Page 89 of Broken Romeo

“I’m not good at making new friends,” I say. “I don’t know that I ever have been… but when I was younger it was for different reasons. It wasn’t because I was guarded, it was because I was loud and outspoken.”

He narrows his eyes at me, playfully. “This is you not loud and outspoken?”

I laugh and punch him in the arm. “I was loud, outspoken, and sweet. Now I’m loud, outspoken, and bitter.”

Nolan rests his arm around my shoulders as we walk toward the exit. “Lucky for me, I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Holden

Five Years Ago…

I felt like a total idiot.

And a poser.

And based on how all the guys in this class, who actually wanted to be actors, were glaring at me? I’m pretty sure they all knew it, too.

Professor McCay sat in the front row, an open binder with the script resting in her lap, watching as Keith tried to direct us.

“Holden, you need to feel her presence before you even see her across the room. Then, when you two do make eye contact, we need to see the fireworks. You need to make even the biggest skeptic in the audience believe in love at first sight.”

I snorted and rolled my script in my clenched hands. “Even if I don’t believe in that shit?”

“You may not,” Keith said, “but Remy does. This moment makes a believer out of Remy.”

Fuck. My. Life.

I would have much rather been on the football field pummeling my best friends than doing any of this shit.

Keith turned his attention to Kate, standing on the opposite end of the stage. So far, she and I had been the world’s worst Romeo and Juliet known to audiences everywhere.

“And Kate. You’re here with a date—and up until you see Remy, you think those lukewarm feelings are good enough. Until he shows you what you should be feeling on a date. Got it?”

She blinked slowly, her black lashes lowering across her flushed cheeks. “Yeah. I think I got it.”

Keith stepped back, pressing his fingers to his lips in thought. “Go ahead when you’re ready.”

I sighed and took a glance at the lines in my script, even though I didn’t have anything to say yet. I was just supposed to look up and see her and be immediately in fucking love? What sort of lame bullshit was this, anyway? Why did so many people think Shakespeare had this shit figured out? It was fucking stupid.

“Any minute now, Mr. Dorsey,” Professor McCay’s voice rang out, and it was the first indication that she was actually paying attention.

“Fine,” I muttered.

Our classmates who were in the party scene with us milled about, pretending to drink out of invisible cups and silently mimicking talking.

None of it looked real. Not the party goers. Not the dancing. And most of all, not me being in love.

I lifted my gaze from where I was staring at my toes, and Roxie and Mark, two sophomores in the class, crossed downstage, opening up a break in the crowd for me to see Kate across the room.

Her throat tightened, working into a swallow before she lifted her eyes to meet mine. With a hitch of her chest, her wet lips parted on the inhale.

Energy coiled around my spine at the sight of her rosy cheeks flushing a deeper shade of pink. I took a step toward center stage. Slowly. Just as Keith had instructed me to do, trying to hold her eyes.

Flashes of our kiss infiltrated my thoughts. That blush was her heated cheeks beneath my thumb as I pressed my mouth to hers. The hitch of her chest and the moan that I drank as my tongue explored her mouth.

Kate. Sweet, beautiful, smart, and talented. And too good to get caught up in all my bullshit.

---