Playing With Her Heart (Caught Up In Love #4)(66)
Author: Lauren Blakely

My friends all stop by for congratulations, and then it’s time to hang with the cast.

“Ready for Zane’s?”

“Yeah, let me meet you there,” I tell Shelby, then pop out of the dressing room to look for Davis. I head down the hallway, but I don’t see him anywhere, and even when I peek at the empty stage he’s nowhere to be found. I hunt around more, and finally I leave the stage when I see a handful of people lingering in the now empty seats.

There’s Davis’ lawyer, Clay, as well as a man in a sharp suit and a woman in black slacks. They look cool and business-like, and Davis is holding court with them. He’s leaning against one of the chairs in the front row, his long legs stretched out as they chat.

They must be the Twelfth Night producers, and there’s a part of me that kind of likes watching him, unseen, as he conducts business and is wooed by the financiers of the theater world who want his talent, his vision, his eye. My lips curve into a grin—that’s my man over there, and everyone wants a piece of him, but I get to have him.

A woman walks down the aisle, and I tense. The last time I saw her was at the gala. Only it’s not Madeline. It’s Joyelle Kristy, the actress who was interested in Twelfth Night. She joins the crew, and I tell myself not to be jealous because this is his job, and he will work with many beautiful people over the years, just like my job is sometimes to kiss men on stage and I did that tonight.

But she smiles at him, and it’s so unlike the way Madeline looked at him. Madeline was all distance, but Joyelle has this happy, buoyant vibe around her that I almost can’t quite put my finger on. Then, it hits me. She looks like me when I first learned I was cast. Like me, she’s throwing her arms around Davis, gripping him in a huge hug, and he responds by hugging her back and smiling.

I step back, nearly stumbling. That’s how he treated me outside Sardi’s. He’s interacting the exact same way, and seeing the two of them unleashes a new feeling in me, a foreign feeling. Something I haven’t felt before because I haven’t loved like this.

The fear of us unraveling.

He sees me in the corner of the theater, untangles himself from Joyelle, and gestures to them that he’ll be right back.

“You were breathtaking,” he says when he reaches me.

“Thank you. What’s going on?”

“The Twelfth Night producers are here.”

I nod a few times, trying to prepare myself for what I know is coming. Him leaving. “So you’re taking the job in London?”

“Yeah, I am. But you knew I was leaning towards it.”

“And Joyelle? Is she Viola?” I ask, my body flooding with worry that this most wonderful thing could fall apart when a new leading lady walks onto his stage.

“Hey,” he says running his thumb along my jawline. “She’s just happy she was cast.”

“Right,” I say with a nod. Just happy she was cast. Like I was, and I can see it all unfolding again. He’ll be in London, away from me and working with her. She’ll have late nights with him. She’ll have private rehearsals with him.

“I better let you finish your meeting,” I say, as my heart starts to race at a frantic pace, like it’s trying to escape from my chest.

“I’ll see you at Zane’s.”

“Yeah,” I reply, but I feel completely unmoored as he walks away and rejoins the people he’ll be working with next as he moves on from me.

All along, I thought I’d be the one to hurt someone. I’d avoided relationships for that reason. But Davis has my heart, I’ve given him my most valuable possession, and now he can hurt me too.

I grab my coat and leave the theater, the heavy stage door clanging shut behind me. I button my coat, and head out to Forty-Fourth Street, and am shocked when there are audience members waiting for me, asking me to sign their Playbills. It’s thrilling, and I sign several and pose for a few photos too, but inside I am awash in stupid worry.

That doubt escalates as I flash back to all the days and nights we spent together. To all the things he said. To how he plays actors like instruments to get the performance he wants. From Patrick to Alexis to me, he knows all the right notes to hit, and he plucks them perfectly, creating the masterpiece he wants from the tools we give him. Ourselves.

Memories collide with each other.

Davis telling Alexis she was his first choice.

Davis coddling Patrick with niceties.

Davis working me over, bit by bit, night after night to get me to be his best Ava. He knew what Alexis was like. He might not have known she’d break a leg, but he knew I’d have to go on, and he made sure I was ready. Then it hits me, like a punch in the gut. The way he talked to me that night at the studio—do you sing to the wall, do you sing to the floor—it’s no different than how he dirty talked to me in the restaurant the night I got off for him.

I lean against the wall of a nearby apartment building and wrap my arms around myself, as if that can somehow protect me from all these images smashing into my brain and pricking at my heart. I can see him and Joyelle in London, alone in the theater after hours, rehearsing, running lines, digging deep for emotion, connection, passion. I know far too well how easy it is to get swept up. It happened to me. It happened to him.

It happened as he turned me into Ava. All along I never saw that my relationship with him mirrored Paolo’s and Ava’s. But he broke me down to get the best performance from me, as Paolo does to Ava. As Davis will do to Joyelle. The young, gorgeous, talented actress who is next in his employ, and I can’t stand the thought of losing him to her. To anyone.

I start walking again, but I’m wrung dry and worn out, and as I enter Zane’s I want so desperately to recapture the way I felt many minutes ago on stage, as well as the way I felt all the days before. But it’s hard to grasp onto what’s real because now I’m sick with worry that the one real thing could slip from my fingers. That he could be far away from me and forget all that we shared.

Inside Zane’s, I do what I’ve always done. What I’m used to. I shuck off the past. I ignore all the things that hurt, that don’t make sense, that I don’t know how to deal with, as I grab a beer and join Shelby and the others in round after round of endless opening night toasts. As the minutes turn into an hour and he still doesn’t arrive, my heart is a brick inside my chest, and I wish I could rip it out, and replace it with a mechanical one, because I think I’d be better off that way.