Page 78 of Crossing the Line
“Ah, Mom, you love us, and you know it,” Chelsea said, pulling Madeline to her feet.
“Movie time?” Madeline danced from foot to foot.
Xavier slid his hands under Waverly’s arms and pulled her to her feet, checking her for damage. “Let’s watch a movie,” Waverly sighed.
They’d crowded into the family room, pausing for popcorn breaks and what felt like a hundred questions, but Waverly enjoyed it. She’d curled into the corner of the sofa, Xavier next to her and told the Saints everything they wanted to know about the making of the movie. The stunt double that showed up drunk so Waverly performed the jump off the building before the producers figured it out and freaked. The way the director, a charmingly brusque man who knew what he wanted and couldn’t understand why actors just couldn’t deliver it without having their hands held, told her they couldn’t break for lunch until she stopped screwing up a scene. “Just do it better!” Waverly mimicked his bellow and had the Saints rolling with laughter.
And she took pleasure from the fact that Xavier had to cover his eyes during the big kiss scene. While his sisters cooed at the impossible romance of it all, he’d leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I really hate that guy.”
The rest of the family was much more vocal about their approval, and Waverly felt oddly proud. She’d spent so much time over the past few years thinking what she did for a living was silly, it was nice to be reminded that people really did care about her work.
That night, she lay between crisp sheets while crickets sang outside her open window and wondered if the Saints knew how lucky they were. She fell asleep thinking about Xavier: his heat, his heart, wondering if she would ever find what he already had.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning, Waverly woke with the sunrise as it peeked through the room’s bay window. She lay and listened to the comfortable silence of the house. With the exception of Xavier, the rest of the family were late sleepers, and she realized that for the first time in what felt like an eternity she could be alone and not just by shutting herself in a room.
She tip-toed out of bed and pulled on gym shorts and a t-shirt. She plucked the still unopened Stanford letter from her bag and stuffed it in the waistband of her shorts. Quiet as a mouse, she eased open the bedroom door and tip-toed into the hallway. The silence of the house enveloped her like an old friend.
She paused outside Xavier’s door and, hearing nothing, padded downstairs. She started a pot of coffee and snagged a crackle glazed mug of cobalt blue from the glass doored cabinet.
Through the sink window and beyond the trees, the lake waters sparkled and shimmered, beckoning. She took her coffee and her letter and let herself out the back door. The grass gave way to a forest floor, and she followed a meandering path worn by two decades of family sojourns to and from the lakefront.
A stack of kayaks rested upside down, ready for a day of fun. The lake waters lapped quietly at the rocky shore. A dock jutted out over the water, and two dull red Adirondack chairs faced the waters. She carried her coffee down the dock, feeling the worn wood beneath her bare feet. How many times had Xavier sprinted down this dock to jump off the end? How many fish had been caught here? How many bonfires were lit in the ring on the pebbled shore?
This place would endure with its foundation of memories and stories to be built on for generations to come. The sun, pink and gold, peeked over the far shore’s trees. A new beginning for a new day. It was as good a place as any for Waverly to find out if she too had earned a new beginning.
She settled onto one of the chairs and took a deep breath.
The letter felt heavy with importance in her hands. She’d wanted things before. Parts, mostly. Movies that she just knew were meant to be hers. But this was different. She’d been born into that world. This was a choice she could make for herself. A path to a future thatshechose.
She tore open the envelope, shook out the papers inside, and, holding her breath, read the first line. She was out of her chair on a triumphant cry. Stanford University was willing to take a chance on the movie-set schooled Waverly Sinner.
The letter fisted in her hand, she twirled, arms stretched overhead.
“Someone had too much coffee.”
The dry comment came from behind her. Xavier, dressed only in a pair of gym shorts and holding a mug of the coffee she’d made, watched her from the opposite end of the dock.
Embarrassed, Waverly shoved the letter behind her back. Xavier ambled down to her. The only escape, which she always took to noting when Xavier was near, was the black as midnight lake water.
“I didn’t run away,” she said, automatically on the defensive. “I just came outside to be alone for a whole thirty seconds of my life, so don’t even start with me.”
Xavier sipped his coffee and said nothing. Stubble covered his jaw, and his perfect pecs drew her eyes despite her best efforts. Xavier Saint was an Adonis by anyone’s standards, and it wasn’t fair, trying to focus when he stood there looking like every woman’s fantasy.
“You got in, I take it?” he asked finally.
“How the hell did you—?”
“Angel. There is nothing that happens to you that I don’t know about. I knew you were looking at college. I saw that letter from Stanford that you’ve been carrying around with you. Add the fact that I’m not an idiot, and there you go.”
He took another sip. He was cocky, confident, and she wondered why she found that so attractive.She was just dazzled by his bare torso, that was it, she decided.
“Don’t let me ruin your celebration. I believe you were squealing and prancing around?”
“There was no prancing,” Waverly insisted. “It was a very dignified celebration.”
“One worthy of a Stanford student,” Xavier teased.
