Chapter 33 Theater Magic #2
“Remind me never to cross you two.”
“Don’t ever cross us,” I say with a smile as we walk along the block to my truck.
“Where to next?” Banks asks as we pass the tattoo shop.
“You said you never went back to Lucky Falls.”
He tenses. “Right. But I don’t want to go there.”
“I get that, but Darling Springs is cool. Can I show you around my town?” My voice pitches up.
His shoulders relax, then his eyes twinkle. “You’ve shown me a lot of it. Did you forget our yoga and nail salon escapades?”
“The local coffee shop too,” I add.
“And the fuel at Pick Me Up is top-notch.”
“But there’s more to Darling Springs,” I say, stopping on the sidewalk. “Want to see it?” I feel like I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for an answer, even though he hardly makes me wait.
“I do.” He leans forward on his boots, like he’s coming in for a kiss. But he stops short, smirking instead. “Can you show me where you Saran Wrapped Scott Nelson’s truck back in twelfth grade?”
My mouth falls open. “You jackass.”
The smirk spreads. “So that’s a yes?”
“A yes to showing you where Bridget did it,” I say.
“After you,” he says, and gestures toward the truck several feet away.
As we resume walking, I’m so tempted to reach for his hand. Maybe he senses it. Or maybe this is just part of the perks of having a secret romance with a bodyguard, but when he puts his palm on the small of my back, he presses harder, spreads his fingers wider, runs his fingertips across my shirt.
It’s like a private gesture in public, and I don’t mind at all showing him the site of the Saran Wrapping.
We drive to the beach nearby, the scene of the so-called crime. We hop out of the truck, and I take him to the edge of the dunes, where Scott parked his vehicle one fine day.
“Tomorrow, can you show me where you removed the door from the science lab?”
I roll my eyes. “Chloe did it.”
“Right, right.” He sketches air quotes. “Where Chloe removed it.”
“Maybe I will.”
But we both know I’m showing him my high school.
Clearly, I’ll have to revise my earlier statement that hardly anyone gets up earlier than a farmer to include bodyguards.
Mine is killing it in the up-at-the-crack-of-dawn department.
The next morning as the sun peeks above the horizon, I wake to a walked and fed dog, and a fresh vase of flowers on the table.
Melissa, of course. My heart clatters happily.
But there’s no bodyguard. “Where did Banks go?” I ask Hudson.
My boy just tilts his snout in question. If a dog could shrug, this guy does. “But you know all his secrets,” I say, trying to goad the pup.
He settles his snout back onto the rug with a sigh. I scratch his head. “Fine, fine. You are my favorite person.”
He leans into the petting, and as I give him all the scratches and love he deserves, my gaze strays to the deck, then beyond. Is Banks jumping rope?
I stand and head to the glass. He’s outside, on the path, working out. He has earbuds in, and after a few minutes of jumping, he drops down to a plank then executes more push-ups than I can count.
When he comes back into the cottage—a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, his arms, his chest—I postpone the start of my farm chores and show him just how much I appreciate his workout.
After, we’re both sweaty and tangled together in bed. “Thanks for walking my dog,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
“And for feeding him.”
“Well, he is your favorite person.”
“He is. And for the fresh-cut flowers,” I add.
“That was easy, seeing as we’re on a flower farm.”
I swat his chest. “Don’t make a gift seem like it was nothing. It’s perfect for me.”
He turns to me, runs a finger gently down my nose. “You like your dog, and you like lavender.”
That wasn’t hard to figure out, but no one else has done a thing about those two very obvious facts.
Until him.
As the crew shoots at the hardware store that day, between my deliveries, we steal away on our bikes to Sunflower Ridge High School, home of the Wildcats of Darling Springs.
We cruise past a colorful array of bungalows with red, purple, and peach front doors till we reach the school at the end of a winding street.
We rest our bikes against the bike rack, then wander around the grounds.
It’s summer and the morning sessions must be finished, because we’re the only ones here.
“Did you like high school?” Banks asks.
“Does anyone like high school?” I counter.
He taps his chin. “Fair point.”
