Playing With Her Heart (Caught Up In Love #4)(22)
Author: Lauren Blakely

Now I have to because I can’t keep holding onto the pieces of the past. I can’t keep carrying all this blame with me. My life is changing, it’s unfurling before me, and if I don’t free myself from the past it’ll keep haunting me. I weave down the path that leads under the bridge, remembering how green and lush the trees were the last time I was here.

Thick emerald bushes and branches hang low and burst with life as the sun casts warm golden rays. My heart pounds loudly against my chest, drowning out the lone squawk of a hardy crow circling overhead, scanning for crumbs on the barren ground.

The cobblestones curve under the rusted green bridge, and my feet nearly stop when I see the bench with its wooden slats. He waited for me at the bench, looking so sad, but so determined, too. Memories flood me, like a dam breaking.

“Please don’t do this to me.”

“It’s the only way.”

“No, we can try again. We can start over. I promise to be everything you want me to be.”

“I have to go. Please let me go.”

But he didn’t. He didn’t really let me go, and so I went from being a happy carefree seventeen-year-old to being completely f**ked in the head. I realized I could break someone, and someone could break me. But then, I also clawed my way out. I threw myself into my acting, letting go of myself and all the emotions I hated being crushed with, and that’s when I fell for Patrick, for the opposite of all those cruel memories.

Now, I need to let them go so I can be free. I start with this one note.

My fingers are gripped so tightly around the paper that it feels as if they have to be pried off. But instead, I open my fist, one finger at a time, and it’s as if a piece of me is moving on. Then I stand in front of the garbage can and I tear up his words.

They flutter down into the metal can, unreadable, unknowable.

I don’t know what I have to do for you to love me again…

I wipe my hand against my cheek, and then inhale deeply. “It’s done.”

And I walk away.

Chapter 11

Davis

One week.

Seven days.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

That’s how long my detox from Jill has lasted. No more stairwell encounters. No more meetings alone in my office. Nothing but the necessary interaction at rehearsals, and for the last week the assistant director has been working with the chorus on some of their numbers so I’ve rarely seen her.

Now, we’re blocking one of the dance numbers with Patrick, Alexis and some of the featured actors. I lean against the wall and watch the choreographer guide the actors through the bare-bones motions of what’s shaping up to be a sensuous number as Paolo and Ava dance on stage.

Then Alexis stops in the middle of a step. She raises a hand and waggles her fingers at me, sweetly, or feigned sweetly. Damn, that woman can act. Because I almost believe she’s about to ask some sort of thoughtful, curious question.

“Excuse me, Davis,” she says and is grinning ear to ear, as she gestures to stage right. She’s wearing a flouncy red dress. As she sashays to stage right, I suck in a breath because here it comes—the patented Alexis bit of input. “Wouldn’t it better, don’t you think, if say, we started this number right here—” she stops and gestures dramatically to the spot she’s deemed the proper starting point, then tips her forehead to the back of the room “—instead of back there?”

Right. Now she’s the choreographer too.

“No. We’ll start the number where we always start the number.”

“Of course, Davis,” she continues, still smiling, still syrupy. “But have you considered it might be better if we started it here?”

“No. I haven’t considered it, nor do I plan to. Let’s go through the song.”

I walk to the back and sit down as the actors resume the choreography. After the first few steps, a phone rings, loud and bleating, sounding out the overture from Fate Can Wait.

“Oops.” Alexis clasps her hand over her mouth and bats her eyes. Then she removes her hand. The chorus from that wretched show plays again. “My bad,” she says in an offhand way. “I must have forgotten to turn off my phone.”

She grabs her purse from the floor, roots around in it, and snags her phone. “Oh,” she says in a long, drawn-out voice, then taps a nail against the screen. “I should probably take this call. It may be a bit.”

She scampers out of the rehearsal studio, letting the door fall hard behind her. The room is silent for an awkward moment. I turn to Shannon, the stage manager.

“Can you get Jill please?”

She leaves to find Jill in one of the other studios, and they return shortly. Seeing the way she’s dressed tests my resolve.

“We’re working on the song ‘Paint It Red,’” I tell her, trying to ignore the fact that she looks even more stunning in her dance leggings. The trouble is they leave nothing to the imagination about the shape and curves of her body, her tiny waist, her strong legs that I want to wrap around my h*ps as I lift her up and push her against the wall. “The lines leading up to the song.”

Her face lights up at the chance to do the scene even in rehearsal, reminding me of how she started to work her way into my head from the day I met her with that sweetness, that bright-eyed excitement. Within seconds she’s at the front of the room with Patrick, who flashes her a grin that instantly twists my stomach. It’s a smile only an actor like him can serve up. The kind of smile movie stars give and it melts panties off women. The kind of smile I can’t stand seeing him give to Jill, so I look away briefly because I don’t want to see her reaction.

I clasp my fingers tightly together as they run through the scene, trying to focus on the performance. Jill doesn’t even need the pages. She has the lines memorized, and she’s hitting the right emotional notes too. She’s so at home playing this character. I’m impressed, but then I’m not surprised. Patrick is his usual self, pulling off the nuance, the narcissism, but also that random bit of playfulness in Paolo. They segue into the song, one that calls for them to tango briefly before they begin crooning to each other, confessing their burgeoning feelings with music. As they link hands, the worm of jealousy inside me balloons, slithers around my heart and lungs, tightening, threatening to strangle me from the inside out.

I drop my head in my hands. I can’t stand watching her with him, and it’s only one scene. One f**king make-believe scene.

“All done!”