The Decoy Girlfriend(65)
But Freya doesn’t need to extract any such promise from him. It isn’t a trade-off or a transaction. It’s just honesty.
“I trust you,” she says recklessly.
Taft’s eyes are soft. “Yeah?”
“Maybe I have astonishingly poor self-preservation instincts,” Freya teases, just to watch him huff in annoyance. “Or maybe I’m a fan.”
He reaches for her hands, brushing his thumbs over her wrists. “Of the show?”
Silly man. “Of you,” says Freya.
* * *
—
Taft watches Freya instead of the love story playing out on the screen.
She couldn’t have shocked him more if she’d kissed him again. She’s a fan of him. Not his characters, not his celebrity, but him. Like every single smile she’s sent him since day one, this confession makes him feel like there’s a sunrise in his chest.
He knows he should pay attention to Bowen’s movie, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the woman sitting next to him, red lips parted and hand limp in her bucket of popcorn. Her fingers are marinated in salt and butter, and she doesn’t even seem to notice.
She would if he reached over and sucked each one clean, he thinks with a strange mix of possessiveness, lust, and curiosity.
It isn’t the first time he’s thought about giving in to his feelings for her. Of reaching out with both hands and taking what she’s been offering him for days.
Freya’s face flickers with every emotion she experiences. Despite the fact that she’s started slamming her laptop shut every time he enters the room, she’s an open book. It’s refreshing to discover that, despite being a proficient liar, she’s still guileless when it comes to what she feels.
And for some incomprehensible reason, she feels for him. She trusts him.
Taft thinks it’s the biggest responsibility—the biggest honor—he’s ever had.
“You’re not watching,” whispers Freya.
“Yes, I am. Ask me anything.”
He hasn’t been paying attention. He hopes she doesn’t call his bluff. Can he help it if she’s more fascinating and beautiful to watch?
Her voice sounds so close as she says, “If you were, you’d be tearing up right now.”
When the glow of the screen hits her brown eyes just right, he’s startled to discover that they gleam with tears. “Are you okay?”
She angles her neck toward him, but keeps her eyes fixed on the screen. “Oh no, is my mascara running?”
Taft stares for longer than necessary. She’s still staring straight ahead, anyway, so he gets away with it. He wonders what it would be like to be openly spellbound by Freya without the cover of darkness masking his desire. “No, you’re perfect.”
That gets him her full attention. He can read the question in her gaze and he looks back steadily, willing her to peer into his exposed soul if that’s what she wants.
Please want that.
“Don’t,” she says, glancing around like someone’s about to shush them.
But thankfully, they’re seated in the back, and the closest people are three seats away in either direction. Taft gestures to that effect, not surprised at all when understanding reaches her eyes. She can read him almost as well as he can read her.
“Doesn’t matter.” Her voice is pitched low, almost a plea. “We shouldn’t do this. Not here.”
It strikes him then that she isn’t referring to talking during the screening—which is also forbidden, or at the very least frowned upon—even though they aren’t disturbing anyone.
“I’m all out of reasons why we shouldn’t,” he whispers.
She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, teeth biting down. “Taft?”
He loves the sound of her voice, the way she says his name, and the little lilt at the end.
She’s said his name a hundred different times, a hundred different ways. Surprise and elation when she saw her new office for the first time; trepidation when Hen headbutts her to the front door for the walk she won’t take him on alone; frustration on more than one occasion, usually because he’s asking how her writing is going, which he’s starting to realize is never a good question to ask a writer knee-deep in the weeds.
But this is the first time she’s said it with a hint of reverence. Expectation. Hope.
Freya’s eyes search his with all the force of a lighthouse beacon, and he can’t help but be hypnotized. He’s always loved brown eyes, and he suddenly can’t remember if it started before or after he met her.
He’s spent a lot of time soulfully gazing at women, coached by directors, photographers, and intimacy coordinators, but for the first time in years, this isn’t a set and he isn’t playing a role.
No one is watching. This moment is reserved solely for them.
When he looks at her, Taft is just a man looking at a woman he’s falling for.
His mind erases everyone in the theater, silences the movie, and spotlights Freya with a beam so bright that the entire room turns to shadow. He takes everything he feels for her and lets it show through his eyes.
It’s absolutely harrowing.
Relying on every tool and trick he’s picked up over the years to convey emotion through a single look, he projects his heart into her hands as though Bookshop Girl hadn’t already claimed it on day one.