33. Reese
Chapter 33
Reese
Reese
Don’t worry about picking me up for training, I’ll meet you there!
Dante
What are you talking about?
Reese
Nothing! Everything’s fine! Totally fine! Just need to handle a teensy tiny microscopic situation first!
Three quick taps come at my door.
Dante’s here.
Oh no.
My stomach launches itself into freakin’ Jupiter as I stare down the massacre of my signature hairstyle. The Sinclair lies in defeated chunks on my bathroom tile, and suddenly I’m very, very awake.
Who decided it was a good idea to put scissors in my cabin?
“I’ll be right there,” I call out, grabbing the fluffiest towel from my rack, wrapping it around my head, and scurrying to the door. My bare feet slip on the hardwood as I crack it open enough to peek through.
“Good morning.” I throw him a practiced smile and try to sound like someone who definitely didn’t perform DIY hair surgery at 1:00 a.m.
“What’s going on?” His eyebrow quirks up.
“I got a little carried away last night.”
Dante, being Dante, uses his unfair advantage of pure muscle to easily push the door wider. I clutch at my towel fortress as he takes in the scene—the bathroom looking like a blonde pinata exploded, the scissors still lying accusingly on the counter, my guilty expression.
“I’m guessing you didn’t go to sleep like I told you.”
“Wasn’t tired.” I shrug casually.
“What a rebel.”
I lean against the wall, missing the corner and having to catch myself. The towel slips precariously, and I grab at it like it’s my last shred of dignity.
“So you gonna show me what’s under there?”
I shake my head, feeling significantly lighter under the weight of my towel. “It’s bad.” A bubble of hysterical laughter escapes me, the kind that comes when you’ve surpassed anxiety and landed in a strange sort of acceptance. “Like, ‘cutting hair is not a natural talent of mine’ kind of bad.”
“It can’t be that bad.” He steps forward, and I retreat until my thighs hit my small kitchen table and I’m trapped between solid wood and his amused gaze. “Let me see.”
My cheeks burn as I slowly lower the towel, watching his expression like I’m revealing a particularly gruesome wound.
Dante takes one look at my choppy, uneven disaster of a haircut and immediately presses his lips together, his whole face twitching with the effort not to laugh.
“Get it out now,” I huff. “Here, I’ll make it worth your while.” I strike an exaggerated pose, like I’m on the cover of Vogue and not standing in my kitchen looking like I lost a fight with a weed whacker.
He moves closer, his mouth quirking up with a specific kind of suppressed amusement that makes me want to simultaneously kiss him and throw something at his head.
“Reese,” he says, with the kind of devastating sincerity that feels like being hit by a meteor, “you could shave your entire body, tattoo the complete works of Shakespeare backward across your forehead, and exclusively communicate through interpretive puppet shows featuring socks with googly eyes, and I’d still think you were the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen in my catastrophically extraordinary life.”
Ugh, isn’t that the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me?
And now he’s over here freaking just—AHHHHH!
I run to the bathroom, hiding my blush and brushing my fingers through my choppy disaster. “I—I don’t know what I was thinking, but I spent my whole life with someone else controlling every single strand. And I mean, it started innocently, when my hairbrush got stuck, and then…well, once I started, I couldn’t stop.”
Dante follows me into the bathroom, and his expression melts into that tender look that makes my insides turn to mush.
“Reese,” he says softly, “you don’t need anyone’s permission to be yourself.” He bends down and places a kiss on my forehead that feels like absolution.
“Yeah, well, being myself apparently means looking like Weird Barbie.” I laugh shakily. “Heather’s going to freak! I need to call her so she can send someone to salvage this mess.”
“Let me do it,” he says, eyes sparkling.
“You?” I blink. “Since when are you a hairdresser?”
“I cut my own hair,” he says. “And I trim for my fencing team. There are skills I possess that might surprise you, though I hesitate to enumerate them.”
I eye him suspiciously. “The last thing I need is to look like an eighth-grade boy who discovered online hair tutorials.”
“Please,” he smirks. “I’m about to create the next big thing. The Sinclair 2.0—edgy, bold, and completely yours. Let me grab my shears, clippers, and comb from my cabin.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Dante jogs to his cabin, returning moments later with a small black case that looks far too professional for someone who claims to just trim for the team. He guides me to sit in front of my bathroom mirror, draping a towel around my shoulders.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” I sit on my hands, pressing them into the wooden chair. “But I was thinking, instead of the Sinclair 2.0, I want this to be the Reese 1.0.”
“Done.” He pats my shoulder, looking at my reflection like he knows what it’s like to be reduced to your last name.
“I didn’t think I’d be doing this on my first day back on set,” Dante chuckles, combing through what’s left of my hair with expert fingers, each touch impossibly gentle. His brow furrows in concentration as he sections off pieces, measuring twice before each precise cut.
The soft snip of the scissors feels different now, careful, nothing like my hack job.
Right…filming!
We start tomorrow. “Oh no, I need to figure out how to tweak the script and tell Mari,” I say, eyeing my laptop, a beat of hesitation stuck in my throat. I really hope she likes it.
My mind wanders to the script changes we’ll need to make. Maybe I can swing this for Robyn’s character arc, especially since we’re tossing out most of the old footage of me anyway.
“I’m sure Mari will love this new look. She had short hair through most of college.” He squints, a crease forming on the bridge of his nose. “Plus, it’ll save time in hair and makeup.”
True .
“Actually, now that I think about it, there’s a strong case for Robyn chopping her hair. She’s in the middle of a whole self-discovery arc. I could wear a wig for the first few scenes—it would make sense.”
