Playing With Her Heart (33 page)

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.

Better off like I used
to be.

Then, like I’ve been
slapped stupid, I pick myself up. Because I wasn’t better off. I
was acting all the time. I was living a life of pretend. But then he
came around, and with him there was never any faking, there was never
any make believe.

I rewind to the night
in my bedroom when he listened to me, and he helped me, and he saw me
through.

I flash back to the
direction he gave me at our first private rehearsal:
“But then
she transforms. Love changes her. Love without bounds. Love without
reason. She becomes his, and that changes her.”

How I loved the
sentiment, how I felt it ring true in every cell in my body, how I
longed for it to take shape in my life. I can picture the next scene,
I can hear the music swelling, the orchestra growing louder, because
this is the moment in the show when the heroine has to face all her
fears.

For better or for
worse, I need to know.

I grab my coat, my
purse, and leave Zane’s. I won’t sit here and mope, and I
definitely won’t walk away from this man without trying to protect
what’s mine with every ounce of my heart and soul.

Davis

The meeting is taking
forever, and I am antsy and eager to leave. But Clay has made it
clear that the producers—Tamara and Carter Shey—like a casual,
family atmosphere. They want a director to be involved, to chitchat,
to engage in long, deep discussions about Shakespeare. So I hold my
own, sharing some of my vision for
Twelfth Night
, and how I
want to bring a new take to one of the Bard’s most popular plays.

Joyelle is enrapt in my
ideas, and at one point, she even bats her eyes and casts me a huge
beaming grin that seems a bit too adoring at this point. Or really,
at any point.

I look at my watch, and
they realize it’s nearing midnight.

“I’m so sorry we’ve
kept you so long, but we’re thrilled to have you on board,”
Tamara says, and shakes my hand.

“There’s one thing
I’m going to need though to make this final,” I say, then nod to
Clay. “He’ll let you know what it is because I need to go.”

I clap Clay on the
back, and leave it up to him to work out the most important detail of
my contract. I say goodbye to the others, grab my jacket, and head
down the alley. If I know Jill, she’s already starting to worry.
I’ll have to work on that with her, to reassure her that things
don’t always unravel. That things can keep getting better.

But I don’t have to
go to Zane’s, because she’s walking toward me, marching right up
to me. She has the most determined take-no-prisoners look on her
face, and her blue eyes are fixed on me. She stops inches from me,
reaches for the neck of my shirt, grabbing the fabric. It’s not an
angry gesture, but a pleading one, matched by her voice when she
speaks. “Please tell me you’re not going to fall for Joyelle,”
she says.

I laugh once, shake my
head, and clasp my hand over hers, pulling her closer.

“Tell me,” she says
again, insisting.

“I’m not. That’s
not even remotely possible.”

“Tell me why,” she
demands.

“Because of you,” I
say simply. The answer is patently clear to me.

“I need to know
you’re not going to fall for her. I need to know that if you work
late with her, help her become a better Viola, you’re only going to
think of me,” she says, and I can’t help but grin.

She points at me,
accusingly. “Why are you smiling?”

“Because I love your
jealous, possessive side. It’s completely endearing.”

She narrows her eyes at
me. “You haven’t answered the question. Are you going to fall for
your Viola?”

I shake my head, and
curve a hand around her neck. “It’s impossible.”

She leans into me, and
her voice softens. “Tell me, Davis. Tell me why it’s impossible.”

I cup her cheek in my
hand and look her in the eyes. “Because she might play Viola, but
you
are my Viola. You are my Ava. You are my Eponine. You are
every part ever written, but most of all, you’re my Jill and you’re
the only woman I want,” I tell her, and she closes her eyes briefly
and sways towards me. But I’m not done. I have more to say. “I
will work with other women and you will be on stage or screen and
kiss other men, and we will come back to each other because nobody
else can come between us.”

Then she melts into me,
pressing her body against mine on the streets of Manhattan, outside
the St. James Theater, where I first told her on that cold evening
that she was in my show. “Do you want to know why I took so long in
there? What was so important to me that it kept me away from you on a
night like this?”

“What?”

“I told them I would
only do
Twelfth Night
if it was worked into my contract that I
could come back once a week during rehearsals.”

Her eyes widen and
sparkle, as if she’s filling with happiness. I love that she
responds this way. “Really?”

I nod. “Yes.
Really
,”
I emphasize. “I want to see you. I want to have a future with you.
I’m not going to jet off without a way to see you as much as I
can.”

She shakes her head, as
if she’s berating herself. “I’m an idiot for doubting you.”

“No, you’re human.
But you’ve got to realize that even though I might be in London for
two months, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I love you,” she
says fiercely, grabbing my shirt again, and fisting the fabric. “I
fucking love you so much it hurts. But it’s a good hurt, because it
makes me feel like I’m alive, and it’s not pretend and it’s not
fake, and I want to keep loving you and trying not to hurt you, but
sometimes doing it anyway, and then forgiving, and I want that with
you. Only you.”

