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  And that’s both good and bad.

  But mostly good, so I hope this un-movie-like moment will work out in an unexpectedly good way. I point to my room. “If you get hungry or bored, come see me.”

  She mimes typing. “Time to make the donuts. Thanks for a fun day.”

  I shoo her away. “Go. Write. You can’t lollygag with me any longer.”

  “Hey, did you ever think that lollygag sounds like something that happens with a blow job that takes too long?”

  “That’s not a thing.”

  “A blow job that takes too long?”

  I shake my head vehemently. “That’s never happened and it will never happen.” I snap my fingers. “Wait, wait. You said something about being bad at blow jobs.”

  She groans in obvious frustration. “Thank you for reminding me of my shortcomings.”

  “Hey! No one ever said you were short with coming.”

  She rolls her eyes. “We are not discussing blow jobs right now.”

  “But eventually?”

  “Good night, Tom.” She heads into her room, and the door closes with a dull thud.

  That sound is the end of my night, and I have only two more to win her heart.

  Inside my room, I take a shower and power through some work. When I check the clock and see it’s ten thirty, I pick up my phone to text her to see if she’s gone to bed.

  But as I tap out her name, there’s a knock on my door.

  19

  Finley

  This tune is driving me insane. Every song is driving me crazy. Most of all, the guy playing them is making me lose my mind—this shirtless, long-haired, ankle rope bracelet–wearing surfer dude strumming tunes on the loudest guitar in the universe.

  Outside my window.

  The window is shut, but I can still hear the instrument crying through the glass as he sings and plucks by the pool, and it’s enough for me to WANT TO DIE.

  I drag a hand down my face. “Ugh.”

  I turn to the window again, yank it open, and fix on my best oh-so-kind face. “Hi there! Any chance you could play a little quieter?”

  But he doesn’t even look up.

  I shake my fist at him, pivot, and march dramatically to the hotel phone. I call the front desk, and Hipster Hat Dude gives me a sympathetic, “I know, I hear ya, I get it. As a harmonica player myself, I try not to music pollute.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “So you can handle this aural assault?”

  “Well, it is a free country,” he points out.

  “So you can’t help?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I appreciate you letting me know.”

  Only mildly relieved, I hang up and return to my laptop and do my best to put blinders on my ears, so I can focus on the scene in front of me. Since I worked all day yesterday, I’m more than halfway through episode three, and I’ve managed to write another scene tonight. The homestretch for this episode is in view. Inspiration and I are tight these days.

  But this pivotal scene between the hero and heroine, where they’re talking about other things without saying what they really mean, is bedeviling me.

  I’m close. So close. What if the hero says—

  A harmonica reverberates in the air, breaking my concentration. I snap my gaze to the window then stomp over, peering through the glass.

  “Are you kidding me?” I mutter.

  Tweed Hat Guy is outside now, one booted foot parked on a lawn chair, playing his harmonica, jamming with Surfer Guitar Dude. This is why he appreciated the tip—so he could play, front desk duties be damned.

  I become the demon baby in Incredibles 2. I’m fuming, filled with smoke and fire and rampant irritation. I seethe, clomping my way to the bathroom to lock myself in there and write in the freaking tub, when I realize something.

  It’s both a face-palm and a glorious chorus of angels.

  Tom’s room.

  It’s on the other side of the hotel.

  I stuff my laptop into its case, grip it tight in my arms, and march to his room, banging hard on the door. When he answers, a slow smile spreads across his face, an easy grin that makes my heart kick.

  That grin, those teeth, his lips.

  His hair.

  His eyes.

  I smile too. “Hi.”

  I nearly stumble when I hear the timbre of my own voice. I sound like a girl greeting a guy she likes. But I also sound like someone else.

  I sound like Tom did this morning when he picked me up. He “hi’d” me the same way. The start-of-a-date hi. An I-like-you-so-much hi.

  I blink in surprise then double surprise when he says it again.

  “Hi.”

  My heart flutters. My skin tingles.

  I’m supposed to be angry. I’m supposed to be completely annoyed and frustrated over harmonicas and twangy guitars. But I’m neither of those anymore.

  I’m happy. I’m flirty.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” I say.

  His eyes sparkle. “I assume all my prayers that you’d wind up hungry or bored have been answered?”

  I’m not the only flirty one. He’s doing it right back to me. With me.

  My mind slingshots to the first night at Red, White, and Rosé. I joked that Tom was easy to say in bed.

  Maybe you could show me what that sounds like, he’d said.

  Have we been flirting from the start?

  What if it’s true what he said in the car today, that all along his affection for Cassie was misplaced? That it was rose-colored glasses tinting the view? That he hasn’t felt anything for her in ages, and it took a lightbulb moment to see that clearly?

  In this moment, I believe him. Because he looks at me the way I imagined he looked at Cassie.

  But then I think of Anthony and his parting words. His I’m-just-not-that-into-you-since-I’m-totally-into-someone-else words. Even if Tom looks at me like I’m the one he wants right now, that doesn’t mean he feels for me the way he once did for Cassie. I’m not that girl to him. I’m the replacement, and I don’t intend to play that part with him.