I show him the outside of the science lab, then the auditorium, small in size but mighty in possibility. “That’s where Haven did her first musical. Beauty and the Beast.”
He turns to me, brown eyes widening with questions. “Tell me. How did the Beast transform at the end?”
I flinch. Rub my ear. “Wait…did you just—”
“Ask you how the beast became the prince,” he says quickly, making a rolling gesture with his hands, speed-it-up style. “Yes, I’ve been dying to know ever since I saw it.”
“You saw Beauty and the Beast?”
He gives me a look. “Does this surprise you? I listen to classical music. I bake. I have a sister.”
“And she didn’t take you? You took her?” I ask, processing this new Banks detail.
“For your information, the three of us all like musicals and theater. And yes, I took my mom and my sister. So…how did it happen?”
My heart gallops. This man is so tough and so tender at the same time. I step closer, curl a hand around his ear, and lean close to whisper, “Magic.”
He sighs heavily. “Ripley.”
I pull back. “You really want to know?”
“I do.”
“Spoiler and all?”
“Bring it on.”
I lean in and lower my voice again. “Double cast.”
When I step back, the look in his eyes is magic. Then, he shakes his head in disbelief. “Another actor must play him in the Gaston battle scene.”
I tap his nose. “Exactly.”
“I’m a fool,” he says, then smacks his forehead. “I can’t believe I missed something so obvious.”
“Or maybe the magic worked,” I say.
He flashes me a warm smile, holding my gaze meaningfully. “It did.”
My heart speeds even faster, and I’m not sure we’re talking about stage magic anymore.
Banks swings his gaze around and reaches for my hand, clasping our fingers together as we walk through the quad.
As we’re leaving it, we pass a bench in the corner, set away from others.
I stop, my chest squeezing with painful memories.
Banks has opened up to me, so it’s fair I do the same.
But it’s not just about fairness. There’s something else, something new—an insistent need to let him in.
I haven’t felt like this before with a man, and I don’t know what to make of these new emotions. Still, I forge ahead into the unknown.
“That’s why I don’t like having my picture taken,” I say, pointing toward the seat.
He tilts his head. “The bench? What happened?”
We sit, and I begin the story that I haven’t shared with any other man.
“There was one day in our sophomore year, a few weeks after our parents died, when Haven was having a really rough time. It was after school, and she was crying.” I pat the wood of the bench, feeling like it was just yesterday.
“We sat here, and I hugged her as she cried. A girl we both knew—Katrina, she’s a friend and she runs The Sweet Spot now—was working for the yearbook and was going around doing slice-of-life pics, and she snapped a bunch of pictures of students doing their thing at the end of the school day.
I don’t think she fully realized what was going on till the next day in yearbook class. ”
Heavy-hearted, I remember that photo. A portrait of grief. My baby sister sobbing in my arms. Me, holding her tight. Us, clinging to each other as our life capsized.
I push past the hurt and finish the story that the town knows, my friends know, my grandma knows.
But I haven’t told anyone else. I’ve never shared this with a soul who wasn’t there at the time.
“But the pictures were up on the computer and that one was there. As soon as she realized it, she deleted it. But people had seen it. Even so, she and the teacher and the other students all said, We shouldn’t run that one.
They were so lovely. They knew it was private.
They knew Katrina hadn’t meant to take it.
And she felt terrible, but in the end, she’d actually protected us. ” My eyes well with tears.
“Sweetheart,” Banks, says softly, then tugs me close, wraps his arms around me, and shields me. No one’s here. No one can see us, and yet he knows without me saying it that I don’t want anyone to see me cry.
I nestle against his chest as a few rebel tears stream down my cheeks till I wipe them away. I feel lighter. I feel like I let go of something I was holding on to for too long. Something that maybe has held me back.
Deep breath. Then I pull back. He runs a hand down my hair. “I get it. I do.”
“Why I don’t love having my picture taken without knowing it’s happening?” I ask in a broken voice.
“Yes, but also, why you love it here. You all look out for each other.”
“We do,” I say.
