“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 ofVogueand 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.
