“And you’re not allowed to kiss me again.”
My throat tightened. “Copy that.”
A beat passed. Then, so quietly I might have missed it “Not unless I kiss you first.”
My breath caught. “June.”
Her silence said everything she wouldn’t.
I wanted to say a hundred things. That I missed her. That I was sorry. That she still made everything inside me short-circuit. But I didn’t want to scare her off. Not when she’d just started to come closer.
So instead, I said, “Okay.”
Simple. Soft. Enough.
I hoped.
“I’ll text you,” she murmured.
“Looking forward to it.”
She hung up first.
I sat there for a long time afterward, phone still in my hand, forehead pressed to my palms, trying to convince myself thatfake datingwasn’t going to be the actual death of me.
Because if I kissed her again — on purpose, for show, with cameras watching and her mouth that close and her body against mine and a crowd of people pretending we were already in love?
I was never walking away clean.
I must have been sitting theretoolong, because a PA knocked on my door, giving me five minutes until make-up would be calling for me.
I was tempted to leave my phone in my trailer. One less thing for me to obsess about instead of doing my job — I was on thin enough ice already.
But as I rose from my pity party, my phone buzzed on the couch.
JUNE BUG
Can I come over tonight?
JUST TO TALK
Stupid fucking grin on my stupid fucking face.
Shoot ends at 7. I’ll pick you up.
CHAPTER 25
Shoot ends at 7. I’ll pick you up.
So now all I had to do was… tell my dad that former superstar and actor in one of his favorite movies — he saw the original movies in theaters, I was just a precursor kid — was going to be at our doorstep in less than an hour.
Cool. Fine. Totally normal Friday.
I stared at the message until the words blurred, then shoved my phone deep into my pocket like I could bury the whole situation with it.
Dad was in the kitchen when I padded in. He had his readers pushed up on his head like sunglasses and was using a steak knife to open a package instead of scissors.
“Hey,” I said.
