Page 19 of Falling for My Sister's Heartkeeper
The room applauds for something that has nothing to do with us, and he steps back, and sets me at arm's length, and clears his throat like a man surfacing from underwater.
"You can dance," he informs me, perfectly composed, already turning for the doors.
Sure. Fine. I can dance.
I just can't feel my legs, and neither, I'd bet the borrowed gown, can he.
Chapter Fourteen
THE SCRIPT HAS A KISSscene 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.