  Keep it light. Keep it breezy. Focus on friendship.

  “There’s a new trope I encountered tonight.”

  He arches a brow. “Do tell.”

  “It’s the Horrifically Loud Guitar and Harmonica Duo Playing by the Pool trope.”

  “Which obviously leads to Only One room Left at the Hotel.” He opens the door wide, gesturing for me to come in. “There’s also Only One Bed in the Room.”

  As I wander in, my eyes drift to the king-size bed. “It’s so blissfully quiet. Can I write here for a bit?”

  “Be my guest. I’m just going to get tipsy and wrap a sheet around my waist.”

  I swat him, because I still like flirting with him, even though I won’t let it go anywhere. I can manage this flirtation and keep him at arm’s length. Just like I can safely get out of bed without a helmet.

  I write for an hour, maybe more. I’m dead-focused the entire time, and when I tear my gaze away from the screen at last, Tom’s lounging in the hotel chair, reading.

  “You’re the perfect writing companion. You’re like a church mouse.”

  “You did say you liked quiet,” he says, setting down his e-reader, rising, and walking over to the bed. He sits on the end of it. “How’s it going?” He tips his forehead to the laptop.

  “I’m almost done with another episode,” I say, a huge smile spreading across my face.

  “Can I hear some of it?”

  I flinch, surprised by his request. “You want to read it?” I ask, as if he suggested we speak in Arabic tonight.

  “No. I want you to read it to me. Read me a scene.”

  “Like a bedtime story?”

  “Well, hopefully it won’t put me to sleep.”

  He scoots up on the bed, parking himself next to me, and my body goes up in flames. I rein in a shudder and hold back a sigh. But even as I feign stoicism, it’s as if I’m wearing a bright, flashing sign broadcasting my heart. I lik
e you. I want you.

  I should move away from him, but I don’t want to move at all. I want him to come closer. I clear my parched throat and do my best to concentrate on the words on the screen, but they hardly seem legible.

  It’s more than like that I feel for him.

  It’s so much more.

  “Want me to read Lane in this scene?” he asks gently.

  I only nod, because forming words that aren’t I’m falling for you is too hard.

  “Question. Why are you bringing two umbrellas?” he asks, and he sounds so eerily like my hero that it takes me a few seconds before I can see the words on the screen. The damn words I wrote.

  “It might rain,” I say as Amanda, and I’m grateful I have a script, that I don’t have to improvise my way through a conversation right now on his bed. I pat his arm since that’s what Amanda would do, and since I like touching him as her. I like touching him as me too. His arm is strong and toned, and the second I make contact, I picture those arms wrapped around me, spreading me open, pinning me down. Heat shoots across my skin, fiery and bright. I force myself to focus on the screen. “You can use one of mine if it rains,” I say, reading the next line.

  “I’m not going to use an umbrella,” Tom says.

  The next few lines swirl in front of my eyes. I don’t need to read this to know what’s coming next. Words we’ve said. Words I say to him all the time. He already knows he’s my inspiration, but will he know he’s becoming more?

  My heart rises into my throat.

  “You’re such a guy,” I say as Amanda, fighting to stay light, breezy. I desperately want to stay in character.

  “News flash. I am a guy,” he says, just like Lane, just like Tom.

  Slowly, Tom turns his gaze to me. He taps the screen. “You’ve said that to me before. You’re such a guy.”

  His brown eyes linger on mine like he’s found some hidden meaning in them. “You’ve said that back to me. I am a guy,” I say, too breathy for my own good.

  But I don’t know how to speak like me anymore. I don’t know if I’m the character or the creator or the woman who’s been swept away by what she’s living.

  My heart thunders a demanding rhythm that he has to notice, has to hear.

  “What’s next? What will you write next?” he asks, since that’s the last thing on the page.

  The room is so quiet, I can hear the fabric of his shorts rustle against the comforter. I swallow, trying to find words as he slides closer. But it’s not words I need. It’s guts. The ones to match my emotions. The man told me less than three days ago he wasn’t into the woman I’ve been helping him win back, and now all I want is to grab his face and yank him against me.

  I should run.

  I’ve been there, done that, have the scars to prove it. I’ve been this girl before, the one cast aside. The second choice.

  I don’t want to be that girl with Tom.

  But I also don’t want to spend another second with this knot twisting in my gut. The pain of not telling him what comes next is clawing away at me.

  I don’t want to run from him.

  “The network wants,” I say, my voice bare, “a fake kiss.”

  “Fake? Like ours the other night?”

  The tingles are everywhere, slip-sliding all over my body. “Yes.”

  “The network wanted that?”

  “I mentioned it to Bruce, and he jumped all over it. I need to write it next.”

  “But will it be a fake kiss or a real kiss?”

  I lick my lips. “He wants it fake. Like they don’t know they’re kissing for real yet. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I do.” He takes the laptop from me, gestures that he wants to close it, and I give him my permission. He flips the lid and moves it down the bed. “Was our kiss fake or real?” he asks, and his voice is so raw. He’s as desperate to know as I am.

  But I’m still afraid, still so scared. “How did it feel to you?”

