Dark Wild Night (Wild Seasons #3)(36)
Author: Christina Lauren

“ ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he says, laughing. “We went by ourselves and felt so fucking mature. We took a bus to Sydney—it’s nearly two hundred kilometers away and my grandparents were like, ‘Yeah, sure, go for it.’ I’m not kidding when I say every crazy personality in the world is represented on buses.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” he agrees. “Such kids, right, but I reckon it was the best night of my life up to then. My mate got tickets from his cousin. I didn’t even know any Aerosmith songs—well, I did,” he says, “I just didn’t realize they were Aerosmith. But it was brilliant. Maybe that’s when I decided I wanted to travel. Maybe it was before that, I don’t know. I think I learned to be a little fearless on that bus. Figured if I could head up to Sydney for a weekend, I could go anywhere.”

“My first concert was Britney Spears.”

He laughs outright, pulling back and smiling down at me. “That’s awful.”

“It was awesome,” I tell him. “I swear. Me, Harlow, Mia, and Luke—Mia’s ex.” I shake my head, remembering us dancing our asses off and Luke smiling through his teeth, being a good sport. “Poor Luke.”

“Taking three chicks to a concert? He could do worse.”

“Only one of us was putting out. Well, back then,” I say, reconsidering. “I think Luke gets more action now than 1979 Steven Tyler.”

Oliver laughs at this, but the song ends and he stops, easing his arms from around me.

“You did it,” he says, looking down at me with a half smile. “You danced with an Aussie in an empty bar and the world didn’t end. Check it off your list.”

“And we . . .” I start.

We talked. We admitted. We took that terrifying single step forward.

He waits to see how I’m going to finish this, expression warm, but neutral. “Yeah, we did,” he says finally, tilting his head toward the bar. “Let’s finish our drinks.”

And like this, it’s easy again.

* * *

I WAKE UP alone in an enormous white bed, in a bright pool of sunshine.

In the past few months I have traveled so often that the dusty blue walls and wide, white chair in the corner don’t immediately trigger a context for where I am. I roll over, see my leather pants folded on the chair, my shirt and bra lying neatly on top.

Obviously, Oliver is down the hall, in his own room.

My stomach feels low and small in my body, missing him. Wanting him closer.

Over our second drink we easily shed the tension of the We Are Totally Into Each Other admission. We were interrupted by a perfectly timed call from Not-Joe telling us how his date passed out drunk on her couch, and only after he left did he realize his phone was dead and he left his wallet in the store so he had to give a taxi driver his watch in order to get a ride home.

At around one in the morning, we left the bar, hand in hand, and walked the two blocks back to our hotel. I had five missed calls from Austin, none with voicemails, so I let them be. I wanted nothing but Oliver on my brain. He pointed out his room when we passed it on the way to mine, but before I could stutter my way through an invitation inside, he bent and kissed my cheek.

“Let’s take it slow,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

The words immediately formed in my head, but I couldn’t exactly say them out loud: can’t we have sex but otherwise take this slow?

I roll over, unplug my phone from the cord on the bedside table, and check my email. Shoving up onto an elbow, I squeeze my eyes together, struggling to read the words in front of me.

“Holy fuck.” I sit all the way up, crossing my legs in bed and zooming in on my screen so I can be sure I’m not imagining what I’m seeing. It seems that while Oliver and I were flirting and clinking glasses and avoiding the discussion of dating, Columbia-Touchstone cast the leads in the Razor Fish film. I have over three hundred emails, and at least ten voicemails from media outlets wanting a statement.

I tried to get a hold of you last night after you left. There’s a script, Austin wrote in an email. Thank God I’ve flagged his name; otherwise who knows whether I would have even seen it? Just something Langdon drew up in the past week. But don’t stress, we did it so we could cast quickly, and you’re going to do all the polish.

He didn’t think to clarify this last night? He told me Langdon had started writing, not finished.

The check also deposited in my bank account, and seeing that much money there makes me want to vomit. It triggers some instinctual panic, like I should have it all made into gold bars and hide them in my mattress.