He smiles at me. “The most important thing is that you’re happy.”
“I am. The other great part is nobody knows we’re back on set and filming this week. As long as the crew keeps things under wraps, I can probably hide my hair for a bit. They haven’t leaked anything from last week, so I think they’re trustworthy.”
“We could just have you wear a beanie until Amara’s intro speech tomorrow. Mornings are getting colder anyway.”
I like the fact that he’s looking for solutions.
“Oh my heavens, I can’t wait to feel the cold air on my head. And this is going to take so little shampoo to wash.” My heart drops. “What if Diamond Essence hates it? I’ve been with them for ten years.” I pause, shaking my head. “That would be silly, right? Short-haired people wash their hair too. I’m sure Heather can handle it!”
Does he know how much he’s helped me understand that I crave control? I’m calling the shots to make this movie successful—my idea, my choice, my rules.
“I like watching your mind at work,” Dante says.
“I’m excited.” Energy radiates from my body, making me feel like I could probably lift a car. “Everything feels like it makes sense.”
“You know what else makes sense?” he says softly. “How right this feels.”
My heart palpitates. “The haircut?”
“Everything about—” He clears his throat. “Everything about this new look. It suits you perfectly.”
“Tilt your head forward,” he murmurs, one hand cupping my chin to guide me. His thumb brushes against my jaw, and I let go. I close my eyes, surrendering to his steady hands grazing my scalp, the quiet brush of his shoulder against mine as he checks his work, the faint rasp of his voice that tickles my neck when he murmurs instructions.
The rest of the world fades away until there’s only this—the quiet rhythm of his movements, the tender way he turns my head this way and that.
It feels like trust.
We’ve only known each other for two months. I’ve played every role in every rom-com script: slow burn, enemies to lovers, and the insta-love couple. The last was always the hardest heroine to play. I’ve spent countless hours wondering how anyone could feel so strongly about someone in an instant. But maybe it’s not the amount of time that matters.
Maybe it’s just the person.
“I don’t regret it,” I whisper. “Any of it.”
“Good.”
When he runs the clippers up the nape of my neck, the vibration tingles down my spine. I bite my lip to keep from making an embarrassing sound.
“Almost done,” he says.
A few more careful snips, his fingers ghosting along my hairline, and then he’s combing his hands through the finished cut, styling it. Each touch feels like he’s rewiring something essential inside me. When his knuckles graze my cheek, I melt into the contact without meaning to, earning a low chuckle that makes my toes curl. My heart might burst from all the things we’re not saying, but that makes it more perfect.
Dante steps back, and my stomach lurches with anticipation. His eyes meet mine in the mirror, holding something unspoken that makes my chest tight.
“There.” He nods, voice low and measured in a way that makes me feel like I’m teetering on the edge of something vast. “You look…” He pauses, and his jaw works, like he’s wrestling with words too heavy to say out loud. “Devastating, actually.”
The once-chaotic mess is now a soft, tousled pixie cut that frames my face in ways I never knew hair could. It’s shorter than I’ve ever worn, exposing the vulnerable curve of my neck.
I feel naked, seen, terrified, and thrilled all at once. My trembling fingers reach up to touch it. Dante watches me in the mirror with an intensity that makes it feel like I’m invincible.
Before I can process what’s happening, he dips down, running the clippers along the side of his head.
“What are you doing?” I blurt.
He doesn’t answer, just keeps methodically getting rid of those divine curls I’ve spent embarrassing amounts of time daydreaming about sifting my fingers through. The back of his head is clean now, deliberately reminiscent of my hair. The parallel makes my throat tight.
“Now…” He grins, putting our faces side by side in the mirror. “We match.”
I glance at our reflection, at the way we fit together in the frame. It’s so incredibly intimate. We look like we belong together.
“We look like the Beckhams,” I say, trying to diffuse the intensity.
He kisses my cheek, his hands brushing loose strands off my shoulders. His touch seeps through my thin T-shirt like sunlight through water.
“Better, because we’re Sinclair and Hastings.”
There’s something in the way he says our names—like they’re meant to be paired, like it’s inevitable—that makes my heart ache with a sweetness I can’t quite contain.
Sinclair and Hastings.
But I don’t want to only be our last names. Those names have so much power over us.
“I think I like just Reese and just Dante.”
I stand, and Dante’s gaze stays on me, full of that soft, tender look that leaves me feeling both seen and exposed. His eyes crinkle at the corners, a fondness so genuine it feels like something we’ve built together, intimate and earned.
“Why don’t I stay, make you some breakfast while you work on your script notes?”
“You sure?”
“Of course.”
Heat blooms in my chest, spreading outward like steeping tea. “Maybe after I’m done, you can give me my first training session now that you’re back, and afterward we can come back here and have dinner ?”
One more rendezvous before we start filming tomorrow will be good. Help us both relax for the weeks to come.
His eyebrows lift. “Yeah?”
I gather my courage, letting playfulness mask the vulnerability. “I remember something about you being at my beck and call?”
“I aim to serve and please.”
“And maybe after dinner …you could make me an actual dinner.” I widen my eyes dramatically, turning on my innocent doe-eyed act—though we both know there’s nothing innocent about the way my pulse races when he looks at me like that. “I can ask Ramsey to get us some groceries.”
“You realize that one of these days that look isn’t going to work on me.”
“Not today, though?”
He sighs, the sound caught somewhere between exasperation and adoration. “Not today.”