Page 58 of The Do-Over

“All right—the coast is clear.” He looked at me over his shoulder. “Are you ready for this?”

“What’s our story if we—”

“I got it—no worries.” He looked at me with crinkly eyes and said, “You still trust me, right?”

It was weird how much I did. “Right.”

“Then let’s go. Just pretend we’re supposed to be here.”

“Got it.”

Nick pulled open the door and we walked out. In front of us was a carpeted hallway, with offices on each side of it.

Offices with glass walls.

We started down the corridor and he winked at me, which made me giggle. We hurried past office after office, and a woman in a suit gave us a closed-mouth smile as she came out of her office and walked past us.

After she went by, we grinned at each other because holy crap, it was actually working. We were going to make it to the elevators.

“Excuse me.”

Shit. We kept walking, our eyes looking straight ahead as we heard the deep voice of an older man repeat the words from behind us. “Excuse me. You two?”

Nick turned around, and his face transformed itself into that of a sweet, innocent high school boy. I watched in awe, my heart racing, as he said, “Yes?”

“Can I help you with something?”

“Actually, that would be great. Can you point us to the elevator? We’re here for an internship orientation and we clearly got off on the wrong floor.”

Wow—good one, Nick.

I turned around and the man was looking at both of us through narrowed eyes. I thought Nick was super believable, but the well-dressed old guy still looked suspicious.

I gave him my best good-student smile.

“It’s just over there,” he said, pointing past us, “but I didn’t even see you two get off the elevator the first time.”

“That’s because we took the stairs,” I said, smiling even harder. “I like to move, but my friend here is a little out of shape. I thought he was going to puke on the way up, which is why we ditched the stairs to look for an elevator.”

Finally—finally—the guy smiled. “Not everyone can handle those stairs.”

I reached out and poked Nick’s midsection (which was incredibly hard, for the record) with my finger and said, “Tell me about it. I thought I was going to have to carry this marshmallow.”

“Thank you so much for the help, sir.” Nick captured my finger in his hand while the guy laughed. Nick said to me, “Come on—we’ve got to run if we’re going to get there on time.”

We managed to calmly walk to the elevators, but the second the doors closed behind us, I was cackling. I looked at his wide grin and said, “Nick Stark, you are such a good liar!”

He laughed and moved a little closer. “And you are such an enormous brat with your ‘marshmallow’ shit.”

I felt breathless. He wasrightthere, his face just above mine while his body kind of trapped mine between the elevator wall and him, and I realized that I wanted him to kiss me. Something about my stairwell epiphany about my feelings for Josh made me feel wildly free to explore Nick Stark.

“We should go to the thirty-ninth floor,” he said, his voice deep and quiet as his eyes stayed on mine, “and then take the stairs from there.”

I just nodded as the elevator whooshed us upward. I swore he was leaning closer when—

The elevator dinged.

We both jumped apart and looked up at the numbers. We were apparently on twelve, and more people were getting on. I pushed at my hair as the doors opened and a security guard joined us

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