Chapter Fourteen
THE SCRIPT HAS A KISS scene in it, and I've been avoiding that page like it owes me money.
"You're rushing the build," Maximo tells me from the armchair, reading the other part in a monotone that should be illegal for a voice that good. "The scene doesn't work if she's already decided. Again."
"Maybe she rushes because she's nervous."
"She isn't the one who's nervous."
I glance up from the pages. Caught red-handed. "I'm extremely professional, thank you."
"You've read the same line four times."
"It's a rich line. It rewards rereading."
He sets the script down and gives me the look, the one that peels the joke right off me. "What is it?"
And because it's late, and because he asked, and because I've apparently misplaced my ability to lie to this man, out it comes.
"I've never actually kissed anyone. Not properly. Not the way this scene needs." I shrug like it's nothing, which is the exact tell that it's something. "So I don't know how to fake a thing I've never done. That's the whole tragic backstory. Very Method of me."
He goes still for a long moment.
Then he stands.
"If you're going to be an actress," he tells me, crossing the room like a man walking toward a decision he's already promised himself he'll only make once, "you should at least know how one works."
My borrowed heart forgets its whole job, which is the kind of thing my cardiologist would want to hear about and absolutely will not. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm teaching you." He stops close. Closer than the lesson strictly requires. His hand comes up under my jaw, turning my face to the angle he wants, and I have time for exactly one panicked thought—hold it together, Jassy, don't you dare—
and then his mouth is on mine.
Oh.
Oh.
So this is what page forty was so afraid of.
It barely lasts. It's the lightest press of his mouth, careful, like he's handling something he already promised someone he'd not break, and it still undoes me all the way to the floor in the time it takes to forget my own name.
Then it's over.
He steps back. And I get to watch it happen in reverse, the shutters coming down behind his eyes, the regret already there before I've even managed to open mine all the way.
"That's how it works," he tells me, rough, already turning. "Page forty. You're welcome."
And he's gone down the hall, a door closing behind him with tremendous restraint.
I stand alone in the middle of the living room with one hand pressed to my mouth, as if I can keep it there.
I'd like to report that I played it cool.
I didn't play it cool. I am, at this very moment, mentally composing a text to a group chat I don't have. brEAKING: local girl kissed by the eighth wonder of the world. Film at eleven. Girl may not recover and refuses all treatment—
Then I remember his face when he pulled back.
Oh.
He regretted it. And there's the drop, right under all the fizz.
He kissed me like I mattered, and then he looked at me like I was something he wasn't allowed to want, and pulled back so fast you'd think the wanting itself was the crime, and I have no idea which of those two men I'm supposed to believe, the one who leaned in or the one who ran.
But my mouth still knows his now. And it's decided, entirely without my permission, that it'd very much like to be taught again.