Jordan runs a hand through my hair. He edges off me, just slightly. “You’re so incredibly beautiful,” he says. I feel his gaze on me, and it makes my whole body blush. I don’t know what to say, so instead I lean forward and kiss him.
It feels painfully good. Our veins are electric wires. I want to touch him everywhere, and I know he feels the same way because our hands can’t move fast enough. I run them over his skin, marveling at how his breath constricts and expands based on where I touch him. I love that I have this effect on him. It’s heady, weightless. It makes me feel powerful in a way I never have been before.
I let my fingers dip into the top of his jeans, and he grips my hips tightly and groans into my shoulder.
I can’t catch my breath. I fumble with the clasp on his belt. I want to remove every remaining barrier between us.
He picks his head up and our eyes meet. My hands are still at his hips. “I want…,” I start. I feel his body tense above mine, and then he’s touching my cheek. He runs his thumb back and forth across the skin.
“Tell me,” he says. His voice is strained. “Tell me what you want.”
Everything. I want everything. I want to go somewhere with him I’ve never been with anyone before. I want to close my eyes and just feel him. Be with him. For one night I want us to be the only two people in the world.
But then it comes in—the dark cloud of reality. I see it cover my face and then his until it leaves us both in shadows. We’re not. We’re not the only two people in the world.
Photos of us barely touching sent everything into a tailspin. And I know no one is here now. I know it’s just us. But tomorrow it won’t be. Tomorrow it will be Rainer and Jessica and then L.A. and Sandy and Greg—this whole universe where we’re not alone. Where we can’t be.
“I want you,” I say. “So much. You have to know that.” I run my hand over his forehead. I don’t want to say what I have to next: “But we can’t.”
Jordan sits up. He pulls me with him. “No,” he says. He shakes his head. “Paige, I—that stuff I said before, about letting you go? I was wrong.”
I close my eyes. I feel the tears come, and I will them away. “You weren’t,” I say.
He picks my chin up and kisses me softly on the lips. My eyes flutter open. I see his—those deep, dark pools of intensity. I can’t look away when he says: “I just wanted one night.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But if you stay here and we do this, what is tomorrow going to be like?”
“I don’t care about tomorrow.” His black eyes look into mine, and they’re so beautiful, so pained, I want to weep.
I kiss his forehead. His cheek. The edge of his temple. “You do,” I whisper. “This would just make it worse.”
“How much worse can it get?” he says. His face flushes, and for a moment I’m afraid. I see his helpless anger flare and then retreat. “The world hates me. They think I broke up the Golden Couple—and maybe I did. I’ve been trying to prove something to Rainer, to get his friendship back, but I’m just tired. I’m tired of lying to him and you and mostly myself. Because the truth is we haven’t been friends in a really, really long time. What we had, back when we were brothers? That was lifetimes ago. We’re never going to get back there. Too much has happened.”
“It isn’t irreversible,” I protest. I know how much they once meant to each other. That kind of love doesn’t go away.
Jordan takes my hands in his. “It’s never going to be what you want it to be because we’re both always going to want you.”
I think about Rainer’s words.I don’t think that makes you confused, Paige. I think that makes you selfish.
“This is my fault,” I say. “I called you. I betrayed him. You tried to stay away and I just… You were right when you said we needed time. We should be taking time.”
“No,” Jordan says. His words are fierce, determined. “Imoved your room.Icame here tonight. No amount of time is going to fix this because I don’t want it fixed. I don’t want it to go away. Paige, can’t you see? I’m in love with you.”
Love.Four letters. One syllable. It’s the thing I have wanted to hear from him since that day on the beach. Possibly even since I met him. I have wanted it so badly that I didn’t even dare dream about it. I haven’t let myself think about what it would be like to hear it from him because it seemed like it would never happen. That it couldn’t.
I’m about to answer. To say, instinctively, what I feel, too, when the doorbell rings. My eyes go wide, and I scramble to put my robe back on. My first thought is: Rainer.
I don’t tell him to, but Jordan hangs back. I walk to the door, take a deep breath, and open it.
But it’s just the bellman. My suitcases. Those goddamn suitcases. I hold the door open as he carries and deposits them into the walk-in closet off the hallway.
I find my wallet on the minibar counter and press a bill into his hand. “Thank you,” I say.
The door closes, and I hear Jordan move out from the darkness behind me. I exhale and turn around. The lights from the window are casting shadows on his face, so his eyes are hidden. I want to cross the room, take his hand, and pull him into the light. I want to pick up exactly where we left off. To tell him I love him, too. Of course I do.
But this last moment is like a bucket of cold water splashed straight to the face—wake up—and I realize something. I realize the way I feel about him. Love, yes, but something else, too. Responsibility. I want to help him—I always have. Just like Rainer has always wanted to help me.
When Jordan first got to set, I wanted to make things better. For Rainer, at first, but then for Jordan. I wanted to understand him. Then I wanted to protect him from the way I felt about Rainer. I wanted to make fame easier for him, his past less painful. I wanted to put my arms around him and make it better. But I can’t. Because I can’t see him in the light. I can’t beseenwith him in the light. And he needs to be with someone who can.
