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He sniffed. “You make me happy,” he said softly. “But I want you to have the best role ever. You deserve the lead in all the best plays. I don’t want you to stay in the ensemble because of me.”
I reached up to brush a tear away with my thumb. “I wasn’t about to let anyone else kiss you, Jem Sinclair. That’s my job.”
He looked horrified. Before he could squawk out an argument, I quickly corrected him. “It wasn’t only because of you. I didn’t get a good feeling about a couple of the people involved. My gut told me not to take it. Something else will come along when the time is right for a change. Now is not that time. Not when we’re having this much fun and the show is sold out every night.”
Jem smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Good. So maybe you can go to Colorado? You said you weren’t sure.”
“My brother is getting married in June. That’s why my mom called just now. I texted her at the theater to ask when the wedding was in case it conflicted with the trip. It doesn’t. So, yes. I can go to Aster Valley.”
He blew out a breath and shook out his arms and shoulders. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had so much to drink on an empty stomach.” He looked around at our friends, who were watching the two of us like a telenovela. “Shit,” he breathed. “Dawson…”
I reached around to clasp the back of his neck before pulling him in for a possessive kiss, not at all caring that it was the third time Jem and I had kissed in front of an audience that day, because this was the kiss that mattered most.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “So what if they know we’re together now? We are together, right?”
“Yeah,” Jem murmured. “We definitely are.”
Everyone around us erupted in cheers and shouts of “It’s about time!” I tried ignoring all of them so I could kiss Jem again.
And again.
With as much practice as I’d had kissing him, it still made my stomach flip every single time.
Now he was mine and I was his, even when the curtain closed and the lights went out.
I stood up and reached for his hand. It was time for celebrating but not with a crowd. “Let’s go home.”
The cold night air sobered him up a little, and when we reached our apartment building, he’d decided to be completely mortified by his behavior at the bar.
“I’m sorry,” he said for the tenth time since leaving the Retro. “I didn’t mean to freak out. I would completely understand if—”
I shut him up with a kiss in front of the building. I knew he’d been trying to give me an out, and I didn’t want it. Kissing him was way more fun than arguing.
He tasted like alcohol which was sexy as fuck. “Upstairs,” I said against his mouth. “No more talking.”
Jem looked at me with a teasing grin. “What in the world will we do instead of talking?”
“Rehearse,” I said, reaching past him to unlock the door.
“Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully, trailing behind me into the small entry and up the stairs. “Funny you should say that, because I’ve been thinking it might be time to… shake things up a little bit.”
“Is that right?” I pushed him up against my apartment door and ran my teeth over the curve of his chin, just because I could. “My kisses getting too predictable for you, Jem?”
Jem shivered in my arms, his fingers helplessly clenching my waist, and I smirked a little bit smugly before touching my lips to—
“Oof,” I said a second later as Jem reversed our positions and my back thumped against the door. “Hey, what—” My words and my thoughts cut off abruptly as the man—my man—threaded both hands into my hair and pulled me down into a fiery, consuming kiss that left me breathless and hard as a rock.
“Holy shit, baby,” I moaned. “That was… that was…”
“That was improvisation, Dawson,” he whispered, grinning broadly. “Just go with it.”
I laughed out loud. Then I bent my head and touched my smiling mouth to his.
This man would keep me on my toes for the rest of my days, and I couldn’t fucking wait.
The kiss would be different every night. But as long as it was me and Jem, it was always going to be perfect.
11
JEM - SIX MONTHS LATER
The kiss was different tonight.
But now the world knew the story behind our relationship. John had accidentally outed Dawson and me as a couple during an interview about a month after the cast party, and the media had gone crazy over it. The two of us could hardly go anywhere in the city without being recognized from the billboards, interviews, and social media blasts.
The show continued to be one of the hottest tickets on Broadway, and they’d begun rehearsals for a traveling version of it. A couple of our cast and crewmates had been lured onto the traveling show and would be leaving us later this summer. Both Chris and Kota were leaving with the tour, which had made it really easy to finally make my moving in with Dawson official. We’d pretty much been living together in his apartment since the beginning, but now it truly felt like my home as much as his.