I set my head on his shoulder. We sit quietly for a while, and it’s nice not to say a word but still feel so connected.
Later, we visit The Sweet Spot, and I buy banana bread from Katrina, who’s dolled up again today. As she hands me the bread, her smile grows bigger with hope. “Would you take some cookies to Chris?”
“I’m not sure I’ll see him,” I admit.
“Or maybe the whole crew,” she says, then reaches under the counter and thrusts a white box of a dozen cookies at me.
Banks takes it before I can, saying a heartfelt, “Thank you.”
I don’t think he’s thanking her for the baked goods.
We leave the shop and continue our ride.
When we reach Prohibition Spirit, I stop and point it out to Banks.
“I love that place. I go there with Chloe and Bridget, and Haven when she’s in town.
That’s the place that my ex wants,” I say, nodding to the expanded section with the for-lease sign in the window. “For a restaurant.”
Banks growls. “He won’t get it.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ll stop him,” he says.
I’m not sure he can, but I love that he wants to. His possessiveness makes my chest flip. “How would you do that?” I ask.
It feels a little like foreplay, this question.
His eyes travel up and down me, heating me up. “However I need to do it, Ripley.”
I can’t stop playing this game. “Why?”
“Don’t want him near you. At all.”
I nibble the corner of my lips. “Then I hope you stop him.”
“Me fucking too,” he says, and I blink off the fog of lust as I push my sneakered feet on the pedals, riding again.
Once we’re past Prohibition Spirit, Banks says into the faint breeze blowing past us, “I like that place, but I like Mister Fox too.”
“You’ve been there?”
“A couple of times. That’s where I met Monroe last year.”
“You’ve been holding out on me.”
“I was there the other night, debating what to do about you.”
At the stop sign, I give him a coy look. “And what did you decide?”
“That you’re impossible to resist.”
I smile. “That bar is the best place for decisions.”
When we stop at the hardware store, Banks brings in the box of baked goods for the crew but makes sure Chris gets a cookie when there’s a break in action. “It’s from The Sweet Spot,” he says. “Katrina is a big fan of yours and wanted you to have one.”
The movie star pumps Banks’s hand, giving him a heartfelt thank you, then takes a cookie.
I figure he’ll set it aside or give it away since he’s probably on a kale-and-boiled-chicken-only diet.
Instead, he takes a bite and then moans.
When he’s done chewing, he asks, “Where did you say these are from?”
“The Sweet Spot,” Banks answers, and Chris looks like he’s filing that data in a very special drawer in his head.
Later that night, Banks tells me again I’m impossible to resist as he lies down on the bed.
“Is that so?” I ask from across the room.
“Yep.” He pats the mattress. “Get over here.”
“So bossy.”
“And you like it.”
“I do,” I say, joining him.
He sits up and strips me in seconds, then tugs off his own shirt in one smooth, sexy motion. “Want you to ride me, sweetheart. Want to watch you bouncing up and down on my dick.”
Well then. “I believe that can be arranged.” I undo his shorts, find a condom, and cover him.
As midnight settles over Lavender Bliss Farms, I lower myself onto him, gasping and sighing as he fills me up, arching into the sensations racing through me—the pressure, the sparks, the heat.
There are no DIY toys this time. No headbands.
No flowers. Nor any hands holding my wrists.
This time I press my palms to his chest, bracing myself on him as I set the pace.
He grips my hips, and we move together, unbound.
Me over him.
Him under me.
Giving and taking. Till we’re both chasing the edge, then falling off it together.
Funny how a week ago he was arriving in town, and I was trying to ditch him. Now I’m trying to soak up as much time as I can get before he leaves.
Since he will.
The shoot the next day is here on the farm. I’m showered and dressed and making coffee in the farmhouse kitchen when an image of last night flashes vividly through my mind.
I shiver just as Tabitha walks into the kitchen. I straighten, shaking off the lingering lust. “Good morning. Want some coffee?”
“I’m going to need it. Haven’s in makeup right now, but I just got a call that her stand-in is sick. Any chance you could help us out for an hour?”
Well, I guess you can’t get a better stand-in than a twin sister.