Page 54 of Romance Is Dead

Letting his hands slip from my shoulders, he raked them through his hair. “I don’t understand what about that scene could possibly. . .” A dawning realization crossed his face. “Are you jealous?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. As distraught as I’d been mere moments ago, I still didn’t want to admit he was right. But I was in no position to lie when tears still clung to my eyelashes. “Yes, ok fine, maybe I am! Which I know is stupid and you can laugh at me if you want. Again, like last night. And then can we please, for the love of God, forget about this?” I reached for the handle of the screen door.

Teddy slammed a hand against the frame, blocking my path. “Why do you think I gave you such a hard time last night?” His voice was quiet, deathly calm.

“What do you mean?”

“When I teased you about trying to hook up with Brent?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea—you give me a hard time about everything. I figured it was business as usual.”

“No. It was because I hated it.”

“What?”

“Seeing you with him. Talking to him all night, sticking by his side. Flirting.” He gritted his teeth. “I. Hated. It. But I couldn’t do anything about it—that was your choice to make. So I joked about it instead. Because that’s how I could cope.”

The confession took me off guard, and I struggled to compute. “You were jealous too?”

Teddy moved closer, backing me slowly against the wall. I was grateful for the support, my knees suddenly weak. This time, I didn’t notice the scraping prickliness of the bricks, focusing instead on the way Teddy’s arm was snaking around my waist.

“Yes. I was jealous.” He leaned in until I could feel his breath in my ear, sending shivers of pleasure down my spine. “And for the record, I was hitting on you. And if you had said yes, I would have fucked you right there against the wall.”

The air whooshed out of my lungs, leaving me unable to reply. But I didn’t need to, because then Teddy reached up to cradle the back of my head, cushioning it from the bricks before he pressed his mouth to mine.

The kiss was gentle at first, like a question. But then we both surged forward, rough and urgent, like we didn’t know how starved we’d been until we had a taste. Teddy pinned me against the wall, engulfing my senses—the taste of his mouth like peppermint, the sound of small groans as I raked my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer. The feel of his body pressing against mine as he dipped his mouth to my neck, his hand gripping my hip hard enough that I hoped it left a bruise. He was everywhere, and it was everything—relief from an aching need that had been building for only God knew how long. I didn’t want it to end, content to stay there pressed against the wall forever if it meant I never had to give up this feeling.

I deepened the kiss, my arms twining around his neck, and he matched my intensity, gripping my hips to his.

“Teddy?” The voice came from inside the house. But not deep inside the house—it was close.

I pulled back, gasping. “I think that was Natasha.”

“Shit.” Teddy’s eyes were hazy and he blinked to clear them. His lips were puffy.I did that, I thought. But then, Natasha called again.

“Go!” I ran a hand across my collarbone, trying to catch my breath. “She’s looking for you.”

Teddy grabbed for the screen door, thought better of it, and turned to press his lips to mine once before loping inside. I was left alone on the porch, grinning like a fool. I brought my fingers to my lips, caressing them where Teddy’s mouth had been just moments before. I could still smell his woodsy scent.

I closed my eyes, trying to relive the kiss before the spell broke. If I hadn’t been before, now I was well and truly fucked.

Chapter Seventeen

I played our kiss on replay for the rest of the day.

After Natasha called Teddy back to set, I’d made a beeline for the hotel. Motoring down the back roads, I’d cranked up the radio, desperate for a distraction—only for “Bohemian Rhapsody” to come galloping out of the speakers. It took me right back to the night we’d questioned Scott in the props trailer, except this time, I knew exactly what it would have felt like to end that night with a kiss.

Pulling into a parking spot at the hotel, I remembered the way he’d murmured my name as we caught our breath. As I retreated to my room and changed into sweats, I relived the precise way his thumb had traced my cheekbone, desperate yet tender. And as I’d tried to distract myself by crocheting row after row of my blanket, I pictured the way he’d leaned in for one more before hurrying inside.

God, it’d been perfect. Better than I’d imagined. It had been knee-quaking, stomach-melting, toe-curlingly good.

Every time I replayed it in my mind, I imagined what could have happened if the kiss hadn’t been on the back porch, but somewhere private. If Teddy’s hand hadn’t stopped on my waistband, but dipped lower. If we’d been alone and I was able to have all of him and not just a taste.

But the fantasies eventually gave way to different images—memories of the last time I’d trusted an actor with my heart. Memories of opening my phone to embarrassing photos, of tabloid headlines speculating on whether the paunch on my belly was a bad angle or pregnancy. Phone calls from my dad asking if there was a wedding that I hadn’t told him about.

I couldn’t let myself go through that again, not when I’d dealt with the fallout of my failed movie just months ago. It didn’t matter how good the kiss was.

By the time a knock came at my door at precisely seven o’clock, my head was swimming from so much back and forth between blissful fantasies and traumatic memories. I padded to the peephole, peering through. It was Mara, holding what appeared to be a brown paper bag of takeout and an extra-large bottle of wine.

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