Chapter 31 #2
I open the window.
“Are you insane?” I hiss. “It’s wet. You could slip and break your neck.”
“Will you let me in, then?”
I bang my hand against the screen. “And how do you suggest I do that?”
“You can pop it off,” he says. “On the sides.”
I do as he says, and it does pop off easily.
“I’m only letting you in so you don’t die,” I tell him.
“Fair enough,” he says. “I deserve that.”
By now he’s crawled through the window, and he’s in my room.
He takes off his shoes without me asking and puts them on the windowsill.
He hasn’t changed out of what he was wearing when we got caught in the rain, and his clothes and hair are still damp.
Every fiber of my being is overwhelmed by our nearness.
We’re standing close enough for him to reach out and tug gently on the pocket of my pajama pants. “You’re wearing your Halloween
pants.”
I take a few steps back. I’m not in the mood for teasing or flirting, or whatever this is. I don’t want to be charmed. I don’t want to be toyed with. I just want the truth. “What do you want, Luke?”
He drops his hand. “We’re not together. Me and Ani, I mean. She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Then why was she curled up on your couch in her pajamas, waiting for you? Can you honestly tell me you two are just coworkers
or friends or whatever and have never hooked up?”
Luke pauses long enough that I have my answer. “It’s complicated—”
I hold up my hands. Yes, Ben and I went to a haunted house together and kissed. That’s not nothing, but this feels like it
goes deeper. “You know what? I don’t care. It’s your life. Just leave me out of it.”
Luke shakes his head. “It’s complicated between me and Ani.
Yes. We’ve hooked up. But it was months ago.
And then Cal figured it could be good PR when the movie got started, so he said we should just .
. . pretend we were more than we were. It seemed like an easy thing that would be good for our careers.
A few weeks ago, I told her she could crash at my house if she ever needed to, but I was only being polite.
We are not together, and we haven’t hooked up since I left LA. I need you to know that.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation. In fact, you’ve already paid me for my time as your ‘regular life coach.’” I motion between
us. “I hope your team is happy with the results, because this transaction is now complete.”
“That was all fucking made up,” Luke says, throwing up his hands.
I don’t understand what he means. “What was all made up?”
“The shadowing you stuff. My director never asked me to do that. No one did. I made it up.”
“Wait, what?” Then I think about how the checks were made out from Luke, personally. He paid me? Like out of his own bank account? “Why?”
“When I realized who you were, when I saw you—” He swallows. “I felt like I needed an excuse to spend time with you again.
You were my best friend for years, Cee. Literal years. And then you were just . . . gone. You’re the only person in my life
I’ve ever been able to be fully myself with. Fully honest with. Even my parents. That’s true even now. Do you know how stupid I felt, showing up at your house, basically begging to see you after you cut me out of your life?
Of course I needed an excuse to spend time with you again.”
“I’m sorry about the way I cut you out,” I say. “But what you did . . . on top of everything else with my dad, with what was
going on with Brett, it was just too much for me back then.”
That stops him cold. “Wait—what did I do?”
“When we kissed,” I say. “It feels so stupid now, so insignificant. But back then my feelings were really hurt.”
He still looks completely bewildered. “I hurt your feelings because I kissed you?”
“No. You hurt my feelings because you did it on a dare.”
“What? What are you talking about?” His eyes search my face. “It wasn’t a dare.”
He’s not lying. I can see that, plain as day.
“But Matthew Gunn said he dared you,” I say, still not understanding. “I overheard him talking about it.”
“And you believed what Matthew Gunn said without asking me?” Luke says incredulously. “The Matthew Gunn who claimed his parents created Dancing with the Stars? The Matthew Gunn who I’m pretty sure is in prison now?”
“So why did you kiss me, then?”
“Why does anyone kiss anyone? Because I wanted to. Wait—” Understanding dawns on his face. “That’s why you stopped talking to me? Because you thought Matthew Gunn dared me to kiss you?”
I nod slowly. “I mean, there were obviously other things I was having trouble dealing with. But . . . yeah.”
“You must have thought I was such a dick,” Luke says. “Am such a dick. And I don’t blame you. But it’s depressing to think we missed out on years of knowing each other because of
a dumb misunderstanding.”
“I’m sorry, too. But who knows,” I say. “Maybe we would have drifted apart. Our lives went such different ways.”
“Maybe.” He takes a step toward me. “But maybe not. Maybe we would have kissed again.” He takes another step. “And again.” He’s so close I can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “And again.”
“Maybe,” I agree.
And then I’m reaching out and my hands are in his hair, and he pulls me close, and his lips touch mine, and he’s kissing me.
And . . . oh.
It’s everything.