Rainer runs his palm up and down the back of the sofa.
“These last few months, away from you—it’s been scary, but it has also felt good. I want to be able to do stuff on my own and not feel like I need you by my side. I don’t want us to be together because weneedeach other. I want us to be together because wewanteach other. As Rainer and Paige, not Noah and August.”
Rainer nods. He doesn’t say anything.
“I haven’t been fair to you,” I say. “I punished you for keeping me at arm’s length and not thinking I could handle things when I gave you no reason to believe I could. I took no responsibility for myself. I left it all up to you. I don’t want to be that girl anymore.”
I get quiet, and Rainer’s eyes study my face. “Can I say something now?” he asks.
I nod.
“I was wrong,” he says. “But not for following my dad’s advice. Honestly, Paige, telling me to go after you might have been the one good thing my father has ever done. I was wrong to think you had to be protected. I’ve just seen fame destroy people. And I didn’t want you to end up like Britney. I didn’t want you to fall and not have me there to catch you.” Rainer swallows. “But you’re stronger than I gave you credit for, and I want you to be. What kind of guy would I be if I didn’t want you to be everything you are? Look, Paige, I don’t want to make this harder for you. If you say we’re done, then that’s your choice, and I’ll respect it. But I also need you to know I haven’t taken myself out of the running.”
I look up at him. His blue eyes are so clear and bright. The hope stings me. Burns me right at the heart.
“I still want to be with you,” he says simply. “Now, on our terms. I just need you to know that.”
He looks down at me and smiles. That dazzling, megawatt, movie-star smile. And then he kisses me. It happens in a split second. Blink, his lips are on mine.
It has been so long since we’ve kissed, but I remember him perfectly. He’s so familiar to me here, now—back on Maui, where we know how to be together. My body remembers him. He presses a hand gently against the back of my head, tangles his fingers in my hair. And then, just as quickly as he began, he pulls back, touching his forehead to mine. “There is a lot of good here,” he says. I feel his breath on my cheek. His eyelashes tickle my face.
“I know,” I whisper.
I think about that advice people are always giving out—follow your heart. What they forget to tell you is that your heart can want many things at once. It can want love and romance and friendship all at the same time. It can feel betrayed and compelled. It can feel swollen and broken. Our hearts are big. There is room in there to hold a lot. There is room in there to hold two people.
We don’t waste any time getting started on rehearsals. Late nights, early mornings. Working with green screens and harnesses and animatronic plants. This is what our training was for, but it’s still a steep learning curve here, on set. We’re suspended from ropes fifty feet in the air. It’s terrifying, but pretty awesome. Our stunts inLockedseemed massive, but like any good franchise, they just keep upping the stakes.
Alfonso is exacting. There is no room for mistakes. Every second is scheduled. Wyatt was passionate, incredibly demanding, but Alfonso’s method is totally different. He gives us more free rein. He doesn’t talk through scenes with us; he just expects us to know. Some of the time we do, but other times I find myself missing Wyatt’s direction. Even if more often than not he was screaming it.
I can tell Rainer and Jordan feel it, too.
The three of us are trying our best, but to me we feel like planets orbiting around each other, never fully coming in contact. Alfonso encourages what he calls a “spotlessly professional” atmosphere, so for the most part, their tension goes unnoticed, played off as method acting on the parts of Ed and Noah.
We’re rehearsing a fight scene four days in. Ed and Noah are having it out. It’s a scene from later in the book, almost at the end, but we’re shooting it early. Alfonso is with us on the soundstage, and Jessica stands next to him. I figured she would follow Wyatt onto his next project, but she’s back with us. When I asked her about it, she shrugged and said it felt like something she needed to see through. It’s nice to have her here. It makes things on set feel way more normal.
“I trusted you,” Jordan says. “And you betrayed me.”
“You betrayed me years ago, Ed,” Rainer says. “When you told me I shouldn’t be with her, that it had to be you. I listened to you. And all along, all you had were your own interests at heart.”
“No,” Jordan says. “I had hers.”
The press loves to talk about how real life is imitating fiction, how we’ve become our characters, stuck in this love triangle. I think, in a strange way, we’ve believed it, too. Rainer wasn’t the only one who went in search of real life to imitate fiction. We’re all guilty of it.
On the first movie, I was afraid of not being able to be August. AfterLockedcame out, I was afraid of not being able to be Paige the Movie Star. To live up to everyone’s expectations. But standing here watching them, I begin to see that we’ve been drinking way too much Kool-Aid. We’re not our characters. Jordan isn’t Ed, and Rainer isn’t Noah. Not even close.
And perhaps most important, I’m not August.
I’m Paige Townsen. And I’m not choosing between Rainer and Jordan for the rest of my life, because I’m eighteen. I’m not supernatural; I’mhuman. And most likely I will fall in love again, maybe even a few times. August thinks that the choice between Ed and Noah is the last one she’ll ever make. It’s forever. But this isn’t about forever. Jake was right—it’s aboutnow. And right now I don’t want this fiction to be our reality. Not anymore.
Alfonso calls break, and Jordan goes to grab his phone. I see him looking at Rainer and me, and then he jogs over.
“Hey, we have to get on Skype,” he says.
Rainer swigs some water out of a Save the Whales jug Jake gave him. “What?”
“Alexis is doing that school visit for Do Something,” I remind him. “We told her we’d join in.”
“Oh right,” Rainer says. “What’s she doing with them again?”
