“Thanks.” My mind goes back to Aidan. Crestfallen at his absence, I excuse myself and leave the party again, making my way through an adjoining sitting room and out onto the patio.
It’s a cool evening, just windy enough to require a thin sweater. I step out into the quiet space and shiver when I see a familiar figure leaning on the balustrade.
I pause, waiting. I wasn’t loud entering the patio, but I’m sure he heard, or perhaps sensed me join him. As I stand by the doors, he turns around to face me.
“Are you going to stand there or are you going to join me?”
I don’t reply. I should turn around and return to the party. I hate him. No one jumps at opportunities to spend solitary moments with the objects of their dislike.
Except for me, obviously.
He turns back to the view and pulls on a cigarette I hadn’t noticed he was holding. I walk toward him. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
He holds out the e-cig and studies it for a moment, then shrugs and lifts his blue eyes to mine. “I’ve done far worse.”
There’s something haunted in his gaze, invisible demons that peek out in one quick moment, hinting at dark secrets and darker pain.
He turns back to the view.
I’m shivering again, and it’s not the cold. We’re standing side by side, both silent. I follow his gaze and take in the nighttime vista of the park, the city…all familiar, and all new somehow, because I’m standing so close to him.
I feel his eyes on me, and when I summon the courage to face him, he turns away. I study his face, his features, from the waves of his hair to the firm line of his jaw. He’s so perfect it makes my stomach hurt to look at him. Suddenly, I don’t care about the things he said about me. I don’t care that I hate him. I want him to talk to me, to tell me what he’s thinking. I want him to kiss me under the night sky.
“Have you ever been in love?”
The question jolts me. My skin…my whole body feels heated. “I…maybe. I don’t know.”
He looks amused. “Surely, you can do better than that.”
I swallow. “I had a crush on a boy back in high school. He had a crush on me too and we dated for a while.”
Aidan leans close to me, and I try not to faint. “A crush. So…what happened?”
“There was another guy,” I shrug as if it doesn’t matter. “I just…I guess I liked him so much it made my first crush seem ordinary.”
He’s grinning. “My! What an interesting life you’ve lived, Liz McKay.”
His tone stings. “You’re mocking me.”
“No, I’m not.” He shakes his head. “So how did the love triangle end?”
“I…I gre
w out of my first crush. He went off to college, and we broke up.”
“And the new crush…Did he turn out to be the love of your life?”
I meet his gaze. His eyes are the most vibrant blue, even here in the dark. What would he say if he knew that I obsessed about him since I first saw his picture in a magazine? That I saw all his plays and read all his interviews?
He’d laugh and call me a fool, and I am a fool for not dismissing my ridiculous feelings for him even now that I know what a bastard he is.
A beautiful bastard.
I look away from his face. “No…” I murmur. “He turned out to be a disappointment.”
Aidan doesn’t reply. He reaches out toward my face and my heart starts to race in expectation, but he only smooths a wisp of hair behind my ear. “You know your character requires you to portray intense emotion, slightly more intense than crushes.”
“My character…” For a few seconds, I’m confused, then I remember. Of course, my character. He hadn’t been asking about my romantic history because he was interested. He’s working, even now. While I was thinking how he was the most perfect man I knew, how much I wanted him to reach for me, to me, somehow…he was working on the blasted play.