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Chapter 1

1

JEM

The kiss was different every night.

Some nights it was a quick peck, and some nights it was a comically exaggerated snog for laughs. There were some shows where Dawson hammed it up for the audience by dipping me dramatically or twirling me before planting one on me. We never rehearsed it or even discussed it in advance. I was as surprised as they were from show to show.

But when our lips touched, one thing was certain. Everything else in the theater disappeared. The eight hundred audience members, the set pieces and props, our fellow cast members, and even the hot stage lights. For that short moment, Dawson was mine and mine alone. It no longer mattered he looked down on me as an amateur who didn’t deserve to be in a Broadway production. I didn’t care anymore that he was a classically trained actor from Carnegie Mellon and Juilliard while I was practically self-taught.

As soon as someone said the next line, “Okay, she’s gone,” we all went back to sitting around the table in the center of the stage for the rest of the scene. Life went on, for approximately twenty-four hours. And then he kissed me again.

I never knew what to expect. Which Dawson would I see out there under the lights?

We barely spoke offstage. After the first week of rehearsals, I’d overheard him complaining about untrained morons coming off the street and landing roles with sheer luck when perfectly good, trained actors were being overlooked.

I knew he’d been talking about me.

I’d kept my mouth shut until the following week when I’d made a snide comment about entitled know-it-alls who think just because they have a fancy piece of paper (or two) they’re somehow better than everyone else.

I’d tried precisely once to ask him about his changeable kisses, to make sure I was playing it appropriately, and he’d said, “It’s improvisation, Jem,” like maybe I’d never heard of the technique before. “Just go with it.”

After that, we’d seemed to enter a silent war. It had been going on for eleven long months. We did what we needed to do to keep our mutual antagonism away from cast and crew dynamics, but we certainly never went out of our way to be friendly, other than participating in group activities where it would seem awkward if we weren’t nice to each other.

It was different once the curtain opened.

I loved my role in the show. Not My Alfred was a fast-paced comedy of errors about a 1930s mob boss who’s trying to keep his life of crime hidden from his perfect, god-fearing wife. Dawson and I were both cast in supporting roles as members of the crime family. Dawson became Lucky Loretto, whose closest compatriot in Alfred’s organization was Trigger DeCaro, the role I played. During the show, we laughed, we strategized, we slammed doors and shoved each other into hiding spots.

We kissed.

Seeing him dressed in his pinstriped suit with spats confused me for a split second every night. For that quick moment, he looked hot as fuck. Tall with a strong jaw and head of thick, dark hair. He was commanding, sexy, competent, and delicious.

Someone I could want.

But as soon as the final curtain came down after the show… it was like none of that had happened. And maybe it hadn’t. Maybe that was how theater life was.

Lucky and Trigger were bros.

Dawson and Jem definitely weren’t.

“Jem, you coming out tonight?” Kota bounced his eyebrows at me in the dressing room mirror. “The Retro has buy one get one cocktails midnight to two for cast and crew.”

I nodded and glanced over at Dawson, who was standing across the small room in just his costume trousers and white tank undershirt. The sweat shone on his skin, and the way his suspenders hung down outlined the rounded globes of his ass in those pants.

“Yeah?” Kota asked.

I blinked and looked back at the mirror. “Sorry. Yeah. I’ll go with. Thanks.”

A few guys from the cast and crew had recently started including me in their after-work drinks. Even though I was usually flagging after the very physical show, I’d learned to rally. Socializing wasn’t easy when you didn’t know anyone in town, but as my sister had told me a million times, “How else are you going to get to know people if you don’t at least try?”

So I went for a cocktail, which quickly turned into four since they were half-off.

“I should get going,” I finally said, dragging my tipsy ass up from the sticky table and dreading the long train ride back to the apartment in New Brunswick, where I lived with my sister and her boyfriend.

“Stay with us,” Kota said with his dimpled grin. “We have an extra room now that Taylor moved to LA and our new roommate was a no-show. It’s about as big as a moderately sized doghouse, but it has a bed and a door that closes.”

The two guys from the crew who shared the apartment with Kota nodded their agreement. They were all easygoing guys, and I enjoyed hanging out with them. Once I agreed, ordering another drink was all too easy. Before I knew it, I was in a conversation I hadn’t expected.

“What’s it like to kiss Dawson Priest?”

At first, I didn’t answer because the question was clearly not aimed at me. But I couldn’t help thinking about it. His lips were firm and full, and his jaw was just the right amount of bristly…

“Jem, dude. Lars asked you what it’s like to kiss Dawson. Lucky bastard is what I say. Those lips? How can it be anything other than incredible? He’s the world’s hottest man.”

“Me?” I asked, stupidly pointing to myself. I wouldn’t know what it was like to kiss Dawson. How would I?

Oh, wait.

“You mean the stage kiss.”

They laughed. “Sure, babe,” Kota said. “The stage kiss.”

“Why are you laughing?”

Two of the guys exchanged a knowing glance. “Let’s just say you’re both really good actors.”

“Hot,” another guy coughed into his fist.

“So hot,” another one sighed.

“It’s just…” I thought about the right words to describe it. “It’s just whatever, you know?”

They all stared at me. “Try again,” Kota said.

“He’s an asshole,” I blurted. “So it’s nothing special.”

The lie sat heavy on my tongue. It was something special, but I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to admire the way he made every night a new experience, always keeping me on my toes. Or the look he sometimes got in his eye right before his lips met mine that said, “Trust me, this is going to be amazing,” like we were true partners up there.

I really didn’t want to think about the way my stomach swooped when his arm wrapped around me or how it was sometimes a struggle to let him go when the scene ended.

“Mm,” Lars said, studying me. “Fine. Be that way. Someone said you have a girlfriend anyway.”

“Me?” I squeaked. “I’m gay.”

Kota giggled, which meant he’d had one too many drinks. “He lives with his sister. The hot chick with the short curly hair? That’s not his girlfriend, dude.”

Lars mouthed the word “Oh.”

Another guy leaned forward. His name was Chris, and he was a sewing genius in the wardrobe department. “There’s no way you don’t have an opinion about kissing Dawson fucking Priest every night if you’re gay. The man is hot as hell.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t know how to explain that the kiss onstage wasn’t actually Dawson kissing Jem; it was Lucky kissing Trigger. I wasn’t sure I really understood the difference myself, but there was one.

Fortunately, Chris continued before I had to speak. “Also? Insider info from the wardrobe department… he’s a tight fit in the trouser department if you get my gist.”

“I’d like to get that gist,” someone muttered. “In my gist hole.”

We’d all really had too many drinks. “I think I should head home.”

Kota grabbed my arm and used it to haul himself up. “Okay, but you’re coming home with us.”

One night crashing at their place led to two, which led to me moving in with Kota, Lars, and Chris the following week. The short commute from the Chelsea apartment was heaven compared to the train ride in from New Jersey, and it would allow me to get a part-time job in the city on my off days. I usually walked to work and then took the subway home at night or split a car with the guys. Living in the city was one of my dreams come true thanks to being cast in Not My Alfred, and when I finally got my financial feet under me, I would enjoy taking time to go to the parks, museums, and restaurants that made the city such a great place to people watch.

I loved the energy of the city, and I’d always imagined what it would be like to live in the middle of it. Now, here I was, and I’d do anything to keep living my dream.

Even if it meant getting a tiny taste of something impossible every night in the form of a ten-second kiss with the world’s hottest but most infuriating man.

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