Focused: A hate to love sports romance(23)

They wanted to film The Machine, and that was what they'd get. Starting now.





Chapter Eleven





Molly





"That house must have been worse than I thought," I muttered. "It's like that last hit to the head knocked his personality into a coma."

Standing in the kitchen of Noah's temporary apartment, Marty and I watched carefully as Noah did his best impression of a man ignoring everyone around him.

By that, he was sitting on the couch with headphones on and watching film on his iPad, occasionally pausing the film to jot notes into a massive notebook.

"So we just stand here?" I asked.

Marty sighed, checking the position of the tripod that held his smaller camera. "Yup."

"He's not doing anything."

"Nope."

His unperturbed tone had me glancing at him. "How often do you get bored doing this job, Marty?"

He chuckled. "Rarely. Even at times like this."

"Seriously?"

What he lacked in height, Marty made up for in his huge smile. "Seriously. You don't go into a job like this because it's exciting all the time. It's about finding the moments of interesting in the mundane, you know? I've done six-month shoots tracking wolves in Yellowstone, and it's not like you're constantly filming them on the hunt, right? They're sleeping half the time, pissing in the grass, tugging at a pile of old, dried-out bones to find a last scrap of a meal. If you get lucky, someone fights over a female, and you manage to catch it. But most of the time, it's quiet."

My eyes trailed back to Noah, sitting quietly on the couch that was painfully out of proportion for his large frame. In my mind, I couldn't imagine him as a wolf. He was too large, his frame too dense and weighted down with muscle. He was a bear, tall and broad and ominous, big enough to blot out the sun if he stood over you.

"And you're never tempted to force action?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Like they do in reality TV." I held my hands up when his face pinched with distaste. "I'm not suggesting it, trust me. Just ... trying to understand the process is all. How doing this serves the narrative."

Marty leaned over to check the camera again and changed the angle to account for the setting sun. "Things like today were perfect or would've been if he hadn't had a tantrum at the first house. It's something real and true, something he needs to accomplish to get settled now that he's here." His eyes, astute and keenly observant, moved back over to the man in the other room. "But this is real and true too. He's retreating to something that's safe, something he's good at, and this is just as important to capture."

I nodded, glancing at my watch. We had about an hour left in the filming schedule, and it was about as fun as watching paint dry.

"But if you want to ask him some questions," Marty said, leaning toward me and speaking quietly, "I wouldn't tell you not to. You get a reaction out of him that no one else seems to. And that's good on film. As long as his reactions are his, are true, it's never going to be a bad thing."

The laugh huffed out easily. "But that's not forcing action?"

"It's not. You know we can edit you out of the shot if that's what needs to be done, but look at him," he said. We both did, and my face felt flipped upside down at what a sad picture it was. "He's alone, by choice, in this place that clearly doesn't fit him or make him feel comfortable, and he's supposed to make it feel like home."

"Seattle was home to him," I corrected. My eyes zeroed in on my shoes as I felt a flush of heat crawl up my neck. "I just mean, it's not like this is new to him."

"How well did you know him?" Marty asked the question just a little too smoothly.

I gave him a look. "Not well. I knew of him. Knew he played football. It's almost impossible to be a sixteen-year-old girl and not be aware of someone like that living next door." I shook my head. "But I don't remember him being like this."

"Is that hard for you?"

"Hard how?"

He shrugged. "Guy's pretty closed off. I hope we can get enough good footage off field, you know? Make it worth it to keep his storyline in the final cut."

A flash of discomfort turned my stomach over, imagining Beatrice's face if that were to happen. How that would reflect on me if it did. "It'll make the final cut. I saw the way he tore up practice this morning. You guys won't cut his footage."

"It's happened before." Marty clucked his tongue. "Be a shame, since Washington put all their eggs in his basket. One he doesn't seem very motivated to hold onto, if you ask me."

"Oh, you are a dirty, dirty cheat," I muttered under my breath, which made him grin unrepentantly. "I'm motivated enough for the both of us, trust me."

He nudged me with his shoulder and started unhooking the camera from the tripod. "I think your boss is banking on that too, Ward."

So many people called me by my last name, a hazard of working in the industry that I did, but for some reason, it reinforced why I was in this position and what was riding on it.

My last name held weight in the halls of Washington and even more on the field. When I walked into a meeting with someone new, there was an undercurrent of established respect. One that I'd be a fool to ignore, no matter how much it rankled that Beatrice didn't think I'd earned my place honestly.