Page 35 of The Reunion

I’m here because I’ve missed this place.

(beat)

I’ve missed you.

Duke is quiet, but can’t take his eyes off her.

HONOR

None of the places they sent me felt like this.

DUKE

Freezing with a side of fog, you mean?

Honor gives a small smile, tucking her hands deeper into the front pocket of her thick hoodie.

HONOR

None of the places they sent me had you there.

“Brilliant, brilliant, on to the next,” Bryan says, pulling me out of what has suddenly become a rather intense moment.

The next scene centers on Sasha-Kate, and I’m thankful for the breather—holywowwas that some next-level eye contact with Ransom during those last lines. He’s feeling the tension, too, I can tell—just the thought of being so close, having this intense conversation on the beach while the waves roll in, has me wanting to crawl across the polished wood of this table and finish what we didn’t quite get the chance to start in the garden the other night.

I catch Ransom’s eyes on me when I glance at him over the top of my script. The corner of his mouth quirks up, subtly enough so as not to distract Sasha-Kate and Millie as they work through their scene. Iforce my eyes back down to the page, and it’s a good thing, because this scene is ending and I’ve got the first line in the next one.

We work all the way through the rest of the episode like this, flipping from Liv and Ransom to Honor and Duke and back again, each glance, every quirk of his lips unraveling me a little more—and that’s not to mention the mid-episode scene that’s brimming with close-to-kissing tension between Honor and Duke, which has a few people fanning themselves just from the way we’ve read it on our opposite sides of the table. By the time we finish the final scene and our break rolls around, no one but us seems to have caught on that it’s more than just lines on a page. No one but us knows what almost happened in the garden.

The secrecy of it lights me up from the inside: it’s almost unbearable, standing here with Ford and Millie and Ransom during the break, eating a cranberry orange muffin like it’s any other day. I have the sudden urge to lick the crumbs off Ransom’s lips, taste the sugar on his tongue. From the way he looks at me when our eyes meet, it’s safe to say the feeling is mutual.

I’ve got to get out of here. Five more minutes until Bryan will expect us at the table again—it’s more than enough time. I make a beeline for the ladies’ room. As soon as I enter, though, I hear a voice echoing from behind one of the locked stalls: Sasha-Kate. Her tone sounds secretive, even a little sultry. She must have heard me, too, because a second later she says, “Gotta run—I’ll call you back after.”

I duck into the second stall before she comes out and things get awkward. I’m not in the mood for small talk, not with her, not while feeling all the things I’m feeling for Ransom, and especially not after overhearing enough of her phone call to know it sounded much more suited to a private hotel room than this very public bathroom stall.

Just before I head back out, my phone buzzes. Ransom:this is torture

Agreed, I type back.Still on for catching up later?

The typing bubble pops up, then disappears. A moment later, he writes,think we can get away with gelato on the beach without anyone noticing?

Another message immediately follows:also come back now, bryan’s giving your empty seat the death glare

I laugh out loud, and it echoes from the tile.On my way, I tap out as I walk.And I’ve got beach at my house, let’s use that

I hit send before I fully think through the implications of what I’ve just done. The idea of Ransom in my living room, on my back porch, on the stretch of sand between my house and the Pacific Ocean, all of it—suddenly I’m a tangle of anticipation, of nerves and excitement and theon purposeof it all.

But it’s not a date, I remind myself. He wants to catch up, which is fine, totally fine. It’s been fourteen years and we’ve only just reconnected. There’s a lot to catch up on.

Everyone’s seated when I return. Bryan trains his death glare on me, not my seat—his eyes are so lovely and kind until they’re staring intensely down his narrow, picture-perfect nose at you, and then they’re lasers. Worse, he doesn’t acknowledge me verbally—there’s noNice of you to join us, Livto distract from the glare, nothing to soften the hard silence. Once I’m seated, he simply says, “Now that we’re all here, let’s begin.”

Despite that uncomfortable moment, the rest of the afternoon soon turns into one of the best I’ve had in a while. It takes forever to go through the feedback—so many pages of notes from Dan and Xan all the way up to the Fanline executives—but overall, everyone is thrilled with the table read, especially the performances given by Ransom, Sasha-Kate, and me.

When all is said and done, Ford stretches his arms out over my shoulders and Millie’s, who’s sitting on the other side of him, and pulls us into something resembling a seated side hug. “Youkilledit today, my dudes,” he says, seemingly unbothered that the production team was decidedly neutral on his own performance.

“Liv killed it, anyway,” Millie says. If that’s bitterness I detect in her voice, I’m pretty sure it’s not directed at me. “I sound ‘like a heartless extraterrestrial who was picked up off the street and handed a script five minutes ago,’ apparently.”

Yeah, ouch. Production was decidedly less neutral about Millie.

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