But that was different. You’d be going in with eyes wide open.
“If this has any chance of working, we have to be honest with each other, so I can honestly tell you—I’m scared.”
His expression softened. “I know. I’m . . . well, yeah. It’s new for me, too. Maybe we’ll get to a point where we want to go throw mud at each other again, but I think we could be worth the risk.”
I drew in an enormous breath and then lifted my hands in surrender. “Fine.”
He blinked. “Fine?”
“You wore me down.” I’d tried to sound annoyed, but shit, I failed miserably. My voice was a little too excited. “I’ll be your girlfriend. Happy?”
He raised an eyebrow, and then a slow smile crawled along his lips. “Yes.”
My heart drummed in my chest, heating me all over as I stared at my new boyfriend. It was wild and exhilarating.
After our entrees arrived, he straightened in his seat and took a preparing breath. “About tonight,” he said. “There are two options.”
“Oh?”
“The first is after we’re done with dinner, we’ll go upstairs to the room Petal Productions has booked for us, which has the lights and cameras ready to go, and we shoot the prom night scene.”
This sounded great to me, but . . . “What’s the other option?”
“After dinner, we go upstairs, but we don’t turn the cameras on.”
I hesitated. “Why wouldn’t we do that?”
“Because we could be ourselves. Maybe we need one night where there’s no script and no one watching.” His eyes were dark, inky pools. “Something that’s only for us.”
Holy shit. I’d never wanted something so badly in all my life as I wanted this.
But there was no way Petal Productions would pay for a room if they weren’t going to get content out of it. He’d been so prepared, surely he’d asked about it and had a plan. “Nina would be okay with that?”
“Yeah. As long as we film something later or, you know, in the morning.”
In the morning. I didn’t even need to think about it. “We’re doing the second option.”
Fuck, his laugh was sexy.
TWENTY-ONE
Colin
I hadn’t paid much attention to the hotel room earlier this afternoon when I’d been in here with Scott setting up the equipment. I’d been too busy running through the points I wanted to make to Mads over dinner. I wasn’t sure how much convincing she’d need. It was obvious she liked me, but would that be enough to overcome all the other shit?
It was, thank fuck.
After we’d finished our dinner and split the check—since she refused to let me pay for her—I’d led my brand-new girlfriend up to the room, which was masculine and sexy. It was decorated in charcoal gray and brass, with a huge textured wall behind the bed, and long mirrors stretched to the ceiling over each nightstand.
The sun was setting outside, painting the tall buildings with orange and pink hues. It reminded me of her dress, which clung to her body in all the right ways. I liked the subtle hint of glitter it gave as she strolled to the window and looked at the view of downtown.
When I joined her, she didn’t say anything. She flashed a nervous smile, and it made me wonder if, without a script, she wasn’t sure what to do.
But I was.
I took my phone out of my pocket, opened my music app, and pressed play on the song I had ready to go. When the opening strains of the music started, I set the phone down on the windowsill, and her surprised gaze darted up to mine.
Her eyes grew even wider when I took her hand and wrapped my arm around her, resting my palm on the small of her back. She sucked in a sharp breath as I urged her to move with me.
To dance with me.
Maybe it was a little over the top—but fuck it. It felt right because we were dressed up, and it gave me an excuse to get her in my arms.
Once she recovered from her shock and began to follow my lead, I expected her dubious expression to fade, but it didn’t.
“You like Troy Osbourne?”
I nearly laughed. There was a threshold of mainstream that, once an artist crossed it, guys my age deemed them no longer cool. Had Troy gotten to that point? Mads had recognized his voice immediately and assumed I wouldn’t listen to him.
“Yeah, I like Troy,” I said. “Full disclosure, we’re friends. We went to high school together.”
There’d been a time when I would have said he and Preston were my best friends, but Troy had gone out of state for college. We’d stayed as close as we could, but once his music career took off, it’d been a lot harder to find time to hang out.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t fucking thrilled for him.