“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I thought . . . never mind.” When I look back up from where he just hung his thumbs into his board shorts—my mind temporarily dazed by the abs and happy trail and the V—our eyes meet and hold.
Something about the fact that he actually has to practice at his craft kind of throws me. He’s always been perfect at everything he tries first time around and the notion that he is practicing, rehearsing, tells me he truly does care about what he does. That he takes it seriously. It’s such a change from the fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants mentality he used to have.
Practice before baseball try-outs? Of course not. And then he made starting lineup. Study before his final exams? Why would he? He aced them anyway.
So I just stare at him as the realization hits home: he’s the same boy I once knew and yet so very different. He’s matured. Changed. But in a good way.
Luckily he speaks and interrupts my overthinking. “I usually run them with my PA. She’s an aspiring actress.” He rolls his eyes as if everyone is in his life. “Rehearsing is hard when it’s one-sided.”
“Can I help?” His face reflects the same shock that I feel in asking.
He stifles a laugh but lets the lopsided smile spread across his lips and studies me. “You want to help?”
“Don’t sound so shocked, Whitley. I know I can’t act worth a shit, but I’ll help if you need me to. What’s the movie about?” I step closer, the breeze hitting my face and the view catching my breath momentarily as if I’d forgotten the paradise outside.
His lopsided grin turns sly. “It’s a romantic suspense project. This scene . . . is about the main characters. They’ve fought their attraction for what feels like a lifetime.”
“Why would you fight it?” The question is off my lips before I can pull it back, and it earns me a quirk of his eyebrow.
“Good question.” He shrugs, his gaze never wavering. “The way I see it, sometimes things happen in life and love’s put on hold. But if someone’s your soul mate, nothing is going to stop you from being together in the end.”
His words throw me. This introspective opinion so unexpected. The notion that I know him, and yet don’t know him, becomes more and more clear. It makes me want to talk to him that much more. Understand who he’s grown into. See the depth in his thoughts. The maturity in his opinions. Sure I loved him before. Loved the teenager he was—playful, loyal, sincere, funny—but I’ve changed and matured too. The things I look for in a man have evolved with that. Insight. Compassion. Security. Character. Integrity. All of those things in a man are important to me.
And as I look at him standing before me, I realize the more I discover about the almost thirty-year-old version of him, the more I realize he embodies all of those traits.
His comment repeats through my mind. If someone’s your soul mate, nothing is going to stop you from being together in the end.
“Is that you speaking or the character?”
“There’s a little bit of me in every character I play.”
“Nice deflection.” I laugh, thankful for it too. “I’ll make sure to remember when I need you to lift something that you have the superhero strength of that Marvel character you played last year.”
He just laughs and hands me the script. “Cute, Ships. You want to help, or not?”
“Ah, it’s all fun and games until someone makes fun of the tights you had to wear,” I tease, knowing his superhero costume received quite a lot of buzz over the Spandex pants and definitive bulge they showed.
“Hey, whatever pays the bills.” His smile tells me he’s heard it all before and it doesn’t bug him. And it shouldn’t, considering the rumors regarding the paycheck he earned for wearing those tights. As should any man having to walk around in very tight Spandex. “You ready?”
Shit. I guess I better focus. And not on him. Or his bare chest. Or his biceps. Or the thought of his bulge in Spandex.
“Is it ridiculous that I’m suddenly nervous?” I ask with a skittish chuckle to boot.
“Not at all. I know something—a role, an award, an anything—is worth the trouble it causes if it makes me nervous.”
“Good to know.” I take a deep breath and glance down at the script in front of me. Ignoring the staging I don’t understand, I make a quick study of the exchange between the two characters, Gabby and Noah. “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”
I can’t read the smile he gives me. It’s almost as if he knows something I don’t. I shake the thought and just play it off as he finds me helping him humorous. And he most definitely will laugh at my attempt to act, but I don’t care. How many people get the chance to say they rehearsed lines with an Oscar winning actor?
“Let’s take it from right here,” Hayes says as he leans over and points to a line. “And why don’t you sit on the edge of the chair for me. It will help me with blocking.”