Page 38 of #Starstruck

I’d left Chase’s sweater on the coffee table so I wouldn’t forget to return it to him. I picked it up. “He’s not my man. We’re not dating.”

“Yet. You’re headed down the road to Relationship City.”

“It’s more of a flirtationship.”

“Do you at least know if his intentions are honorable?” Gavin asked, pausing the movie.

Lexi giggled. I rolled my eyes. “We’re hanging out. Not discovering Plymouth Rock.”

I had started stroking the soft fabric of Chase’s sweater, not realizing I was doing so. Lexi pointedly looked at my hands, and I stopped. “It’s just really soft. Although I don’t know what it’s made out of.” As if that would explain my anxiety.

“I do. Boyfriend material.” She waggled her eyebrows at me, but I didn’t laugh. “You’re nervous.”

“He makes me nervous,” I confessed.

“You should feel that way in the beginning. It’s exciting and scary to fall for someone. I always say when you first start dating someone, he should be like a cappuccino. Hot and sweet, and he makes you all jittery.”

“Did I make you jittery?” Gavin asked.

“Obviously. Still do sometimes,” she said, and they both smiled. Their smiles faded, and their expressions changed, like they were about to ravage each other.

I cleared my throat. “Okay. So I’m going to go.”

“Before you do”—Lexi broke eye contact with Gavin long enough to look at me—“don’t give up on him once you get past the honeymoon phase.”

“Honeymoon phase?” I repeated, not sure what she meant.

“Everyone is amazing and wonderful when you first start dating, but nobody can keep up the pretense forever. Eventually he’ll show his true colors. Everybody has skeletons in the closet.”

I told her I would keep an open mind and said goodbye. As I headed to my car, I wondered how true Lexi’s statement was. Because so far, Chase had been kind of perfect. He was thoughtful, considerate, and kind. Charming and funny. And the handsomest man I’d ever met in real life.

But I had skeletons in my closet. And personality defects. I was human, after all.

Chase was a movie star and had grown up in a completely different environment from me. He didn’t just have skeletons in his closet. There were probably T. rex–size fossils in there. We would have to decide if we could deal with each other’s shortcomings.

I’d offer to show him mine if he showed me his.

Um, I probably needed to think of a different way to phrase that before I saw him.

“Come in!” For some reason it surprised me that Chase answered his own door. Like, what was the point of being that wealthy if you couldn’t have somebody else answering your door and fighting off solicitors?

“Here’s your sweater. Thanks for lending it to me.” I decided not to tell him that I’d seriously considered putting it on my body pillow, because that was too weird, even for me.

“Anytime.” He closed the door behind me, and I followed him into the kitchen. He had a stack of head shots on the island. “I sign these for fans who write in asking for one.”

I put my purse down as he sat on a bar stool and began quickly autographing one picture after another. “Shouldn’t I be helping you with this?”

“Do you think you could forge my signature?” he asked. “If you can’t, it has to be me. I promised my agent I’d get these signed by tomorrow morning.” He tapped the Sharpie he was using against his lips, and I’d never been so jealous of a writing instrument in my life. “Was it tomorrow? My agent says I never listen to him. At least, I think that’s what he says.”

He tossed me a mischievous grin, pleased he’d made me smile. It was so adorable and hot that all I wanted right then was to kiss him. To shove the stack of photos off the counter, leap across it, and knock him over. My lips actually tingled in anticipation.

“I’d like to know what you’re thinking right now.”

I felt all the color drain my face. Did he know? “I’m not telling you. That’s why I didn’t say it out loud. Because that’s how thinking works.”

Chase laughed. “Sometimes in interviews they ask you what superpower you’d like to have. I used to choose being able to read people’s minds. Then Facebook happened, and I got over that.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. He seriously got cuter with each passing minute. I needed to keep my hands busy and think of the best way to tell him what I’d come to say. “Do you mind?” I pointed at the pantry, and it made his hand still.

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