Page 54 of End Game

His eyes glittered a striking constellation—I wanted to chart it. To tattoo it into my skin. “I’ve already proposed at least half a dozen times.”

“Trying to lock me down, huh?” I laughed.

“Oh yes,” he confirmed as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pressing a kiss between my brows. It was so freeing to share this moment—this honesty—of what we both imagined it might have been like. If only our circumstances were different and my heart wasn’t so fucked up. “But you keep turning me down, you wicked woman.”

“It’s not really in my nature to make things easy, you know.”

Leo’s cheeks flushed crimson as he grinned wide. “I think,” he said softly near my ear, “we should go home and drink expensive whiskey and watch Sodapop and Ponyboy and the rest of the gang stir up trouble in the East Side.”

I laughed again, feeling drunk on the way he caged me in. The way he made me feel safe. “I’ve never seen the movie,” I confessed.

Leo’s face twisted into horror. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. They played it in my high school English class, but I was out with the flu. I’ve only read the book.” I watched him pull his phone out of his back pocket, swiping on the screen as the backlight glowed on his face. “What are you doing?”

“Requesting an Uber. We’re going home so we can watch the movie—I can’t have my girlfriend in the dark on what is arguably one of the best movies of all time.”

I smiled, leaning in closer to whisper, “Do you really think it’s one of the best movies, or did Marge put you up to this?”

He huffed out a laugh, eyes dancing with mischief as they flicked up to me, his phone momentarily forgotten. “She stopped me on my way to the bathroom and told me it would ‘seal the deal.’”

I gasped. “Leo Callahan, are you trying to put out on a first date?!”

His eyes went a bit hazy as his gaze fell again to my mouth, tucking his phone back into his pocket. His response was quiet. “So what if I am?” It felt like a dare. A test of boundaries.

And I wanted to give in. That dangerous yearning pulsed through me, a starseed rooting into the trenches of my heart. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” I said honestly, my gaze shifting to the jukebox. I couldn’t look him in the eye, couldn’t see the impact of my words on his face.

He lifted a hand to push my hair back, and I arched up to it, greedy in the way his fingers lingered in the strands as my neck and scalp exploded in goosebumps. “I know,” he said quietly. “But can you blame me for hoping?”

It sounded like he meant something more than just tonight, and it was disorienting. The whispers of longing emboldened inside of me, but we were already almost halfway through the contract. All of this would be over soon.

Will I be ready to say goodbye?

My heart ached even thinking of it, and I wondered how I’d let myself slip back into such a fierce want. I could blame the date or Leo’s bright golden smile or this whole damn charade—but blaming him would be a fallacy. My want for him began before this contract even started, and I was the lying traitor when I told myself I could manage it.

“Come on.” He steered me gently toward the door. I could see the pain flash through his smile. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Twenty-One

It was almost midnight when we slipped through the front door of the apartment to find it quiet and dark. Leo’s parents had gone to bed hours ago, content to sleep off their day’s worth of petty judgment and passive aggressive subtleties designed to chip away at their son’s resolve. Just being back in the same general vicinity as them sent a rattle of anger through me. Tonight had shown me what was beyond Leo’s masked charm and had let the man beneath shine through. Now I would make it an effort to keep that light of his beaming.

I hoped his parents were struck blind from it.

We’d stopped on the way home for popcorn and licorice—Leo had given the Uber driver a hundred-dollar bill to wait for us in the parking lot so we wouldn’t have to request another car. I was terrified to leave the Bentley back at The Manhole’s parking lot, but Leo asked the resident concierge downstairs to have a driver run and get it, handing over the keys like it was nothing. I wasn’t sure I could ever get used to such access to convenience, but then quickly shut the thought down when I realized I never would. I was only in Leo’s orbit for a few more days before the clock would strike midnight, and I’d return to my shoebox of an apartment down the street where no one in the building cared about me except for maybe Mrs. Buxom next door, who sometimes left me tin-foil-wrapped meat when she’d made too much for herself.

“I’m going to go make a bag of popcorn,” Leo whispered as Swift glided figure-eights around his ankles, audibly purring like the seductress that she was.

“I’ll make us drinks.” I smiled, feeling an expansion in my heart that I couldn’t name, a stretching of my chest cavity as I watched his mouth tick up into a grin and his eyes flash to my mouth before he turned toward the kitchen.

In the few days I’d stayed here, I’d hardly spent any real time in the living room, so as I moved through it to get to the mini-bar in the corner where the decanter of bourbon sat, I eyed the black leather couch and glass coffee table with interest. It wasn’t the pink velvet boho faux-luxury I was used to, but it didn’t evoke the cold stuffiness I would have expected from a rich bachelor’s furniture choices. The throw blanket that warmed my thighs on the roof that first night lay folded over the arm of the couch, and a delicate white candle with a burned-down wick rested atop the table. I was reminded of the confidence Leo displayed in his kitchen when he cooked—he was comfortable in his home, had made it his in a way that made me being here feel like I’d snuck into a place I had no right being in. It made me a little uneasy, like he’d realize at any moment how ridiculous this all was—that I was nothing more than a fun bartender on a good day and barely holding myself together on a bad one. Who was I to take the role of his girlfriend, to earn a place in a penthouse like this?

My mind somersaulted into a frenzy of chaos—a telltale sign of my fears coming to the surface. I had enough self-awareness to put my finger on the issue: I was losing control of the outcome. My neat and tidy plans of how I wanted this agreement to play out were now blurred like smeared ink on wet paper, and my feelings toward Leo were slipping into dangerous territory. Knowing firsthand the kind of shit he went through in his own life, I regretted how difficult I’d been every step of the way to get here.

I’d punished him for the pain that still pulsed in my veins, pain that had nothing to do with him. I’d assumed him to be entitled and full of himself the day I’d found out he’d purchased Larkspur, assumed him to be at the helm of the some larger system working against me. But he was proving me wrong—and my misjudgments lay right there in the new yoga room down the hall, or written all over his face when he swept me into a slow dance.

I gave the crystal glasses a generous pour of amber liquid and carried them to the couch, settling into a middle cushion that cradled my body like an old friend. Leo joined a few minutes later, a bowl full of warm popcorn in hand and both cats trailing at his feet, eager for the cuddle-fest that was sure to ensue—I couldn’t blame them. He sat down next to me and pulled the throw blanket over our legs before reaching for the black remote control on the table.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked before I could talk myself out of it.

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