Page 36 of Broken Romeo
He shakes his head. “You don’t understand. There are people in this show, on this production team even, who want to find any reason to—”
“Can we just get the rest of rehearsal over with? I’ll eat later.” I can’t sit here and listen to any more of his excuses. My job is to find the truth and pain in my character—not to have dinner with an old flame.
Besides, I’m suddenly not hungry. Standing, I dust off my legs and pack up what’s left of my uneaten dinner.
With a snort and a shake of his head, he covers his own dinner and shoves it aside. “Whatever you want, Katherine.”
“Whatever I want? Are you kidding me right now? Nothing about us—our relationship, working or personal, has ever been about what I want!” I pace the stage, my voice growing more and more shrill with each passing second; each passing word. “Not even the fucking name you call me is what I want, Holden!”
He thrusts his hands into his hair and launches to his feet. “Forget it. I thought we could sit and have a meal together and talk. Actually talk. So that maybe, just maybe, when we work together, and I have to order you to do shit, it might be easier. But if you want to do this the hard way, fine. Let’s do it the hard way.”
“Fine by me.” I stomp to the edge of the stage and snatch my script off the floor. “Where do you want me?”
His breath is labored as he slowly closes the space between us. His eyes burn like cherry oak wood in the center of a fire, and he pauses as he leans in, so close to me.
“You know where I want you,” he whispers.
The implication of those six words hangs thick in the air between us.
“That’s the thing. I don’t know. I never have.” My voice is thick and hoarse in an unusual way that I’m not used to. And judging from the way his eyes graze my throat, he isn’t either.
“You start Act One, Scene One stage left,” he says.
We both know that’s not what he meant.
But if he’s not going to admit it, then I sure as hell won’t either.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Holden
Five Years Ago…
Girls were literally writhing and rubbing their scantily clad, tight co-ed bodies on mine…
And all I could fucking think about was Kate and her little white cotton thongs.
I scrubbed my hand down my face and tried for the hundredth time to push thoughts of her out of my mind.
I didn’t want to think about Kate tonight.
Kate and Professor McCay were mere specs in the fading rearview mirror as I entered the weekend.
With the first week of classes over, I didn’t have football practice until two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, which meant one thing in the world of Varsity: Friday Night Party.
Even on an Ivy league campus, we could let loose. Only, instead of cheap kegs of watery beer and Doritos, we had expensive craft local brews, bottles of Grey Goose and Makers Mark, and catering.
If there was one thing my blue-blooded senator father had taught me, it was how to throw a fucking party. And this party was in full swing.
We’d already finished four bottles of Grey Goose, although I was still nursing my first beer. These other idiots may enjoy getting shit-faced the night before practice, but not me. Having to run drills while hung over? Not my thing.
Across the room, Addison danced with some friends, standing on top of my coffee table and I gritted my teeth together as she stared suggestively at me while grinding her slim hips against her girlfriend in what I assumed was supposed to be a suggestive way.
But all my dick did was give a lazy yawn.
My best friend, Duncan, slapped a palm to the middle of my back, shoving a red Solo cup at me and telling me to “catch up” before he was off to chat up some girls on the opposite end of the room.
We may have been rich, but we weren’t stupid. Pint glasses would have been shattered in no time. At least the Solo cups were easy to clean-up.