Page 39 of Directing You
“Tell me something,” I said. “Do you have celebratory sex with all the women you cast as your leads? Is that a pattern you have? Or is it just me…andProfessor Faith?”
He winced at the mention of Faith, and I waited for his answer as he sighed. “Who the hell told you that? Jenna?”
I said nothing but held my ground. We’d get to Jenna soon enough. But for now, I had to know if his thing with my previous professor was over or not. If it was a pattern or not. And if I was just one of many he was planning to toss aside.
“Jenna is an asshole,” he hissed and moved to step toward me, but I countered his movement, stepping back and putting a desk in between us. I couldn’t be trusted when he got close to me. One touch, one brush of his fingers against my neck, and I would melt. And Icouldn’tmelt. Not yet. Not until I had some answers. “Yes… Faith, your professor and I were engaged. She’s the only actress I ever dated while I was her director, but it wasn’t like that. We’d known each other for years. We knew each other when we first moved to New York and neither of us had careers in theater. Hell, we worked as waiters at the same restaurant. Then, when I got my first directing gig, I cast her. Not only because she was a friend but because she was talented. As my career went on to get bigger, I did my best to cast her when the show called for someone like her, and that’s when we started falling in love. Or I thought we fell in love. The rest of the story, you know…Two years ago, she cheated on me with my best friend. Broke off our engagement and married him.”
I swallowed back the tears that filled my eyes, refusing to cry in front of him. I could feel, inside my own chest, the pain, the grief his fiancé’s affair had caused him. “That makes Professor Lewis your best friend, too?”
He nodded, taking a large step toward me. “Ex-best friend. I can’t believe I was ever friends with someone who could do something like he did to you.” As Reid approached, he moved the desk out of the way and closed the space between us. “I didn’t think I ever wanted to be in a relationship again after Faith broke me…and then I met you.”
“You barely know me,” I whispered. “You can’t possibly know that you want to be with me.”
The corners of his mouth twitched upward, and for the first time since I entered his classroom, his frown shifted to something happier. “Oh, I know you. I know you more than you think, Hazel. I know you drink cheap wine because you don’t know or care to know good wine. I know you’re a hard worker. Talented. A force to be reckoned with, but also incredibly vulnerable and afraid to fail. So, you take the emotionally easy path a lot. It’s not thelazypath. In fact, sometimes, it’s the path that actually creates more work in the long run, but you don’t realize it until you’re too far down that road to turn back. I know that you’re kind. And tough as nails. And you eat ramen noodles out of a microwave cup almost every day for lunch because you have to. But you have mac & cheese because youwantto—granted, maybe this fact doesn’t count because it’s an obvious one. I know you’ve been waiting for your big break in acting, for life to cut you a little slack, for years.” He lifted his hand and brushed a bit of my hair away from my temple. The point of contact sent a shiver of electricity from his touch down my face and neck, and God help me, I couldn’t help but melt into that touch of his. He leaned in close, brushing his lips against mine in a kiss that was so gentle it almost felt like a breeze brushing over my face. “And I know that you, Hazel Stone, awakened my dormant heart.I know you.”
I pushed onto my toes, kissing him hard, overtaken with emotion and desire. When I pulled back from the kiss, I looked up into his eyes. “But the workshop? Were you really going to give my part to Jenna?”
He leveled me with a look. “Are you kidding me? That was never the plan. I have an idea that I wanted to run by you first. I know that you didn’t want to go forward with talking to Professor Dercy, but I’m not sure Jenna left us much choice.”
“What do you mean?”
He blew out a breath and handed me a package of chocolates like the ones I used in my burlesque act. There was a card on top that I opened. Inside was a picture of me and Reid in the middle of the act when I had pulled him up on stage, and the note scribbled inside was simple:I thought you might need a refill. –Jenna
“Well, shit.”
“She knows everything. She has pictures of you dancing at the club from almost two years ago. She’s been holding on to them, waiting for the right time to use them against you. She threatened to have you fired from your job here, knowing it violated the integrity code. I think she figured that if you didn’t have your job, you couldn’t afford school.”
She’d be correct about that. “And you? She threatened your job here too?”
He waved the thought away. “I’m only here as a favor to Faith. She can report me all she wants. I care aboutyoufinishing your degree. I care about all the other people Jenna has pulled this stunt with and how they perhaps missed out on roles and opportunities because of her.”
“Well? What do think we should do?”
He smirked, just one side of his lips tilting toward his eyes. “We’re going to catch a few snakes with only one trap.”
