Page 42 of #Starstruck

“Has no one ever baked for you before?”

“My mom wouldn’t know what a stove was if it jumped up and bit her,” he said after he finished chewing. “My grandma was the ultimate stage mother, and she was far more focused on my career than anything else. The first time I got cookies I was fourteen. There was a guest star on our show. Shayna Rayne. She had an arc as my first girlfriend. She was actually my first kiss. She was a little bit taller than me, and when we tried to—”

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “I don’t need the details.”

He gave me a half smile, like he found my simmering jealousy cute. “Anyway, on her last day of filming, she brought me a plate of cookies, claiming she’d made them herself. I remember being really impressed because they were perfect-looking, and no one had ever baked for me before. When my grandma saw them, she said they were store-bought. I didn’t believe her, so she sent out a PA to prove she was right. She was. And then she told me that someday I would find a girl who would make me cookies and not lie about it to impress me. When I saw it in your Twitter posts, it felt like another sign. Like the universe was saying, ‘That one.’”

“My grandma said I would know I had the right man when we could wallpaper a room together and not kill each other. Although her frame of reference was definitely different from anyone else’s.”

At the rate he was going through the cookies, he was going to wolf down the entire dozen before they’d cooled.

“Didn’t you say your grandparents were Amish?” he asked.

I used the spatula to take two cookies off the sheet, and I put them on the counter so I could eat them. “They were. My grandmother loved to learn, but once Amish kids turn fourteen, they don’t go to school anymore. She asked to go to a regular school, but her parents didn’t want her to fill her head with English ideas. They wanted her to meet a boy and get married. But the boy who caught her eye was Zev Miller, the son of her family’s sworn enemies. I don’t remember what the feud was about. Like, stolen cows or something. He liked her, too, but Hannah Yoder was off-limits.”

“Like an Amish Romeo and Juliet.”

“Exactly. They started to meet in secret and fell in love. My grandpa was so besotted that he told her he didn’t mind if she went to high school and college. And he promised to take her to see the ocean, something she had always dreamed of. When they told their families, there was a lot of yelling and threatening and forbidding. So my grandparents decided to leave. They eloped and ended up in Marabella. My grandpa did woodworking, and my grandma made quilts and cleaned homes. Other than watchingJeopardy!with me, I don’t have a single memory of her sitting down. She was always moving, always on the go. Eventually she got her degree and went to the beach every chance she got. They wanted a lot of kids, but they didn’t have my mom until their early forties. And then, you know, the whole video-vixen-knocked-up-at-fifteen thing happened. So when she left me with them, they didn’t let me go to public school because they thought it would be a bad influence on me, like it had apparently been on my mom. I spent my time doing schoolwork or cleaning or baking. Then my mother came and got me because she needed a built-in babysitter, and you know the rest.”

“Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with babysitting. Maybe once she got her life together, she realized what a mistake she’d made in leaving you behind and wanted you back.”

I wanted to believe that, but years of feeling rejected and abandoned made it difficult to consider her motives that way. I ate my cookies, and they were practically perfect. Definitely brag-worthy.

Chase got up and poured two glasses of milk, then handed me one. “To one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time.”

I smiled, clinking my glass against his. I shared the sentiment, but some bitter, unbelieving part of me wondered if he was acting and pretending. Because of his desire to be a better person, he felt like he had to say and do certain things he didn’t really mean.

I took a small drink, but he chugged his, leaving behind a white moustache. “You have milk on you.”

“Where?” he asked. “Here?” He teased me by rubbing one side of his cheek, completely missing his mouth.

“Not quite.”

“Here?” Now he was wiping his forehead.

“Right here,” I said with a laugh, stepping forward to rub the milk off with my thumb. It was a reactionary move, and I hadn’t allowed myself to think about it first. I rubbed my thumb just above his top lip, and my smile died when I looked up at him.

Because his eyes had the same expression as when I had set the tray of cookies down. Like he didn’t care if I had cooled off enough, because he intended to devour me.

For the record, I was the opposite of cooled off. Just one look from him made my blood heat and feel too thick for my veins.

I should have taken my hand away, but I didn’t. He had faint stubble that made his skin an intoxicating combination of smooth and prickly. Chase reached out and wrapped his fingers around my wrist, and my pulse there jumped against his touch. He tugged at me gently, and I stopped touching his face.

“I don’t know about you, but after all this sharing, I think I’d like to turn my brain off for a while.”

He led me into the family room, and my heartbeat got louder with each step he took. His fingers were still around my wrist, causing little waves of heat to travel up my arm. We sat down on the couch, and the only thing I could think of to turn off our brains involved a whole lot of making out. I’d kissed my fair share of guys before, but most of the kisses had been brief and not all that exciting.

I couldn’t imagine kissing Chase would feel that way.

And I hoped I wouldn’t disappoint him.

But the only person who was disappointed was me when he let go of my arm to pick up a remote from his coffee table. “This is supposed to be a universal remote. You can imagine how sad I was when I realized it didn’t control the universe. Not even remotely.”

This was not a time for jokes.

“I thought we could watch a movie. And I will even let you choose, as soon as you give me at least one movie from your better-than-Octaviuslist.”

My body was so flooded with hormones, anticipation, and want that it made it hard to concentrate on what he was saying. “Miracle Mile.” It was about a potential Olympic swimmer who was in a serious car accident and came back to win medals in the Olympics four years later. “Although it has an inaccurate title. It probably should have been calledMiracle Meter.”

---