Page 48 of Rebel Romeo

“Guess so.”

“Good night, Holden,” she said and didn’t wait for me to respond before she shut the door.

Walking downstairs to my car, I tucked a cigarette between my lips and lit it, inhaling the delicious smoke.

The first inhale was always the best. Then, I pulled out my phone and dialed the pizza place.

“Hey, this is Magic Mushroom. How can I help?” a young voice said.

“I’d like to order a pizza,” I said, tugging my credit card free from my wallet.

If I couldn’t allow myself to stay for the night, then I could at least order them a pizza. A real pizza. On me.

And hope that somehow, she could see the subtext beneath the small gesture…

That I was totally and completely falling for her.

I was falling for my Juliet. And just like Romeo, she and I could never be together.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I exit the subway after my rehearsal feeling utterly raw. Like Holden had taken sandpaper to my entire body.

But I’m also exhilarated.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed our rehearsals in the evening. The times that were just him and me. Tonight was a salve, soothing an abrasion I hadn’t realized was there.

“Kate.”

A cold, feminine voice calls my name as I hike my bag higher and take the last step out of the subway.

That voice stops me dead in my tracks as I look up into the lavender eyes of Missy Howl.

What the hell is she doing here? In Brooklyn?

I glance around nervously. “How did you know where I’d be? And have you just been waiting outside for me?”

It’s creepy as hell. Stalker much?

She ignores my questions and walks slowly toward me, the click of her heels against the sidewalk echoing in the sticky, humid evening. “Apparently, you and Nolan are all anyone can talk about this week. And it strikes me as odd that as soon as those pictures went live in Backstage Magazine, Holden changed his rehearsal policy to push me out.”

Why is she telling me this? “Oh? Sounds like you should be waiting outside Holden’s apartment, then … not mine.”

“Hmmm.” Her humming noise comes out like a little exhaled laugh and her top lip, painted a perfect siren red, curls with the movement. “I spent all week trying to figure out what it is about you. Why is Holden so hell bent on making you work as his leading lady when he has the perfect ingénue right next to him in his bed.” She gestures up and down at herself.

I clear my throat and move to get around her but again she blocks my path. “You should ask Reid Bradley,” I manage to say. “He was the original director who brought me in to audition.”

I had believed for weeks, until the Pillow Fight cast party when Holden’s dad let it slip, that Holden was the one to orchestrate Reid seeing me in that Fringe show.

But right now, that lie might help me get out of this situation.

“That’s what I thought, too,” she says. “At first. It took me a while, but then I found this.” She holds out her phone and illuminated on her screen is the old review of mine and Holden’s show from freshman year.

A sharp breath lodges at the base of my throat. “So what?” I bluff. “A crappy review from some undergrad production?”

She purses her lips. “It’s less the review and more the fact that it says you two were a couple. Dating. And that you nearly lost your place in the theater program because of a little extra-curricular?—”

“What’s your point, Missy?” I’d been publicly humiliated by that review. Not only the scathing review of my performance but the fact that so much of my personal life had been outed. It shouldn’t have mattered… and yet, with Holden’s political family? It did.

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