“Don’t be late.”
He kissed me.
For the first time since that night, he kissed me, and I feel it in every inch of my body. My nerve endings are on fire.
Scurrying away, I head back toward Tahnee, feeling the weight of every set of eyes on me, knowing I just revealed a part of myself that I thought never even existed until now.
Jealousy.
And I’m kicking myself that I let it take over.
It’s quiet for a long moment. The only people deep in conversation are Jude and Cole, going over the script with Jude instructing him on how he wants it to play out.
“Places, people!” Laurel shouts, and everyone suddenly remembers that they’re on the set of a movie with a job to do.
Bodies rush past us to get to their places when Jude finally calls out “action.”
Tahnee and I stand side-by-side, watching as the scene plays out. Mara and Cole are going back and forth with their lines before she nudges her shoulder into mine. “What?” I hiss quietly.
“Just admit that you find him attractive, and I’ll drop it.” She shrugs.
“Is it a crime to find a man attractive, Tahnee? Because if it is,” I say, my eyes scanning the room. My voice is still consciously low, checking out every single man I can. “I would be in prison. That guy over there behind that camera, I think his name isCallum, he’s cute. The guy next to him isn’t bad, either. Even Jude is alright for an older dude.”
“But would you fuck them, Jenna? Would you let them do to you what you happily andwillinglylet Cole do to you three weeks ago?” she retorts, and my body shudders at the thought ofanyonedoing any of that to me. Because if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t think there’s anyone on the face of the planet I would let do those things to me.
He made me feel comfortable in a way that no other person had, and that’s just a fact.
While he didn’t force me to keep the lights on, he compromised with a dimmed lamp. I didn’t tell him that I was self conscious, but I think it was pretty obvious.
He practically begged me to sit on his face, not caring if my weight would be too much. I could’ve suffocated him or broken his neck. He claimed it would be the best way to go out.
“A man could only be so lucky,” he’d said.
He openly told a room of over a hundred people that I belonged to him. And no matter how frustrated it made me, no one has ever wanted me publicly before.
Even if it was all for show.
Not even my own mother.
“No,” I confess. “I wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean I would let him do it again,” I say, attempting to cover my tracks, right as my phone rings, saving the day. “I have to take this.” I hurry out of earshot to anyone without looking at the screen before I answer it, regretting my decision to do so immediately.
“Hi, Jennifer,” my mom’s raspy voice radiates through the speaker of my phone, and into my ear. I’m immediately on high alert. My body can usually sense how the conversation is going to go before we even have it, and right now, it’s telling me to hang up and call her back in a week’s time. Maybe she’ll just…forget.
“Mom, hey,” I reply, frantically hurrying around the grounds of Wingrove Estates in search of a place of solitude, deciding on Harley’s empty office.
Cassandra wasn’t kidding.
The only piece of personality here is an orchid, and the photo of her framed on his desk.
“Please, don’t call me that. You know I’m too young to be a mother,” she warns, as if she’s about to ground me if I don’t do as she asks.
She likes to remind me subtly that if she could go back in time, the choices she would make in life would be very different, and I wouldn’t be here.
“You’re fifty, Becky. Don’t act like you’re a teen mom who gets judged for stepping foot out of her house.” I roll my eyes and wait for the inevitable ear bashing that’s about to come my way.
“Keep it down, would you? God knows who’s around you listening to our conversation? They don’t need to know private things about me.” Did I mention that my birth giver is paranoid, too?
“What do you need, Becky?”
