I bit my tongue to stop myself from saying that no one would be able to tell from a single still image, that faking it didn’t need to be this dramatic. Instead, I climbed into Ward’s lap and hoped like hell that he wouldn’t realize how much I liked it.
“Better,” Ward said, resting a hand on my hip, taking one last sip of his soda before setting the bottle down and grabbing my phone again. “Now my mouth is apple-ginger soda flavored, so it’ll be easier for you to pretend to want to kiss me.”
“It doesn’t need to be easier,” I said, which felt like a mistake as soon as the words passed my lips.
Ward only grinned at me. “Right, because you’re Mr. Professional Kisser.”
“You’re making me sound like a gigolo.”
“Is that not what you do?” Ward asked, quirking an eyebrow. “All this time I’ve been assuming— “
Whatever else he was going to say, I drowned it out by swooping in and kissing him.
I meant to keep it chaste, just a brush of my mouth against Ward’s, but then his lips parted and his fingers tightened on my hip, and if I was supposed to resist that then I didn’t know how. A saint would’ve been tempted to lap at his upper lip and scoot closer to him so we were pressed together from hip to chest, and I was no saint.
He really did taste of apple-ginger soda and I was seventeen again, at our last county fair together, wondering what he’d say if I just kissed him, if I dragged him behind a stall as the sun set, where no one could see us, and kissed the taste of it out of his mouth like I’d always wanted to.
Ward’s hand slipped down to my butt as he pulled me closer and there was no way in hell he was getting that on camera but I didn’t care. I didn’t care as I bit down on his lip and curled my hand around his shoulder and just barely stopped myself from grinding against him like I’d wanted to since I first saw him again.
Dammit.
It took a lot to pull away, but I made myself do it. Ward wasn’t mine to kiss like this. Not really. I’d already asked for so much more than he should have given me and he just kept giving and giving.
Ward’s bitten lip glistened in the sunlight as he let his head fall back against the crabapple tree and laughed. Laughed like he always had, like I’d always wanted him to.
I should have been putting a stop to this.
But dammit, my life had been a mess for longer than I could remember, and no one had ever looked at me like he did, and I didn’t want it to stop. Not now, not ever.
Like always, I was weak.
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks, huh?” Ward asked, straying hand safely back on my hip, my phone loose in the other one.
I don’t kiss my co-stars like that, I didn’t say.
I could only have this if it was fake.
Right?
“They pay me peanuts,” I said instead.
“Well, I don’t have any peanuts.” Ward set the phone down and reached out for the picnic basket, which he’d packed an actual picnic in because he was a sweetheart.
I wanted to ask him what we were really doing here. It didn’tfeellike a fake date.
It felt real.
But I was too scared to tell him that in case it all went away, and I lost my only chance to enjoy something I’d wanted for as long as I could remember.
“But I do have two slices of Grandma Maud’s chocolate cake. Dad made it, don’t worry.”
“I’m sure you’ve learned to tell the difference between sugar and salt by now,” I said as the taste of Ward’s first and only attempt at his grandma’s recipe came back to haunt me as though it was still in my mouth.
He’d tried, that was the main thing.
But I’d never forgotten biting into that cake and pretending there was nothing wrong with it. If I was ever going to win an Oscar, it should have been for that performance.
I’d gotten through half the slice before Ward tasted it and realized what had happened because I hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings.
