Page 46 of The Expiration Date

When we return to the house, I decide to distract myself and help set up the folding tables and chairs outside on the backyard lawn. Anna and Dan decided to get food trucks for the rehearsal dinner, since tomorrow is a more formal dinner at the reception. They wanted to keep tonight as low-key as possible. I place tiny purple and white flowers in small clear vases and make sure that every table has one in the center of it. I pretty much do everything under the sun to avoid the inevitable conversation I am going to have with my fake boyfriend at some point in the evening. I wince as one more memory of me snorting while laughing infiltrates my mind. The haze has lifted and everything has become clearer.

I am on my third glass of wine for the night. Anna is busy talking with her future in-laws, and my mind can’t stop replaying what happened last night at the bachelorette party. Also, I need to get away from the groomsmen, especially Robert, who is getting egregiously drunk. I think I am safe until I feel muscular arms wrap around me from behind. I feel flutters in my stomach, which I need to cease. But that is impossible when he nestles his face in the crook of my neck and says, “Hey, gorgeous.”

Too real. I shrug my way out of his enormous arms. “Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“I’m not going to call you things that you aren’t, Hales. It’s not in my nature. I call it as I see it. You are gorgeous.”

“We need to talk about that kiss.” I need to stop his antics now if we’re going to make it out of this deal with no feelings attached. I need to guard my heart.

“Okay, to what kiss are you referring?” He looks down at me with that annoyingly perfect smirk. He really needs to stop doing that.

“You know what kiss I am referring to.” I finally look into his eyes. They are gleaming in a way that I’ve never seen before. This is exactly the problem. “It’s starting to feel too real, Aidan. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. Maybe it would be better if you go back to L.A. without me. And not come to the wedding tomorrow.”

His face falls. “And why would you think that? I am in this, Hales.”

“I know. That is my point, Aidan. We have a contract and we have come dangerously close to…”

His eyebrows furrow. “To what?”

I sigh. “The lines are starting to feel blurred and that scares me.”

“Why does that scare you? Isn’t this a good thing, that we might have something real here?” He reaches down to grab my hands, but I quickly escape his quite literal hold on me.

“Why doesn’t it scare you? I don’t understand why you even agreed to this in the first place. It doesn’t make any sense. You could literally date or fake-date anyone in the entire universe and you chose me.”

“Because…it’s always been real for me, Hales. Our connection. From the moment we met, I knew you would genuinely have my back and be there for me. I knew you were the nicest person on this fucking planet. I knew there was something special about you. I was so intrigued to find out what made you so special. Why I was so drawn to you. Did you ever consider that all this time, you’ve been it for me?”

I am utterly speechless. My heart rate is going a million miles a minute. Is he seriously saying that he has liked me from the day I stumbled into that conference room and spilled scalding coffee all over his pristine white shirt and nearly gave him third-degree burns?

“I just…I can’t do this.” This would never work in the long run. He is a movie star and I am his assistant. Remember your place in this world, Haley. What if he gets bored of me and drops me like Robert did? What if I let him in and he utterly rips my heart to shreds? What if I let myself fall for him completely, so much that I can’t breathe without him near me? What if that has already happened and I am terrified that I will lose him someday? The only way to lose someone is to have them to begin with. I am not about to lose him. No way.

I start to speed-walk toward the house, hopefully not generating any attention. I desperately want to get back to the room upstairs and pack all of my things and try to find another place to stay. Maybe Anna will let me bunk with her tonight – after all, she and Dan are staying in separate rooms so that they don’t see each other until the altar. I run into the house, door slamming behind me, and make my way upstairs. Maybe Aidan realizes it was a stupid idea to sign that contract in the first place. I am hoping his feet magically got superglued to the ground outside so he can’t follow me.

I reach the bedroom and grab the door to close it. Like it was perfectly scripted in a screenplay, right as the door is about to shut, a hand presses against it to stop it. I could recognize that hand anywhere. It’s the hand that has cradled my face, has held my hand in the worst moments of this weekend, has run through my hair, has playfully grabbed the back of my thighs during a friendly game of volleyball. A hand that I never want to let go of, ever. And that scares the hell out of me.

Aidan steps inside the room, closes the door and locks it to ensure no one will follow us in.

And here he goes again, weaving his perfect fingers through my hair and cradling my jawline, raising my face so that I have no other choice but to look into his hungry, sultry blue eyes. “Promise me something, Haley Swann.”

How is this really happening to me right now? “What?”

“Never run away from me again. Seeing you run away from me gutted me. I never want to be the thing you run away from. I want to be what you are running to.” He presses his forehead to mine, reaches his arms underneath my thighs, lifts me up and pins me against the bedroom door. I wrap my legs around his torso for security, but I have a feeling that he could hold me forever and never tire.

“Aidan.”

“Promise me.” Now his hard body is pressing me up against the door, which leaves his hands free to wander and deliciously graze parts of me that for the past three years I forgot existed. I knew in the right hands they would be awakened again.

“What about our contract?” I whisper shakily. Even though these words are coming out of my mouth, the rest of my body is yearning and confidently holding onto this magnetic man pinned to me.

Aidan’s thumb brushes my bottom lip and he bites his own bottom lip, as if he is trying to restrain himself.

But I don’t want him to.

Not anymore.

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