Page 28 of Most Eligible
“I’m sure,” he teases. “Now are you going to climb up or not?”
I look at the ladder. “I just have a… a tiny issue with heights. But this seems all right.” I grab the sides of the ladder and hoist myself up. For the first time all night, I’m grateful for the thigh-high slit in my dress. I climb a few rungs, my bare thigh parading right in front of Rhett’s impassive face. When I reach the top, I push on the trapdoor, but it doesn’t budge.
“Hold on,” he says. “I’m coming.”
I have my doubts that the ladder will hold both of us, but soon he’s climbing up, and it’s still standing. Unlike most things in this mansion, the ladder seems to be made of more than smoke screens.
Rhett taps my ankle, right above the bone, where there’s a tattoo of tiny black stars. Goosebumps erupt up my calf as I scoot over to let him climb up beside me.
“This is unsafe,” I mutter, looking anywhere but at him, my eyes roving over the ladder and the trapdoor above us, his carefully pressed collar…
Rhett pushes upward and the door bangs open, startling me. He grabs my waist to keep me on the ladder. For a second we’re like a couple in a disaster movie, hanging on to the side of a burning building, about to have amazing sex in an apocalyptic industrial wasteland. But then he lets go and pushes past me, climbing up onto the roof. He reaches down for my arm. We’re not a disaster movie couple about to trauma-bang. We’re two people on reality TV, and for a second, I’ve forgotten that fear is pulsing through me.
I grab his forearm and pull myself up onto the roof. It’s slanted, so I brace myself against the tilt and sink down onto the half-moon tiles. Rhett sprawls easily beside me, looking more at home on this roof than I’ve seen him anywhere downstairs.
“What?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at me.
I tear my eyes from his casual rooftop pose. “I was just thinking about what kind of movie we’d be in,” I say.
“Well,” he considers. He puts his hands behind his head and lies back. “We’re on reality TV, or did you forget?”
“Not right now though,” I point out. “Unless there are cameras up here?”
He shakes his head. “No cameras, Georgia. Just you and me.”
My name in his mouth is like a sip of too-hot tea. It scalds, burns, but I’m warm all over. Flushing, I pick at my fingernails, then stop myself. The anxiety it reveals has no place here, not least because I need to preserve my manicure.
“I think,” I say slowly, “we’re in one of those movies where a bunch of shit happens and then the main character wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.”
He sits up, looks at me. “You don’t want this to be real?”
“Who says I’m the main character? I could be a figment of your imagination.”
He’s suspended, somehow backlit by the darkness as he raises his hand and brushes a lock of hair from my sunburned face, whispering, “Sometimes I wonder if you are. Or a memory come back to haunt me.”
My lips part and I inhale. He still smells the same.
As I breathed in the bodies at the club that night, I wondered what he would taste like. His breath, his skin, his lips. I guessed at whiskey and leather, but I was surprised by the citrus twist when his lips met mine, the acidic aftertaste that made me crave the beginning all over again.
If I pulled him to my mouth now, he’d be soft, sweet. I’d be left with that same bitter bite.
His eyes flick to my lips, fingers still against my cheek. He leans in fractionally, but I pull back from his touch.
A memory come back to haunt me.
What about our first encounter would haunt him? I’m the one who felt like I’d seen a ghost when he walked into the mansion’s sitting room on the first night of filming. I’m the one whowanted to run him through with a sword just to see if he was flesh and bone. In his glamorous life, what about me would have made an impression?
He seems to come back to himself and drops his hand to his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I was a fucking idiot.”
I hold my breath, afraid to move, to break the moment.
“I shouldn’t have left.” His voice is hoarse, like he’s sung an entire set without warming up. Like it hurt but he’d do it all over again. He runs a hand through his hair, shakes his head. “It’s hard to know sometimes, what’s real and what’s not, with people… with fans.”
I blink at him, confused for a beat, then it clicks.
“I didn’t think we were real,” he murmurs. “Didn’t… couldn’t let myself think that. I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “Really, Georgia, I’m sorry. You deserved better.”
