Page 80 of No Words

He winced. “I had a speech written out, exactly what I was going to say when I saw you. Only then you brought up Chloe—”

Now I could no longer suppress a grin. “And the fact that she said I’m her favorite writer?”

“That wasn’t what I thought you were going to say she told you. I thought you were going to say she’d told you—”

“—how you hadn’t noticed she had dyslexia her whole life. I know.”

He winced. “Oh.”

“I didn’t put it together until today, when you told me on the boat. But I get it now.”

“I told you. I’ve just never been very good with words. Not spoken words. I’ve always been better at writing. The things I want to say—somehow, they just never seem to come out right unless I’m typing them. Then it feels like I get everything right.”

“Well, that’s a matter of opinion.” When he only stared at me in confusion, I added, “You can’t possibly consider having two people fall in love only to have one of them get shotat their own wedding‘getting everything right.’”

One corner of his mouth turned up. “You really are reading my book, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m reading it. But I can’t say I’m finding it very cathartic, or whatever I’m supposed to be feeling. What kind of twist is that supposed to be? How can Melanie’s husband not be dead? Johnny saw his body. He was very, very dead. But now somehow he’s risen from the dead and shot Johnnyat his own wedding?”

Out from those pockets came his hands, big and stretched wide open, as entreating as his dark eyes. “I can’t believe you’re actually reading it.”

“I still have about thirty pages to go. But I don’t understand what’s going to happen in the next thirty pages of a book where the first-person narrator has been shot dead.”

“You do know what, Jo.” One of those large hands reached out to clasp me by the wrist. “The emotional journey all protagonists take in every book: from being someone flawed, who’s made mistakes—maybe serious mistakes—to beingsomeone slightly less flawed.” His other hand reached out to clasp me by my other wrist. “Someone who’s learned from their mistakes and only wants forgiveness, and has maybe done one or two things to earn it... not only from the reader, but from their potential love interest, as well. Does that make sense to you?”

I blinked at him. I had to blink, because my eyes had suddenly filled with tears. I couldn’t believe it, but Will Price—whose soppy books I’d been making fun of for years—had finally managed to make me cry.

“You’re not talking about Johnny, are you?”

“Actually, I am,” he said, as he pulled me toward him. “But also... maybe not. Because maybe I’m Johnny.”

And then—don’t ask me how—Will was kissing me again. Not just kissing me, but saying my name over and over—“Jo, Jo, Jo”—like one of Kellyjean’s incantations.

But I didn’t mind, because the sound of my name on his lips was an elixir, as intoxicating as the smell of the night-blooming jasmine hanging heavily in the air. I was kissing him back, my whole body feeling as if it were on fire. I was standing on tiptoe, my hands around his neck now that he’d released them to wrap his arms around my waist, pulling me so close that I could feel enough of him through the thin material of the suit he was wearing to be pretty sure—but not one hundred percent yet—that he was wearing boxers and not briefs. This was something I knew I was going to have to get to the bottom of, and quickly, when something occurred to me, and I tore my mouth from his.

“Wait a minute,” I said, looking up into his dark eyes, thelids half lowered with desire. “If you’re Johnny, does that mean I’m Melanie?”

“Yes,” he murmured, his lips traveling down my throat.

“But Melanie is a total idiot.”

“She isn’t.” Now his mouth was burning hotly against the bare skin of my chest. “To quoteKirkus,she’s the ‘epitome of femininity, at once beautiful and strong’... like you.”

It was hard to think properly with so much hard muscle pressing against me, but I managed to say, “I’m pretty sure the epitome of femininity isn’t—”

But I never got to finish, because his lips returned to mine, effectively wiping all rational thought from my brain.

At least until the sound of a door being opened somewhere nearby caused me to pull my mouth from his and look past his shoulder. Then I saw someone I never expected in a million years come strolling into the courtyard.

“Lauren!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lauren, still dressed in her sequined top and miniskirt from the party, froze, her eyes looking ridiculously large behind her horn-rimmed glasses. She had a pizza box in one hand and an empty champagne bottle in the other.

Will and I had leaped away from each other at the sight of her, but she was the one who seemed the most surprised.

“Oh, hi, Ms. Wright,” she cried. “And Mr. Price! How are you?”