Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 44459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 222(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
“Yeah.” My voice was hushed. “I just want you to know it won’t always be like that. It’s been a while for me, and you . . .” We’d been through so much, it made it a little easier to say how I felt. “I’m really into you, Saint Charles.”
She sucked in a breath, and it took her an eternity to say anything, but her soft words were full of weight. “Me too, North Side.”
“Good.” My tone lightened. “So, dinner.”
“Can we order in?”
“So we can go straight to the good part after?” I teased, although I was entirely serious.
She nodded. “That was my thought, yeah.”
I sat up, swiped my pants off the floor, and dug into the pocket to retrieve my phone. When I swiped up, my screen showed me the last thing I’d had open—my text messages.
I swallowed thickly, both wanting and not wanting to know. “Hey, I sent you the link to my article earlier today. Did you read it?”
“I did.”
That was it? I pivoted around to face her, but her expression was unreadable.
“Okay, you’re killing me. What did you think?” I wasn’t fishing for compliments or validation. It was the fact that she was the only person in the world who knew all the things the article didn’t say.
“It was good, Tyler.” She sat up and rested her chin on my shoulder, putting our faces side-by-side. “It was really, really good.”
I let out a tight breath. It was stunning how much her opinion mattered to me. More than my editor’s . . . more than anyone else’s.
“Was it hard to write?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. And not just because I had to lie, or leave out the truth,” I said. “It was because it made me remember parts of the night I didn’t want to. When I look back on it, all I want to think about is the time when I was with you.”
She nodded in understanding, but then she straightened, taking away the heat of her body. “In that case, I need to ask you for a really big favor.”
My heart beat faster. “What is it?”
“I wrote a screenplay about it. It’s totally out of my comfort zone, and I don’t know if I’ll do anything with it, but . . . would you read it?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but the words must not have come fast enough for her, because anxiety flooded her eyes. The thought running through her head was loud in her eyes. Abort, abort.
“I know,” she said quickly. “Asking someone to read your screenplay is sort of like asking if they want a root canal, and you just said you don’t want to think about that night, but writing it was kind of therapeutic and—”
I cupped a hand on her face, holding her gaze steady on me. “Of course I’ll read it.”
Now it was her turn to let out a tight breath and she melted into me. “You’ll be the only one who knows it was real.”
I leaned in and kissed her, slow and softly.
It wasn’t lost on me that I’d spent much of that night not knowing what was real. But as our kiss deepened, it only solidified how real our feelings were for each other. The last time we’d talked about screenplays, she’d said hers was based on love at first sight, and I’d told her I didn’t believe it existed.
Well . . . I was starting to come around to the idea.