“Good. Now why don’t
we skip Zane’s, because I think there are other things we should be
doing right now.”

“What could you
possibly have in mind?” She says playfully as she takes my hand and
I hail a taxi.

“Come back to my
place and find out,” I say, then open the door and let her in
first.

* * *

We barely make it into
my loft. She launches herself at me in the elevator, running her
hands through my hair. “Do you remember our first private
rehearsal?” she asks in an intensely serious tone.

“Of course. How could
I forget?”

“When we were
leaving, I kept hoping the elevator would stop. Or jolt me into you.
So I could do this,” she tells me, then captures my lips in a kiss
that is both soft and hungry, a promise of what’s to come soon, of
how we will have each other tonight. She slows the kiss down, running
her tongue along my bottom lip, then nipping at the top. She breaks
the kiss to shoot me a sly grin. “That’s how you kiss me
sometimes. You torment me with your teeth.”

“You deserve
tormenting,” I say, teasing her.

“I know, but I want
to give it back to you.”

“You should
definitely give it back to me. Any time. All the time.”

She backs me into the
corner of the elevator, grabs my wrists and holds them tight at my
side, then bends her head to kiss my neck. Only she doesn’t kiss.
She bites, and it feels fucking fantastic. I close my eyes, reveling
in the sensation. I’m about to respond in kind, but she lets go of
my wrists and grabs my hair hard, then pulls. Once.

“There,” she says
happily. “Like you do to me.”

“All’s fair in love
and war,” I say as the elevator stops. She steps out first but as
soon as the doors close, I grab her jeans and pull her back to me,
spin her around, and lift her up against the wall in the hallway. She
wraps her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck. I push hard
against her, grinding my hips into hers, kissing her face, her neck,
her eyelids, her hair, her earlobes, anywhere on her, until she
rasps, “Inside. Now.”

I lower her to the
floor, unlock the door and shove it closed. In less than a second her
hands are on the zipper of my pants and I’m undoing her jeans, and
we are pushing clothes to the floor, and nearly tripping as we grasp
at each other while moving into the kitchen. I lift her up on the
counter, pull off her boots and her jeans, and then slide my hand
between her legs as she parts them for me.

“You’re already
wet,” I whisper in her ear, as I rub my fingers against her, and
she arches into me.

“Did you expect
anything less?”

I shake my head, and
slip off her panties, tossing them somewhere behind me. I don’t
bother to take off my shirt, or step out of my pants. I need to be
inside her now. I tug her closer to the edge of the counter then sink
into her, and she bites her lip, then takes a sharp breath, followed
by a long, low sigh of pleasure as I fill her.

“There are so many
ways I need to fuck you, Jill. So many positions, and places, and
things to do with your beautiful body,” I tell her as I start to
move inside her.

“I know,” she
whispers. “All those things you said you’d do to me when we had
dinner. And then at the Plaza. I need all of them.”

“You’ll have all of
them. And later tonight, I’m going to spend my time making love to
you, but right now, I’m going to take you, and it’s going to be
hard, and it’s going to be fast.”

Her eyes light up, like
she has a secret. “That’s what the hero said in a dirty novel I
was reading. I want it like that. Please do it like that now,” she
pants, then grabs my ass and pulls me deeper into her.

I do as I promised,
gripping her hips as I drive into her, slamming her onto me. She
grasps me with her legs, and holds onto my shoulders, then rests her
forehead against mine, her breath on my face, and I love it. I love
how she can’t hold back, how she wants this as much as I do. How
she needs it. Soon, she is moaning with abandon, moving faster with
me, and I start to lose myself in her noises, her sounds, in the way
she tugs hard on my hair, and shouts
yes
many times over as
she comes, and I chase her there. Then she wraps her arms around my
waist in a tight embrace. “Davis, I love you so much. I can’t
imagine being without you either,” she whispers, and I might be the
happiest man alive right now.

“Good,” I tell her.
“Because you won’t be.”

After a quick bathroom
break, I return to the kitchen, and she’s made herself at home,
perched on a black leather barstool at the counter. She’s still
wearing her sweater, but nothing on the bottom.

“That’s a good look
for you,” I say. “It’ll be even better if you take the top
off.”

“Consider it done,”
she says, and pulls off her sweater and her bra, and crosses her
legs. She looks so unbelievably sexy, all naked and blond and
just-been-fucked, sitting on my barstool, in my kitchen, in my home.

“I have something for
you. For us,” I say, then open the stainless steel fridge and
remove a bottle of champagne. “To celebrate your first Broadway
show. Your first ever performance on the Great White Way.”

I pop open the bottle,
pour two glasses, and sit down next to her. I hold up a glass to
toast. “To many, many more.”

“To many more,” she
repeats, then takes a sip.

I tip my forehead to
the stool. “You look good on that stool. You look good in my home.
You should make it yours.”