CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
Grant chokes on his drink. I flash him a sweet little smile and tell him It’s called Google, bitch with my eyes.
The gentleman next to me tuts his approval and says, “Ah, a fellow Nordophile! Vilken ?r din favoritstad i Sverige?”
“Indeed,” I say, clinking my champagne glass against his. “Indeed.”
“Excuse us,” says Grant, barely holding in his laughter as he leads me away by the elbow.
In moments like these, when we’re playing games and cracking each other up, I can’t seem to remember what I was so worried about before.
Yes, I know we’re tangled in an impossible web of fiction and reality.
And yes, seeing Grant with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his bowtie untied, I’ve given up denying the palpable attraction I feel toward him.
But right now, it doesn’t feel so dangerous.
It just feels good to be around him. It’s fun. There’s no pressure, no anxiety.
Until he looks thoughtfully toward the center of the room, where a string quartet has just set up, and says, “We should dance.”
The floor in front of the musicians is open; all the guests are either seated at the surrounding tables or promenading around the galleries, no doubt deciding whether a Mondrian would clash with their antique jacquard drapes.
I hesitate. “I don’t think—”
“No one else is dancing,” he says, his voice low. “We can stand out without making too big a scene.”
He’s unfortunately right. Doing harmless things that Simply Aren’t Done seems a decent way to get labeled indecent by this crowd.
Reluctantly, I take his proffered hand, and we walk toward the open floor.
Nerves sparkle through me as I try to mentally brush up on the actual how of dancing.
When was the last time I danced with someone—really danced, not at a club or a bar or in some state of inebriation? Homecoming, half my life ago?
I doubt my rusty high school moves will cut it at a black-tie gala for the upper echelons of London society. I’m going to have to admit to Grant that I don’t know what I’m doing, and I hate that. I don’t want him to have to teach me or show me the way. I don’t want to need him.
But all he does is lift my right hand in his, gently placing my left up around his shoulder before encircling my back with his arm, pulling me close. And then we’re swaying to the music, and it seems like maybe I did know how to do this, after all.
I work to steady my breath, to calm my pulse. “Are people looking?” I ask, a lame attempt at distraction. Grant subtly moves his head to get a better look at the crowd, brushing against my hair. I feel immediate chills where it rustles along my neck.
“A few,” he says, so quietly, in my ear.
“Anyone look like they want to hack us to bits?”
“And I had almost forgotten why we were here,” he groans.
“Stay on task, Hoffman.”
He dips his head slightly, his eyes fixed on mine. I can make out every variation in their rich brown, like counting rings in a tree. “That’s Beaumont to you, Mrs. Beaumont.”
I have an instinct to say something snarky, but I come up blank. I don’t think we’re headed for imaginary divorce anymore. Not with the way we’re looking at each other, the way I can’t tell his heartbeat from my own.
“Uh-oh. Incoming,” he says, and my whole body tenses. His fingers lightly tap my back. “Relax. I just meant more people are coming to dance.”
My breath whooshes out of me. “Jesus, Grant. Maybe don’t lead with uh-oh, incoming when there’s a serial killer in our midst.”
“Let me rephrase, then,” he says. “Uh-oh, we are no longer the only ones snogging the dance floor.”
I pause in confusion, then pull back to look at him.
“What do you think snogging means?”
Grant’s brow—surprise of the century—furrows.
“Like … hogging, right? But in a British way. What Lesley said.”
I’m truly not trying to make fun, but I can’t help but laugh. There’s also a tiny spark of satisfaction at the fact that I, for once, know something he doesn’t.
Grant’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “Have we not been snogging the dance floor this whole time?”
I shake my head. “He didn’t say snogging the dance floor,” I say, still laughing. “He said snogging on the dance floor.”
“Which means …?”
I want to kick myself for the way my breath catches. It’s just vocabulary, I chastise myself. No need to be weird about it.
“Kissing,” I say, and Grant’s expression changes so slightly. I could swear his eyes dart quickly to my mouth and back up again.
“Which we don’t want to do,” he finally says.
“Definitely not,” I lie.
We dance in silence as the floor fills with guests, all pairing up to bob tastefully around us. Evidently, it’s socially acceptable to dance at these things, so long as you’re not the first to do it.
“Although …” says Grant, and my pulse revs.
“Although?”
“We’re not exactly making a scene anymore,” he points out. “It … might help, is all.”
Say no! my mind screams. Headbutt him instead! That’ll make a scene!
“It might,” my idiot mouth says instead.
“Just for the mission,” he says quickly. “And then I’ll never touch you again, I promise.”
