his lower moments, Mark sat through all the special features on his DVD ofThe Mercenary just to see bits of Zane getting his hair and makeup done, or giving a tour of theset.Reid and Sean were calling to check on him almost every day, sometimes frothing at themouth about lies they heard.His brothers were with him when the vultures descended for thefirst time in front of Reid s house and they saw the way it had shaken him.Those photographersweren t shy with their cameras; Mark felt like he d end up with the words Nokia or Canonbranded on his face with the way they thrust them in front of him.And Christian? The guy called often probably too often and Mark probably enjoyed itmore than he should.He couldn t figure out how to deal with this man, though, and he wasnervous about the way he was becoming more likable by the minute, closeted baggage aside.Itwas just that Christian was turning out to be a good listener and buried deep down was asurprisingly kind man.Sympathetic.Concerned.Available to talk.A clear sign of danger for Mark.Tack on the suspicious news that Christian was going to be in Albuquerque for work andwanted to get together and Mark could see problems coming a mile away.For now, he d let therequest to spend time with each other float.He didn t know what else to do.Sure, there wasattraction there on a base physical level, but their contact lacked substance Mark knew hewanted.Realistically, he didn t mind being friends with Christian, but he was afraid that hewould do something entirely based on his libido if they spent time alone together.He was asucker for the bad boy mystique.All hell would break loose if the wrong person saw him out with Christian, too.Markrecalled his last phone conversation with Zane about how bad this publicity might get.He dbelieved Zane, but he also didn t think that he, plain old Mark, could cause that great a stir, so itwas a huge shocker when three weeks passed and he went from total unknown entity to tabloidhot topic.Random people were recognizing him at the grocery store.Mark never thought he d beout buying milk and laundry detergent and get accosted by the old lady in line behind him gapingat one of the papers. Is that you? That is you!It was all because he liked totally, completely, utterly liked a very famous man, somuch so that he was afraid he was already sabotaging himself.If Mark ended their relationshipbefore they fizzled out or before Zane left him heartbroken, wasn t that better? That stupidquestion haunted him.Half the world liked Zane! It was hard not to.But not everyone was kissing him and tryingto figure out a relationship with him, either.Mark missed Zane.A lot.It made him feel veryvulnerable.Work was a reprieve in some ways because it was always busy and he didn t have the timeto moon around as Mr.Lonesome [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]