Page 16 of Mad for Madison

His eyebrows curved, brow creasing. In the smallest, faintest whisper, he said, “It was all for show.”

I swallowed hard. Now that it was here, the disappointment felt no different than all the dread that had built up in me over the days. “I know that.”

“Then you know we shouldn’t.”

I blinked. “Shouldn’t or can’t?”

“We’re friends,” Madison said with no conviction.

“Are we?” I asked, risking it all in my most destructive moment. I liked him as a friend, but I would forever look at him as something impossible. Was that the way to treat your friends?

“I make porn, Bradley,” he said, his voice tinged with darkness.

It provoked a crazed laugh from me. “And how does that make you different from everyone else in this hotel?”

“It makes me different from you,” he said, his voice growing more strained with each word he said, as if he exerted physical force over it.

“Not in my eyes,” I said.

His dark brown eyes widened, fire burning within them, and he dropped his gaze briefly as if to take my measure. “Are you sure about that? Sure that when we wake up, you won’t hate me for what I do?”

I never would have spoken so freely to anyone. Maybe it was all the booze that gave me the false courage, but I persisted. “It was your idea that I should have a dream night. This is my dream night.”

The muscles in his face tightened.

I took a step back, reading the answer from his face. “Unless you don’t want me. I wouldn’t want…”

“It’s not that,” Madison said quickly, interrupting me before I could make sure he understood. I wouldn’t have asked him to just be with me like it was an exchange of services. “You’re just so…normal.”

I snorted as I turned away from him. “Really? Boring, you mean.” I had nothing else to lose. I’d already embarrassed myself by asking, and the heat in my face told me it was visible to Madison. I’d squandered any chance of being friends with him, too. Why not wallow in self-pity and destroy whatever remained to us? “I understand.”

What I hadn’t expected was the way this would anger him. “Are you kidding?” he demanded. “I never said that, Bradley. You’re never boring to me.”

I shook my head, refusing to face him. “I’m sorry, Madison. I must have misunderstood. These suits, us getting to know each other, the party, and then the hotel room with just one bed… Forget I said anything.”

“No,” Madison said. “You’re putting all the wrong words into my mouth. When I say you’re normal, I mean that you have everything I can’t have.”

I pursed my lips for a few long heartbeats. “I thought you weren’t ashamed of what you did.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I got so much more than what I was given. I made it against all odds. But…” He let the silence linger between us for one long, unbearable moment. “I feel like I would taint you if we slept together.”

It provoked another snort from me. “You suggested hooking up with another actor.”

“Because they don’t know you,” Madison said in anger that was less restrained than before. It made me turn around to look at him. His eyes were ablaze, and the space between his eyebrows was wrinkled with a frown. “It wouldn’t have meant something to either one of you.”

My eyebrows lifted, eyes widening. “I…didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Madison said. “I made sure of that.”

My heart zigzagged like a rabbit running from a fierce predator. “You like me.” As if by instinct, I took a step closer to him.

The bluntness of my question made him stop. “I can’t like anyone.” He didn’t come any closer to me, but he didn’t pull away, either.

“But you do,” I said, seeing the facade crumble from his face. A much more vulnerable creature existed underneath the confident swagger, and it was this that I found beautiful.

“It goes wrong every time,” Madison said, anger gone from his voice and replaced by hopelessness. His chest lifted and fell as he breathed, his gaze locked onto my face, his lips so full and defined that I wanted to beg him to kiss me. Just one kiss to give me something to cherish when I returned to the real world.

“It won’t go wrong,” I told him. “We’ll make rules.”

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