Page 54 of Sawyer

Really intense.

“Cast!” cries Bruce, standing center stage and clapping his hands to get our attention. “We’re a month into rehearsals, which means we’re just five weeks out from the show. Can we give Aaron a round of applause for the progress he’s making on our sets? Aren’t they wonderful? Thank you, Aaron! Cast, it’s going to start getting real now! We have the fundraiser at the Parsnip this weekend—yes, Mr. Hedgely, your attendanceismandatory!—and I need everyone off-book by the eighteenth. We’ll do our first full run-through the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so plan to stay late. Any questions?”

Vera raises her hand and asks what happens in the event of a snowstorm the nights of the show.

“Are we Hawaiians or Alaskans?” asks Bruce with a theatrical scoff. “A little snow is no match for us. The show will go on! No matter what! Any more questions? No? Then, I need everyone in the engagement party scene first—Wyatt and Ivy, front and center, please—and then I’ll need Sawyer and Ivy for the death scene. Thank you, everyone! Places, please!”

The engagement party scene breaks my heart—at a celebration hosted at Wuthering Heights, Quinn Morgan, as a perfectly recast Hindley, tells Heathcliff that he is “allowed” to say hello to Miss Catherine and wish her well on her impending marriage. Sawyer’s eyes when he looks into my face, so full of love and betrayal and frustration, give me a glimpse into his pain when I left him and returned to Clark after our summer together. I find myself tearing up and use that emotion to be extra mean to him. When he tries to take my hand, I yank it away and haughtily thank him for his well wishes. Then I smile adoringly at Wyatt’s Edgar, and we move away from Heathcliffto greet other party guests. I feel Sawyer’s eyes on my back, watching as I make my rounds. I can feel his pain, and have a fleeting thought that the lines of art and life are blurring. Or converging. It’s unsettling.

After running the scene several times, Bruce dismisses everyone but me, Sawyer, Vera, and Wyatt. It’s time for us to start rehearsing the death scene. Catherine’s death, which is, perhaps, the most passionate scene of the entire play. The stage direction calls for kissing—a lot of kissing. My stomach fills with butterflies as I lie down on a bed and pretend to be dying.

“Wyatt, you start the scene by Catherine’s bedside, but you’re called away on business. Vera, as Ellen, the maid and Catherine’s only maternal figure, you recognize the importance of letting her see Heathcliff before she dies. Knowing that Edgar will be away from Catherine for a little while, you bring Heathcliff into the room, then quietly leave. Sawyer and Ivy, I need not impress upon you the importance of this scene. Give it your all.” Bruce steps down from the stage, taking a seat beside McKenna in the front row. “Action!”

Edgar kneels on the floor beside Catherine, clutching her hands.

Ellen enters the room.

“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Linton,” she says, “but one of your tenants waits in the library. He insists on speaking wi’ you.”

“Tell him to go away!”

“I did, sir, but he won’t go. There’s a dispute ’twixt him and another farmer, and he says you must settle it.”

“Damn these provincials!” cries Edgar. He leans down to kiss Catherine’s hand before standing up. “I’ll return soon, my love.”

Ellen opens the bedroom door for Edgar, then pantomimes closing it. She crosses the room, pretends to open a window, and leans her body out of it.

“Heathcliff!” she whispers loudly, cupping her hands over her mouth. “Mr. Heathcliff! Come now. I’ve left the scullery door unlocked! Make haste.”

“Heathcliff?” asks a groggy Catherine, trying to sit up straighter. “Has my Heathcliff come?”

Ellen opens the bedroom door, and Heathcliff races inside the room, rushing to Catherine’s bedside and kneeling down beside her. Ellen leaves them alone, pulling the door shut as she goes.

“Catherine!” says Heathcliff, covering her face with little kisses. His lips press against her skin and hold. “My life.” His lips on her cheek. “My soul.” His lips on her forehead. “How can I bear it?”

He leans away, seizing my eyes with his, and no matter how hard I want to stay in character so I can excuse what’s about to happen, I know that it isn’t really Heathcliff kissing Catherine in that moment.

It’s Sawyer kissing me.

And God help me, I want him to.

He reaches for my face, cupping my jaw with firm but gentle pressure, his eyes seeking permission for what he’s about to do. I lean into his touch, rotating my face just enough to brush the edge of his hand with my lips, before catching his gaze with mine. Though Heathcliff would never smile at such a moment, Sawyer does—just for a quick second, his lips quirk up in a tiny smile—and I have to work hard not to answer it with one of my own.

And that’s when I feel it.

That’s when I know.

Those feelings I had for Sawyer? That I worked so damn hard to forget and ignore and bury? They aren’t forgotten or gone or dead. They are just as vibrant and alive as they ever were, and they return to my heart, fully formed, in a rush of love.

Real love. True love.

Love that I have never felt for anyone else on earth but Sawyer Stewart.

“Ready?” he whispers, the word barely audible.

“Yes,” I murmur, closing my eyes as they fill with tears.

His lips are somehow new and familiar at once. Tentative only for a second, he wraps his arms around me, sealing his mouth over mine and breaking the seal of my lips with his tongue. There’s an urgency to his touch that I want to meet and match.I want this just as much as you do. My tongue tangles with his, an old dance that we’re both eager to learn again. The taste and heat of his mouth brings back a rush of memories, and I sigh with pleasure, struggling to free my hands, which are trapped between us. I reach blindly for his scalp and run my fingers through his hair, swallowing his groan as our kiss deepens.

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