  His lips quirk. “I want your answer.” Closer. He moves closer.

  I take a breath and find my courage. It’s somewhere near my heart, and my heart wants what it wants. It wants him. I raise my chin. “It felt exactly like how this feels now. Real.”

  He lifts his hand and brushes strands of hair from my cheek. My eyes float closed for a few seconds, then I open them. He’s staring at me, heat in his eyes, desire blazing like flames.

  He spreads his fingers through my hair. “Is the way I’m touching you fake or real?”

  “Real.”

  He lets go of me and takes off his glasses, twisting to set them on the nightstand. It’s such an honest move. Such a vulnerable one. It tells me he wants to kiss. He turns back.

  “Do you want to kiss for real?”

  I look into his eyes, and I see him so clearly. This flawed, beautiful, stubborn, ridiculous, funny, smart man.

  Who wants to kiss me.

  “So much.”

  20

  Tom

  “Ask me the question,” I say.

  The air between us is charged. Crackling. The room is stone-quiet, but the silence blankets us and beats louder than music or song. It’s the sound of desire.

  “Ask you what?”

  “How much I want to kiss you.”

  She trembles. “How much do you want to kiss me?”

  I end all this talking, all this wonderful, incredible talking that only makes me want to kiss more. I end it with my lips. There is nothing fake in this kiss. Nothing inauthentic in the way my lips slide across hers, how I nip on the corner of her mouth.

  Everything is true as she loops her hands around my neck.

  This kiss is long overdue.

  We may have kissed already, but this is our first kiss too. The first between just the two of us, no audience, no objective. It’s not a rehearsal or a practice round. It’s full of possibilities, but now they’re only for us.

  I want all the possibilities with her. I want more than kissing. My hand finds its way into her hair, and she sighs against my lips, angling her body toward mine like she’s saying keep going, give me more, give me so much more. The closer I get to her, the closer I want to be. I want to kiss her so hard that it erases any doubt she felt moments ago. That it blots out any worry that this kiss could have been anything but true.

  She returns the kiss. Fiercely, and with the same kind of passion I’ve seen her pour into her show. Right now, I’m the lucky bastard who gets to receive that passion.

  And she gives so damn good.

  She gives right back to me, urgency in her touch, like we’re running out of time. She tastes hungry and needy. Her hands clasp my face then thread through my hair, and soon the kiss becomes a blur of heat and need and hands and lips and clothes.

  She’s under me.

  Wrapping her legs around my hips. We’re no longer sitting up in bed kissing. We’re lying down, and everything is hot and heavy.

  This is what I’ve been chasing for years. This desperate connection between body and mind.

  I break the kiss, breathe her name.

  Her eyes flutter open. They’re hazy and wild.

  “You’re so pretty,” I tell her. Because she is, because I should have said it sooner, but mostly because I can say it now.

  “So are you,” she says on a panting breath, then rolls her eyes. “I mean . . . you’re handsome. You’re hot. You’re cute. You’re so fucking good-looking I don’t even know what to do with myself.”

  Pride suffuses me, filling my whole body. Not because she thinks I’m handsome, but because of one word. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you swear.”

  She laughs, miming throwing up words. “Everything just sort of spilled out.”

  “You can compliment me anytime,” I say, then lower my hips against her, letting her feel the outline of my erection.

  She throws her head back and moans. “Ahhh.”

  “Finley.” I don’t know if it’s a question or a command or simply the sheer relief of finally
saying her name like this.

  “Kyler,” she says low, under her breath.

  I grab her chin. “Why are you calling me that now?”

  “Just seeing if I like it.”

  “Do you?”

  She shakes her head. “I like Tom.”

  My heart pounds as I brace myself on my hands and bring my lips to hers once more, pressing another kiss to her soft, sweet mouth. This feels like a new beginning, like we could be an us. But I also know the possibilities are tender and new, and I don’t want to crush them.

  “I like the way you say it,” I tell her. I run my finger across her lip. She nips on the pad. “I like how it sounds on your lips.”

  She demonstrates again for me. “Tom.”

  I groan, pressing against her. “Say it again.”

  She moans my name and draws my finger between her lips then stops. Tenses.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “To answer your question from before—I’m terrible at blow jobs. I can’t even simulate one.”

  I laugh.

  “Don’t laugh at me.”

  “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because I love that you just blurted that out, and I’ve been dying to discuss blow jobs with you.”

  “Wait. Let me guess. You’re obsessed with them.”

  I wiggle my eyebrows. “I am a guy, after all.” I move off her, lying next to her, running my finger down her side. “So what’s the story?”

  She sighs. “Are we doing this?”

  “The blow job story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you were privy to one of my most embarrassing moments. In fact, you kind of know most of them.”

  She sinks her head against the pillow, dragging a hand through her hair. “This guy I went out with, maybe four years ago, told me to stop in the middle of one. He said it felt like my mouth was a wet napkin on his dick. I kind of stopped giving them for the most part.”

  My eyebrows rise. “Entirely?’

  She swats my shoulder. “It’s not like I had a blow job stand that I had to take down.”

  I laugh. “Glad to hear that.”