Page 8 of Not You Again
I wouldn’t dare tell the producer to back off because Andie is clearly terrified and regretting everything that brought her here. To me.
But I can give Andie the option to back out.
I clear my throat and shift my weight on my feet. She’s still holding my hands like they’re a lifeline, and that gives me a fraction of peace. It may be all I get.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say to the producer. Then I swallow, mesmerized with the way Andie’s gaze drops to my throat. I squeeze her hands until she meets my eyes. “Do you want … I mean … is it okay if I kiss you?”
She hesitates, and my heart drops to the floorboards. The weight of my wedding band is fresh, and goddamn if it doesn’t feel like an anchor. I want her to feel it too. To take this leap into the unknown with me. Because for a split second, I understand we’ll never get this chance again. We fucked it all up last time. This time we can make it right. If she’ll join me.
Quietly, she answers, “Yeah. It’s okay.”
My heart soars.
The producer lets out a heavy sigh and claps her hands together. “Okay. We’re gonna go again.”
She scurries off behind the cameras and shouts, “Action!”
Andie smiles up at me, looking ever the nervous bride. Her hands flex in mine, and I know it’s too small a gesture for the cameras to have captured. That was for me alone. Hope blooms once more in my chest.
The officiant beams and says like it’s the first time, “You may now kiss the bride!”
I lean in, dropping her hands so I can slide mine to her neck and cradle her head. Fuck the cameras, it’s just us now. When my lips are a breath away, I say so low I know our mics won’t be able to pick it up, “You look beautiful.”
Then our lips connect, and I’m lost. This should be stiff, clinical. But she smells exactly the same. The memories hit me like an avalanche, abundant and aching and fresh. I can’t breathe.
Right now, I’m not in this room at all. I’m in an auditorium on campus, playing a shitty movie I can’t even remember, because I learned the shape of her body all the way through it. I’m in her dorm, and she’s stealing my pencil, hiding it so I can’t finish my calculus homework until I kiss her senseless. I’m pulling her into my room, rain-soaked and sobbing because her mom was going through a divorce, erasing her tears with my mouth.
Blown away by the pure force of her, my lips slide slowly on hers, coaxing her forward.
We’re in this together. You jump, I jump.
Then, just as I’m ready to open my mouth to take the kiss deeper, she pulls away, opening her lips just far enough to scrape her teeth across my bottom lip.
My eyes fly open, my entire body awake.
I blink and take in a deep breath like I didn’t just have a religious experience.
I swallow and let the cheers in the room wash over me. Married. Me. Legally fucking married. To Andie Dresser.
Somehow, that kiss turned back time.
CHAPTER FIVEANDIE
After the ceremony, we’re whisked away to a “private” room at the country club lined with windows overlooking the rolling green hills outside. Even if the cameras weren’t here, we’d still be in a fishbowl. Country club members in polo shirts and visors golf outside with a perfect view of this catastrophe.
I tap on my flute filled with warm, flat champagne to hide the hammering of my heart against my rib cage. The matchmakers paired me with Kit Watson. The man who broke my heart clean in two a decade ago.
Suddenly this whole in-it-for-the-money idea feels dangerous.
“So,” I clear my throat and say delicately, “it’s nice to meet you, Christopher.”
He tilts his head in question, his lips pulling into a frown. I can’t believe I kissed him. Like, really kissed him. And he kissed me back. With purpose. “Everyone calls me Kit.” He says my name gently. “Andie.”
I swallow and give my head a subtle shake. If the producers discover that we not only know each other, but already had a relationship—however long ago—my chance at one hundred thousand dollars is dead in the water. I look into my champagne glass and redirect the conversation to the things we should be talking about.
What we do for a living—he’s an architect, I make wedding dresses.
Do we have any siblings—only children, the both of us.