I swallow. “Right.”
He lets out a heavy breath.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Well … here goes nothing.”
My expectation for nothing is a stage kiss—a showy, ultimately hollow smooshing of mouths for maximum dramatic effect.
Instead, Grant gently pulls me closer. His fingers reach up and skim over my temple, smoothing my hair back, curling around my ear before coming to rest along my neck, his thumb lightly bracing my jaw. His eyes search mine for just a moment before they drop to my mouth.
When he leans in, I close my eyes on instinct. The air feels so charged with static that I half expect a shock. But when his lips meet mine, it’s with an easy comfort that catches me off guard. As welcome and familiar as climbing into bed at the end of a long day.
I surrender to it at first. How could I not?
I feel weightless, and also like my whole being is concentrated in every place Grant is touching.
His hand sliding into my hair, curving around my neck.
His other arm winding tighter around my waist. The rasp of his stubble, and the soft insistence of his lips, kissing me like I’m the home he’s been longing to get back to.
The home that isn’t real.
Rational thought kicks on like a delayed generator responding to the power failure in my brain.
I pull away from him with a sharp step back, catching the hem of my dress on my heel in so doing.
I stumble into a frowning man with slicked-back hair and wing-tip shoes.
“Fuck. Sorry. I’m sorry.” I look back up at Grant’s bewildered face, his arms still extended as if they haven’t quite figured out that they aren’t holding me anymore.
Enough is enough. I need to get out of here, out of this.
I make for the door with absolutely no idea where I’m going and not much of a care, as long as it’s away. I need to do something. I need this to end. I need out.
I take off down the steps with my dress inelegantly rucked up and dart into the street. A Mini Cooper just barely misses me, horn blaring. I keep running. I figure if I run until I can’t breathe, I won’t be able to think, either.
When that fails—when I can still feel Grant’s hand on my back and his lips on mine, and when my heart clenches with the longing to have stayed there in that kiss, and when I realize I’m running past uniform white-pillared townhomes that look just like the one Anna Matthews has posed in front of on Instagram—a fresh wave of vehemence takes over and I start yelling.
“Anna!” I call out as I march down the picturesque street, hands cupped around my mouth. “Anna Matthews!”
I know it doesn’t make sense. I know there are a million of these houses in London and she could live in any of them.
But logic is no match for desperation. And on the off chance she’s nearby and can hear me, I can explain everything and she can make it stop.
She has to. Because if she doesn’t and I have to go back there …
I hear my name and it spreads goose bumps over my exposed back. I don’t turn around. I keep shouting.
“I just need a moment of your time! Please come outside!” On a certain level, I know that no responsible adult would come running when an unhinged stranger is screaming their name from the street. Especially a responsible adult who is knee-deep in the writing of a serial killer story.
On every other level, I am out of ideas. I have no other options. He’s gaining on me; I can feel it.
“Anna!” I’ve reached the end of the street, and I turn the corner to find … another one just like it, an infinite line of identical houses.
“Roxie.”
Grant’s hand lands on my shoulder, turning me to face him. I don’t want to look at him, but he traps me with his gaze, his confused eyes searching mine. “What just happened?”
“I can’t do this!” I snap, a dam breaking inside me. “The dancing and the touching, and the one bed and the late-night talks and the—”
An explosion of thunder cuts me off out of nowhere and the skies promptly open.
So now it’s not just that I have to face Grant.
I have to face Grant in the rain. His hair is wet, and raindrops run together in rivulets down his neck, and his shirt clings to his body in a way that is just not fair.
And he still doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I screech up at the clouds in vain. “Seriously? This is not even remotely creative!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he shouts over the downpour.
“This is all in the book, Grant,” I shout back.
“Somewhere, in a stuck-up cookie-cutter house that looks just like these but is evidently NOT WITHIN EARSHOT”—I really put my lungs into that last part, partly in fury and partly in hope that it’ll finally work—“all of this is being written. The rain, that party, the secret murderer. And you, Grant. You’re part of this.
You’re in the story, written into it. You’re not real. ”
He stares at me in confusion, his brow as creased as I’ve ever seen it. I feel like my chest is caving in.
“What—” His mouth moves as if trying to form a proper question, but he can’t land on one. “What are you—” He goes still. He doesn’t blink, fixed on me like stone while the rain pelts us in the empty street.
“How do you know,” he finally says, barely a question.
This moment is torture, and even so, I would give anything to stretch it out if it meant I could avoid the one that comes next. But I’m at a dead end. I have no choice but to tell him the truth.
“Because,” I say, my voice thin. “You’re the love interest.”