Page 42 of The Love Dare
I love you!
I’ve always loved you!
How can you not see how perfect you are?
She doesn’t. She never has.
It breaks his goddamn heart.
I have to say something.
I have to do something.
He knows the rules. He knows the deal he made with Nina. But he also knows he can’t survive another minute of Winnie questioning herself, questioning them, when she is literally the only person he has ever wanted so badly in his life.
With every step she takes closer, the pressure mounts. It’s the exact sort of situation he loathes. His nerves swarm. The buzz infiltrates his brain. He can’t think, doesn’t know what to say, can’t come up with anything quick enough. The words are sand spilling through his fingers, too elusive to catch.
Winnie stops before him. She looks up. He’s not used to seeing her without glasses, or maybe just in so much makeup, the black liner and iridescent powder highlighting those imploring gold-and-emerald depths. Bright flecks scatter across her irises like stars, a universe alive in her eyes. But tonight, at least, they hold one less mystery.
“Winnie,” he says, his voice a deep timbre.
Her lashes flutter and she inhales deeply. Red fabric strains against her breasts as goose bumps form a trail up the curve of her neck. He aches to taste them. To taste her. To press his tongue to her skin and draw the gasp he’s so longed to hear from her lips.
Instead, he holds out the puzzle piece.
He says the sentence he’s been fed because that’s what the producers told him to do, that’s the deal he made, and his pathetic mind can’t process anything else.
“Will you accept this puzzle piece?”
Her cheeks flush. She bites her lips to hold back a smile. Then she nods. “Yes.”
That breathless whisper hits deep in his gut. He wants to hear her say it again, and again, preferably while underneath him. Always the faster of the two, his body responds before his brain has time to process. He steps closer and lifts the stupid trinket by the chain. He’s supposed to hand it to her, he knows, but he can’t pass up the opportunity to run his fingers through her hair as he sweeps it to one side, to drag the tips along her soft skin, to breathe in the subtle floral scent of her shampoo. He leans close under the guise of securing the clasp. She tilts her head to give him room.
A memory comes unbidden.
They were in his room, studying for the midterm. Winnie stuck one of those mechanical pencils behind her ear to skim through a play, and when she went to pull it out, her hair tangled in the hook.
“Ow!” she griped as she tugged uselessly at the mustard-hued assailant.
“Let me.”
He leaned close, fixated on the knot, and went quickly to work, looping, pulling, threading, until the wayward curl fell free. It was only then that he noticed how close his lips were toher shoulder, how still she sat, how uneven her breathing had become, how his own heart rattled inside his chest. He exhaled softly, mesmerized by the way her skin pebbled as his warm breath brushed against it. He lowered the pad of his pointer finger to her neck and dragged it down along those soft ridges until he reached the edge of her T-shirt.
“Tyler?”
Her voice broke the spell. He dropped his hand away as though it were on fire and shoved the pencil back in her direction. “Where were we?”
“Act three, scene one. Here.” She pointed to a line on the page. “This one will definitely be on the midterm. Do you want to try to?—”
“You do it,” he answered quickly. His blood was nowhere near his brain right now.
“O, I am fortune’s fool!” She moved her finger across the sentence as she read. “Do you know what it means?”
“That Romeo fucked up?”
“Sort of.” She smiled at his frank paraphrasing. “Yes, he fucked up killing Tybalt. It will make reuniting with Juliet even more impossible. But he doesn’t think he’s at fault. He’s blaming destiny, instead of taking the blame himself. He’s not acknowledging that he acted rashly and that he is now responsible for escalating the violence which will ultimately be his undoing. He’s saying that fate is toying with him, that he’s the victim of a cruel game.”
“So…” Tyler glanced at Winnie, waiting for her to look up and meet his gaze. “He’s sort of being a whiny bitch?”
