The door shut behind me just as I looked up to see Sunny pushing a reluctant Angel through the door of a bathroom which was conjoined to the next bedroom over.
I gasped.
I’d been tricked. Bamboozled!
“Graham!” I shouted as I rapped my fist on the door. “You lied to me!”
“Not technically,” he protested. “I asked if you would believe me if I told you Mackenzie broke her costume. I didn’t say she actually did.”
“I don’t have time for your drama on my set,” Sunny said through the other door.
“Me neither,” I yelled back, as Angel slid down the wall and onto the floor.
“And I’m not about to choose between you two,” Sunny said. “So work it out.”
“You’re dead to me, Graham,” I called back to him.
“Don’t listen to him, Graham,” Sunny shouted. “You haven’t lived if you’ve never been dead to Luca.”
“Can confirm,” Angel mumbled.
I let myself really look at him for the first time as he ran his fingers over the shredded knee of his jeans.
“And please keep the yelling to a minimum,” Sunny said. “We’re trying to make a movie out here.”
I tugged on the doorknob just to confirm that yes, we were indeed locked in like some TV episode where everything is resolved in eighteen minutes.
A sigh that sounded more like a whimper slipped from me as I rested my forehead against the door. My back burned at the feeling of Angel’s gaze on me.
But why would he even be looking at me? He certainly couldn’t bother to tell me he was skipping off to Europe with his ex-boyfriend. There was nothing he could possibly say in the next hour that would make me forgive him. The best Sunny and Graham could hope for is that I would be calm and gracious enough to work alongside him for the rest of the shoot without airing his tagged Instagram laundry.
And I was calm—without him. I’d moved on. But how could I possibly be expected to stay calm over someone who reappeared without any kind of warning or explanation?
I pulled myself as upright as I could go, as though my spine was made of steel. I turned to face him with as much aloof poise as I could manage.
He stood too, ruffling a hand through the styled curls at the top of his head. The move pulled the hem of his T-shirt up, exposing a slice of lean stomach with a trail of dark hair leading into his boxers. My eyes were pulled there, and then they lifted back to his long fingers in his hair, to his teeth digging into his lip as he slowly dropped his hand.
“Well, are we doing the talking thing?” Angel asked, his voice low and smooth.
And with my best Vivien Leigh eyebrow lift, and with all the violet femme-flavored agony I felt the night of Vanya’s party, I replied.
“I don’t talk to ghosts.”
Chapter Two
“Fine,” Angel said as he stepped closer to me. “We don’t have to talk. There are plenty of things we’re good at that don’t involve saying a single word.”
I hated this feeling. This feeling of being angry and hurt and rejected—and like I wanted nothing more in the world than to pull him to me until he was as close as my own shadow.
Angel moved toward me, his foot between mine.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I muttered, as I stared down at the paint-splattered toe of his boot.
He hooked a finger under my chin, lifting my eyes to meet his.
Everything flooded back all at once, because it was never actually gone. The last two years of wanting from afar and then our frenzied Christmas romance... it was all there just below the surface, and now my throat was dry and my skin was warm and all I wanted was just to run my fingers through his hair.
So I did.
