Dante makes me feel seen in a way that is both terrifying and exhilarating.
“Remember when you hated me?” he asks, amusement coloring his voice. “If someone had told me at that first table read we’d end up here…”
“I didn’t hate you,” I protest weakly. “I was…”
“Professionally skeptical?” His laugh rumbles through his chest, and I press my ear closer, wanting to memorize the sound.When did I get so lucky?
“You wouldn’t share an apple with me,” he reminds me.
“I made it up to you with the apple the day before I cut my hair.”
“Can’t believe that was over a month ago.”
“But I am sorry for before. For all those walls I built and the assumptions I made without giving you a chance.”
His touch is gossamer against my jaw. “Don’t be. Can’t exactly blame you, can I? We’re like two different kinds of fire,” he says softly. “You burn steady and deep, while I’m all flash and crackle. Sometimes we clash, but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand each other.”
I nestle closer, drawn to him like a magnet finding metal. “Listen to you, being so poetic,” I murmur into his chest and nudge my nose to the bookcase across the room. “And here I thought those books were props.”
“They are, actually,” he confesses with a laugh. “I mostly listen to audiobooks, especially when I’m on the road. Though nothing compares to when you read to me.”
“I could, you know,” I offer, feeling brave in the quiet of his room. “When we’re away from set. Maybe start with Francesca and Paolo?”
“Or Dorothea and Will,” he suggests, naming characters I don’t recognize. “FromMiddlemarch.”
“I’d like that.” The silence between us feels comfortable, like a well-worn sweater. “You know, you always surprise me.”
“Same here. When we met, I thought we would have nothing in common,” he says, drawing lazy patterns on my back, and I melt. “But it’s deeper than that, isn’t it? It’s how we see things, feel things. We don’t need matching life stories to understand each other.”
The truth of it hits me in waves.
“It’s not like those romance movies I’ve done,” I say, slipping into my Boston accent fromHeart in Boston. “Where it’s all,Oh, my god, we both love blue and have dogs and eat lobster rolls! It must be fate!”
“Missed my watchlist.”
“Flopped spectacularly.”
“Show me more accents?” he asks.
“Sugar,” I drawl in my thickest southern belle, fighting sleep, “we both know which one makes you weak.”
“Right you are, darlin’,” he attempts, failing dramatically.
A familiar feeling floods into my veins. That dizzy, teenage feeling I thought I’d outgrown. After Ricky, I’d convinced myself closing off my heart was the mature choice. The professional choice. But lying here, I can’t deny how desperately I’ve craved this kind of connection.
Maybe it’s ironic that as a romance actress, I’ve acted out countless versions of love. But those were just scripts, carefully choreographed moments of perfection. This thing with Dante feels beautifully imperfect.
Being here with him, I let myself believe in the cliché that sometimes things do fall into place.
“You know, I like that we’re so different. It’s like we shouldn’t make sense, but we do. My parents were high school sweethearts who grew up on the same street. Practically carbon copies of each other.”
“When you meet my parents, you’ll see a different kind of love story. Probably more similar to us,” he says.
My stomach does this slow, pleasant flip at the casual way he sayswhen you meet my parents, like it’s inevitable. Like we have a future. “You think?”
“Tech geek meets basketball star? On paper, they’re from different worlds.”
“And they work?”
