CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It may be a cliché—the romance heroine draped over the hero in bed, wrapped up in sheets and probably having just whisperedwow—but I don’t care. I’ve lost my grasp on time and place, on fiction and reality and everything in between.
All my mental real estate is devoted to how good it feels, being here with Grant, and how unthinkable it is that we didn’t end up here sooner—his pulse beating warm under my fingers, his fingertips trailing idly up and down my arm, until he lifts my hand and looks it over.
“Say what you will about Zach Beaumont,” he says, eyeing the gargantuan diamond still adorning my finger. “I bet all the jewelers love him.”
I groan at the eyesore, twisting it off my finger to throw it across the room.
“And Savannah could pitch for the Red Sox,” Grant adds.
I settle back against him with a contented sigh. “Not my first rodeo, believe it or not. In third grade, Brock Kowalski proposed to me with a Ring Pop. I threw it at his head.”
“Yeah, I can’t see you with a Brock. It sounds like you made the right call.”
“I know. It was the proposal rejection every little girl dreams of.”
Grant takes my hand, lazily entwining our fingers. Without the diamond monstrosity, I’m left only with a thin gold band to match the one he still has on.
It’s strange, I think, seeing our hands together. I don’t hate it—the little slip of gold we each wear, marking us as a pair. Funny how the fictional version of something can be so sweet when the reality gives me hives.
“So,” Grant says, kissing my shoulder, “now that we’ve crossed over into your genre of expertise, what do you think happens next?”
“Honestly?” I blow out a deeply thoughtful breath. “Just smut, I hope. No more plot. Only pornography.”
His laugh rumbles through me. “No arguments here.”
“With occasional breaks for late-night walks and dinner.”
“And tourism,” he adds. “All this time in London and so many sights still unseen. I expect a full chapter of us riding the London Eye.”
“And you calling out misinformation at the British Museum.”
“And you trying in vain to make the royal guards laugh.”
“Now, that’s where you’re deluding yourself,” I say. “I would break them.”
He smiles, and it’s a moment I wish I could pause just to live in it a little longer. All these moments, actually—these little scenarios we’re inventing, just me and Grant doing ordinary things, with no plot structure to adhere to. It’s a nice thought and makes me ache a little.
Grant angles toward me, propping his head on his arm. “You think we ever would have met in real life? If it weren’t for the book, I mean. If things were different.”
I think about it. If our normal lives werereallife; both of usgoing about our daily business on the same plane of existence. Just a few miles apart at any given moment, completely unaware of each other.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess we never really ran in the same circles.”
“Yeah. Not a lot of overlap between ass-kicking thrill seekers and faculty trivia teams.”
It’s not just that, I know. If we did have some chance encounter, I suspect that’s where it would have ended. I’d never have let myself get so close to him.
It’s a sad alternate reality to consider.
“It would have been a shame,” I say. “Not to know you. I would have been missing out.”
He smiles. “Me too.”
“And maybe it’s for the best, that it all happened the way it did,” I say. “Even if things were different, if wedidcross paths, we wouldn’t have had such a great meet-cute.”
Grant eyes me dubiously. “Would we call that a meet-cute?”
